Against the wind - Cuxhaven to Den Helder

Today we were planning to sail from Cuxhaven to Den Helder. That is quite a stretch, about 180 nm of sailing.

It started with the wind direction from about 45 degrees different from the forecast, which ment tacking all the way out of the the river Elbe.

After tacking back and forth through the exit, the wind changed slightly to make sure we had more tacking all the way to Den Helder, but at 3 AM we had had enough and knew that if we were going to get to a harbour before Den Helden, we would have to make that choice now and Norderney is the only place we knew were we could seek shelter.

During all the tacking the iPad seemed to have disappeared, and that was where the location of our tide tables were. With no knowledge of tides we had to take a chance and try to enter the harbour, something that was quite scary. At one point we had about 10 cm of water under the keel.  Everything worked out and we found a spot in the harbour where we could jump to bed and get some sleep and much needed rest - we are not 20 anymore and can stay up all night.
It was actually a good thing we did not find the iPad, or else we would not have gone into the harbour knowing it was low tide.

Today we are stuck waiting for the weather. It is just too much wind to sail, so we stay here and do some laundry. The forecast gives hope about perfect wind from about 10 AM tomorrow, so we plan to leave at 9 AM sailing the rest of the way to Den Helder.