The day we departed for our sailing adventure coincidentally was on the day of my birthday. My family has a tradition of having cake and ice cream on our birthdays but this time, we had to postpone this tradition until we arrived at a harbor. Erwin and I usually have dinner at a nice restaurant on my birthday but that had to be postponed too since we were planning to sail to France that day and that meant arriving either very late at night or early the next morning. Fortunately, since we were not very far from the Dutch coast, we were able to receive all the warm birthday greetings from my family and friends which made my birthday not pass unnoticed.

The wind was fair and the current was going the right direction. We were sailing an average of 5 knots, so later that afternoon Erwin suggested that if we maintained this speed we could arrive early in the evening in Belgium (instead of France) and have dinner in a nice restaurant to celebrate my birthday.

Unfortunately, the wind weakened after a few hours and even the shorter distance to Belgium meant that we would arrive at 10:00 p.m. Normally, we would use our engine only when entering and leaving a port or when it is necessary but in this case, we decided to make an exception to that rule and turned on the engine to arrive on time (let’s just say it was necessary).

We arrived in Blankenberge Belgium at 6:30 p.m. opened a bottle of Prosecco for this double celebration and then went out for dinner. We noticed that the average age of the people on the street was 65+. Our waitress told us later that evening that Blankenberge is busy with tourists in July and August but September is when the retirees visit. Ha ha, that makes us one of them.