The Belgian coast line is infamous for its concrete „charm“. High-rise buildings accompany the coastline from the Dutch-Belgian border all the way to France. No wonder that a lot of fellow sailors were telling us that there are not too many nice stops, but that Nieuwpoort should be one of them.
That said, we again left early and realised that crew and ship are getting used to the ship shape routine. For example, Simba starts his round around the deck and climbs onto the dinghy when we start getting ROCINANTE ready. As soon as we are done with preparing ROCI, he leaves for below deck.
Back to the sea! Today’s sail was very easy with mild wind conditions and the current in our favour all the way. That’s why we had left port already at 05:00 am to make our travels as smooth as possible.
Unfortunately, the wind died down and came back a few times. We were switching between motor-sailing (engine with the supporting main sail for stability) and sailing with Main and Jib. Together with the current our speed was above 5 knots on average which is way we arrived already at 10:30 in Nieuwpoort.
And yes, Nieuwpoort is different. Belgian (or French?) architecture plays a role, people start to have dinner at a decent time (after 19 and not 17:30 like the Dutch), but then yes, there is concrete and high rise buildings and lots of it. However, Nieuwpoort and its beach front is quite tidied up and the parks and streets are very clean with good shopping possibilities. Considering that it is off season, there are quite some people around most of which far progressed into their pensionista phase of life 🤣
We can’t quite say that we like it here though. The architecture is really not our style and we miss a bit of authenticity. Luckily, we found the old town in the evening with a little fish market, old buildings (all rebuild after WW1 though) and nice looking restaurants. Our only challenge was that it has been Monday which is why most restaurants were closed, so we used our last chance for a flemish Frituur before planning our routes for the next days.
