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The first order of scenery was a thatch-roofed white house surrounded by Dutch Elm trees all in a row. The Dutch always have big windows in their homes to let in the outside. The weather is so often cloudy and rainy that the people want at least the natural light to come inside to comfort them. This white stone masonry house was so incredibly beautiful in its simplicity that I wondered if its owners knew how many people sail, motor or row by and wish it was theirs.

Next up the canal was a sailing school with about twenty 16-foot sailboats neatly docked. There was room for several more so those were obviously out with their temporary owners sailing in a nearby lake. Just past the line of boats were orange umbrellas over white round tables. It was a café where returning sailors could sip on cool drinks and watch other boats go by. The office to this sailing school was brown stone, had big white framed windows and what I now knew to be typical: a steep thatched roof.

Motoring on at a speed of about 4 miles an hour, we came to a thatched roof of a different kind. This one was short, narrow and long and on top there were bricks that must have been there to weigh it down when heavy winter winds came through. All around this thatched roof structure, cows were grazing and they looked up at us for an instant then went right back to their business of the day. I realized that this thatched building must be a holding place for the cows' winter hay.

"Marten, do you have your quartje ready?" A quartje is a small Dutch quarter, no longer used today, thanks to the Euro. In Dutch when you have a JE at the end of a word, it means little. So here Marten stood with his Dutch quartje on the side deck of the boat ready to grab the wooden shoe attached to the end of a small line which was tied to the end of a stick. The shoe would be swung to him by the bridge tender as we motored under the bridge. But first the green light must be shown in our path and yes, it had turned to green. Marten caught the wooden shoe expertly, dropped in the quartje and let go of the shoe. It was taken in by the bridge tender who nodded a gesture of thanks. Afterwards, Marten and I lamented that there are no red and green lights at bridges in our home sailing grounds. It makes for such smooth transiting because the bridge tender can see who should go first instead of the boaters just using their best judgment. Sometimes in the U.S. it becomes a match of egos with powerboats and sailboats vying for the coveted space under a bridge, often with strong currents.

Up ahead we could see the huge concrete docks that surround, on two sides, a lock, directly behind them.

"Marten do you have the fenders and the lines ready?"

"Yes, Captain!" he called to his brother. Marten put the fenders on the outside of the boat as his brother, Cor, slowly pulled up to the concrete side and we waited for the locks to open. Once we went inside and were along the wall, at intervals, there were big open boxes in the concrete. The boxes had metal bars inside them to put your line on. As we went up in the locks after the huge doors had closed, the line Marten had put on the metal bar had to be loosened to keep pace with our altitude. In about twenty minutes Marten could push away from the concrete wall and pull the line and fenders back into the boat because the opposite massive door of the lock had opened and we could motor out.

Now it was time to cross what looked like a small ocean and the wind did not exactly look calm. By that time, Jay and his wife on their sailboat had joined us. On both boats, the sails went up and then the boats heeled over to a comfortable reach.

"What’s that lonely dead tree doing here in the middle of nowhere?" I asked Cor.

"That’s called a branch," he returned.

"A branch? " I said, "That’s not a branch, it’s a dead tree!"

"I know, I know, that’s just what they're called," replied Cor. "Actually it’s called a TAK, the Dutch word for branch. The Dutch equivalent of the Coast Guard goes out in their boats every summer and usually more than once, to move the dead branches because the winter storms move the sandbanks and the deep water channels change."

All of a sudden there was another dead tree but its branches were tied with twine and I was alert enough to notice that this one was on the other side of the boat. Cor explained, "The tied branches are on the starboard side and the untied branches are on the port side of the channel when you are heading to land." So we followed the path between these branches in a curving pattern which sometimes made for interesting sailing because we had to tack back and forth.

Our destination was finally in sight, our Captain reported. After the sail had been dropped to the deck and the motor engaged, we came into the harbor and could see long cargo boats tied up to the side banks. An older, very thin, rough looking man walked towards us and shouted "Over here! Over here! Tie up to this ship and your friends can tie up to that one next to it. Both ships won’t be leaving any time soon." This meant that to get to land, we would climb onto the cargo boat, walk across their deck and then come out on the dock next to it.

We did as instructed and then Jay, our relative on the other sailboat, said he wanted to work on his engine for a bit. Marten and Cor stayed with him and my sister-in-law, Willie, and I decided to walk to the only building within sight.

We climbed over the cargo boat onto the dock and as we walked down the long embankment, as far as I could see there was flat pastureland. It was as if we were in the middle of a very remote place in the world. In fact, an hour away, by car, was the city of Hilversum.

Willie had been to the little building we were headed for several times but it was a new experience for me. When we arrived I saw that it was an old fashioned café with large round tables and people chatting in their native Dutch. Coffee and cake were served as well as traditional Dutch beer, but Willie suggested I try the local specialty, a shrimp sandwich.

These were the tiniest shrimp I had ever seen and they were the fishiest smelling ones I had ever tasted, so I really didn’t enjoy them and would rather have had the apple tart. The atmosphere in the pub/café was light-hearted and I wondered where all the guests had come from since we seemed to be so far away from any place.

"Shall we go back and see how the men are doing with Jay’s engine?" Willie asked. When we rounded the corner, I could hardly believe my eyes. They had warned me that the tides were drastic in this area and I had seen some evidence of it but now my eyes were treated to a big expanse of dark brown blubbery looking substance beginning to appear.

We walked the harbor docks to Cor’s boat and saw the two keels exposed, but it stood up straight. Water was no longer holding the boat up, the twin keels were. Then I looked over at Jay’s boat, which has just one keel and saw that the cargo boat he was attached to was holding him up straight.

"Marten, could you hand me that large screw I gave you a few minutes ago?" I heard Jay say.

"You’re kidding! I thought you told me to empty the can, so I threw the contents overboard!" Marten returned. "No worry, we’ll be able to find it in an hour when the tide is really out," replied Jay.

This prediction was true. "Glub, glub," sounds could be heard when Marten waded barefoot in the blubbery substance. After several tries of feeling around with his hands in the mud, Marten announced, "Here it is! I found your screw!"

"I knew you would." Jay said.

In other areas of this neighborhood ocean, people walk in the mud at low tide. Some do it for fun and others do it because they think it has health-giving properties for their feet and legs.

The older, gruff man who had guided us into the harbor also had a boat there. The boat was made of wood and the next morning I saw an attractive young woman climb out of his boat. He followed her and this time he was smiling and very friendly and introduced the young woman as his wife. He showed Willie and me an area away from the boat that had been a lock years and years ago when the harbor had been a busy one. Now it was just a place to hide from a storm and eat peculiar shrimp sandwiches.

I had broken my arm at practically the beginning of this trip. The relatives I had been traveling with thought I should go back to land but I knew better. They all treated me like a princess and wouldn’t let me do a thing so it was very, very relaxing. When I walked along the high embankments of this area, looked into the distance and then turned my head to feel the breeze and see the shimmering sea, I knew I had made the right decision to come along.

Editor's Note: Riddle of the Sands is a great historical novel by Erskine Childers about the area where Susi sailed in this piece, and Brian Navin's Cruising Guide to the Netherlands gives you navigational advice for cruising the Netherlands. Our advice: watch out for those tides!