Along the north coast of the Netherlands are a string of islands that have the North Sea on the outside and the Waddenzee on the inside. Some of the best cruising in the Netherlands is in and around the Waddenzee...but not for boats like Tenaya that require more than 2 meters of depth. In the picture above you see the view we saw after passing through the locks at Den Oever. It looks like miles of open water, but most of the Waddenzee is dry land at low tide and not that much deeper at high tide. We needed to follow a fairly narrow channel to the Island of Texel. There is a sailor belief that you should not set sail on a Friday. On Friday the 13th we sailed with the ebb of the tide and just went buoy to buoy. We could tell it was not deep when we would see birds standing on the water not that far from us. Of course, since this route was northwest the wind was coming from the northwest. So we motored in the narrow channel rather than tacking back and forth. Once we changed to a more westerly course we put up the sails and enjoyed the light wind.