We still found the weather to be raw, and were glad of our heater and woodstove. When the wood supply ran low, our blessed friend Liz gave us as much firewood as we cared to haul away, and expressed regret that we had not taken more.

One happy evening, Hanneke and Wilbert and family came to dinner, and their daughter, Elvira, played her violin for us, and played some duets with Barbara. The music was very nice, and the whole evening very pleasant.

One Sunday afternoon we took the train to Amsterdam to see Balanchine's Jewels performed by the National Ballet. We went early enough to explore a little first, and we found, against the odds, a lovely traditional "brown cafe" right in the tourist heart of Amsterdam and had an excellent lunch of pea soup and sausage.

They had come to Leiden to see friends and do a little shopping, reminding us that Leiden is still the market town for a large area, just as it was in the Middle Ages, but they live on the boat in Gouda, halfway between their places of work.

Barbara had arranged to speak at a conference in Stockholm the third week of April, and she also agreed to speak in Uppsala, at the University, the day before the conference. After a little research, I determined that we needed to leave Leiden at the end of March in order to be there on time, so March was a month of winding down and closure.

March was busy, too, with preparing the boat: engine maintenance (oil change, checking all belts, changing the raw water pump impeller), beginning to stow some of the loose gear that had accumulated while we lay alongside, and assembling a set of Baltic charts and installing the electronic versions on the navigation computer. Then I had to replace the nav. computer keyboard. And late in March the current propane tank ran out, so I made one more bicycle trip to Jongeneel Transport to get it filled. This was actually good, because it meant that we started out the season with all tanks full.

We had a very good time with them, and were sorry to see them go on to London -- and I think it possible that they were too, a little.

Our road led us through De Kaag, a lake that is a sailing center, the Ringvaart van de Haarlemmermeeerpolder, and finally to the Sparne, the river that runs through Haarlem.

We found a good and obviously very popular restaurant for Barbara's birthday dinner, and had a very pleasant evening.

Haarlem is a very old city. It is one of the few places in Holland above sea level, on a ridge running from north to south between a large lake (the Haarlemmermeer) and the dunes on the coast. The city grew and became prosperous originally because it could collect tolls from travelers and freight moving along this ridge. Since it is also on the river Sparne, it became a port in the early days, rivaling Amsterdam. Although he had a place in Leiden the Count of Holland had his main seat in Haarlem, which added to the city's importance.

We liked Haarlem. It clearly has some social/societal problems, like any European city in these days of unrest in the "third world," but it is an active, bustling town. The Sparne, running through the middle of it, is still a commercial thoroughfare. We went though the bridges in company with a working tug.

On April 2nd we left our berth, and an hour later, after a brief wait, were tied alongside in the Spaarndammersluis, the Spaarndam Lock, where I walked over to the tender's cabin and paid our sluisgeld, three euros fifty.

There was not much traffic in the North Holland Canal, and we proceeded in a relaxed way past fields full of cows, and an occasional small town.

In Alkmaar, the canal runs into the town, then takes a sharp right turn, and just after the turn is the mooring quay. A smaller boat might go on into the center of town, but we are much too big.

An elaborate pantomime ensues; pairs of cheese porters, in their white coats and variously-colored hats, stack several cheeses on their trays and then pick up the trays using the leather harnesses over their shoulders and hustle them off the the Waag, where they are weighed.

There was also the herald and his lady, both on high stilts, in period costume and making announcements (imcomprehensible to us) with a megaphone. And we mustn't forget the Kaasmeisjes, the "cheese girls" in traditional Dutch costume, who pass by the fence that keeps the crowd at bay, offering sample bites and packets of cheese for sale.

It is all very hokey, but still good fun, and with a certain familial air. There was, for example, a very young Kaasmeisje making the rounds with her older sister, or perhaps aunt.

North of Alkmaar, the North Holland canal runs close behind the dunes that protect Holland from the North Sea, and the air felt a little different, one could sense the openness of the sea.

Den Helder is a very interesting harbor. It is the main Dutch navy base, but it is also a support base for the North Sea oil and gas platforms. The big, state-of-the-art platform supply vessels that one reads about in Workboat and naval architecture journals are here and working. There is also a large number of museum ships and a whole vibrant culture centered on the Napoleonic era naval facility called Willemsord.

We wanted to leave on a Sunday, and Easter Sunday at that, and since we remembered vividly the plight of an Austrian boat owner in Leiden who had to leave his boat and fly home because the Clerk's Bridge did not operate on Sundays in the off season, we did not want any bridges or locks between us and the open ocean. We decided on a berth in the Royal Navy Yacht Club, which is now open to visiting yachts as well as members.

The base is a fair way from the town center, and we would have done well to take our bikes, but we didn't know that. We walked quite a way, but finally did find a medium-sized grocery store and resupplied.

When the lock gates opened, there was a bit of a free-for-all as the waiting boats squeezed into the lock chamber, relatively small by modern standards, but we all managed and nobody lost any paint.

Once through the Stavoren Lock and into the Johan Friso Canal, we made a sharp left turn into the Stavoren Harbor and found a berth on a grassy island that is also a park.

Stavoren was a major port in the 13th century, but the world later passed it by, and now it is a small village that we enjoyed walking around. Like many towns on the east side of the Ijsselmeer, it has a large marina where land- locked boat owners (many of them German) keep their boats, but that has not spoiled the village atmosphere.

From Stavoren we took first the Johan Friso Canal, and then retraced our steps on the Prinses Margriet and the Van Starkenborgh canals before turning into the Eemskanaal for Delfzijl.