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SOme extra points
- Hoorn is a beautiful town to walk around and explore.
- I highly recommend trying ‘Bitterballen’. It’s a dutch speciality and is basically deep fried meatballs served with mustard and mayo. They don’t sound that appetising but they are delicious! The texture is much softer than you’d expect and the mustard and mayo go perfectly with them. (We ended up eating these on a few different occasions during our time in Holland.)
- It took us just under seven hours to reach our anchorage after leaving Sixhaven Marina by Amsterdam but it had a completely different vibe. They have a much slower pace of life there which was really refreshing after a manic few days in the city!
- This is a very comfortable anchorage in the right conditions. The water can get very short and choppy if the wind picks up due to its depth.
- Beware of the weeds! The Markermeer is very shallow all the way across (3 – 5 metres). This means you need to be very vigilant and keep an eye on your charts and depth at all times. It also allows weeds to grow on the lake floor that reach up to the surface. Whilst sailing, we ended up getting a massive ball of them wrapped around our keel, rudder and prop which slowed us down from 7.5 knots to 2! Luckily we were able to remove the weeds by going in a very tight circle and alternating between forward and reverse gear. However, by the time we reached Volendam (where we went after Hoorn), we still had to remove a very large ball of weeds that were wrapped around the rudder. Watch our video to see what we pulled off!
- You can reach the Markermeer without needing to take your mast down as the bridges lift up to allow for tall vessels to pass through.
- The anchorage has thick, black mud on the bottom so be prepared to clean your anchor and chain as you pick it up or the decks when you next get chance. Ours were covered when we left!
- There is a watertaxi available to collect you from your boat and take you into town if the weather is too much for your dinghy. Our engine wasn’t working whilst we were here so we used it then as it was very windy and too far for us to row safely.
Photographs from Hoorn
Contact Details
We didn’t use the marina here – we tried anchoring for the first time!
Our coordinates were roughly: 52°38’09.2″N 5°04’24.3″E
Please use these in conjunction with something like Navionics as you are not allowed to anchor too close to the shore here – stay outside the buoyed area (yellow special purpose buoys (shape: spar). Red-white-red topmark; shape: cylinder (can).
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