The Frisian Islands

With a calmer sea and moderate wind we had a great sail across from Cuxhaven at the end of the Kiel Canal to Wangerooge, the most easterly of the Frisian Islands. There are 7 German Islands and 5 Dutch islands in the chain stretching about 100 miles along the north German and Dutch coasts, each island about 6 miles long.

The islands are really little more than sand bars that some grass and a few trees have managed to cling to! The islands were first popular long ago with monks looking to get away from it all as they do. Now each island has its own community and they have all become major beach holiday destinations.

Coming in to the channel towards the island from the North Sea we came across a colony of seals. There were a lot of young pups, some as small as a couple of feet long; cute and cuddly and considerably quicker over the ground than their somewhat blubbery parents when we got a bit close!

The centre of Wangerooge is a picturesque holiday resort with everyone getting about on bikes as there were no cars on the island. Cycling along the sea front we came across these rather super 'beach baskets', our wind break and deck chair all rolled into one. Mike and I had come across these before in Poland but these were off course much swisher!

From Wangerooge we headed west along the chain. The second island, Spiekeroog was well, another long sand dune, the third, Langeoog – yes, you get the drift. Getting from one island to another was however somewhat more entertaining. 

The islands are about 5 miles off the mainland coast with the water in between characterised by its lack of water – the whole lot dries out at low tide! This made for some interesting navigation. We set out from Wageorooge at about half tide so that we would hit the shallowest parts (yes literally) on a rising tide; that gave us about 3 hours of rising tide with a couple more hours of good water up our sleeve. The channels are continuously moving so charts are useless; they are marked by a series of withies, long willow saplings, driven into the sand at the edge of the channel and moved as required.

We set off into our first withie marked channel and very soon found the bottom.

Moondance has a lifting keel and with the keel up draws only 0.8 meters. I had hoped to find more water than that in the channel at this state of the tide! No matter, we dropped the anchor to wait for the tide to lift us off so we could continue which it duly did, happily just as another yacht passed us – on the other side of the withies! I had misunderstood the markings on the withies and headed down the wrong side – better luck next time. I was at least made to feel better by seeing the other yacht hit the bottom a few hundred yards ahead of us, but then he didn’t have a lifting keel!

Now that we had got to grips with the navigation we had a very pleasant evenings sail to Langeoog.

Tidal times and shallow depths became so tying that we did the rest of the trip along the islands on the North Sea side in plenty of water.

Chris had some friends staying on the German island of Juist that he wanted to meet up with so we anchored the boat off the beach and headed ashore in the dinghy where Chris’s friends stood waving, as did an official looking fellow with a red flag. As we hit the beach the official, who I think was beach patrol, came charging over communicating something to us loudly and forcibly in his best German. I invited him to try again in English as the only word I picked up was ‘verbotten’. He explained in his finest English this time (but no less forcibly) that dinghys were not allowed on the beach within 3 km’s of the village. What? How many dinghys do you suppose try and land on the wavey North Sea side of his island?! I told him that this sounded like a silly rule and suggested that he ignore it and let us see our friends that Chris had come all the way over from Australia to see. He looked at me as if I had 3 heads and explained again that this was a rule, dinghies on the beach were verboten. Germans it seems do not do flexibility! Poor Chris was spitting blood having made so much effort to meet up with his friends. Chris left Germany 30 years ago because he could not stand the German rules and rigidity – here was a very good reminder for him as to why he left and there were many less than polite expletives and gestures about Germany over the next day or two!

Unperturbed by Chris’s dislike of all things German this little fellow landed on the deck yesterday. Now, pigeons have a certain reputation, so I explained to it in no uncertain terms that if he left an unwanted present then he would end up in a pie for dinner. Unfortunatly the threat didn’t work; shortly after he had left Chris showed me his coat which was hung out to dry with a long runny white mess down the sleeve. This was of course hilarious, right up to the moment that Chris produced my water proof trousers carrying very similar markings!

Yesterday we left German waters. Chris took the opportunity whilst ashore shopping in the morning to relieve himself on German soil as a final gesture of defiance. With a few last departing gestures and expletives from Chris we crossed into the Dutch half of the islands. We decidd not to continue along the islands but rather to go into the short canal system which we decided would be a more interesting route down to the Zuider Zee and on to Amsterdam.