Good weather and the races

Sunrise on the North Sea
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We sailed out of London the next day with beautiful weather once again and made it to Antwerp, Belgium, on the 20th, the beginning of the Tall Ships' Races 2004.

This place is amazing! There's bunches of boats all over the place, both big and small, and we just happened to be docked next to a whole bunch of Scots. They were wonderful neighbors in that they played the fiddle and spoons and other Scottish music all day long, every day for the whole time were were there.

As for the fate of our laundry?

Flags.
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Other than that, life was pretty cool. We had standard dock watches, which really didn't amount to much besides making sure the boat didn't float away (which was damn near impossible) and stamping little kids' collections of boats they'd seen.

We were in Antwerp for 4 days and I don't quite remember how they broke down. But here's what sticks out...

After securing the boat and cleaning everything up, we headed out on the town to see what this place was all about. As with most European (and I imagine world) ports, the historical city center is never located too far from the docks. So after wandering a bit around the industrial section of Antwerp, we came upon this huge Renaissance-looking building covered in flags of most European nations. After a few beers at a local hole in the wall, we eventually headed back to the boat for dinner and festivities.

The Scots.
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As is the case in most ports, the night began with lots of singing and playing the guitar. Unfortunately, some of us had to do the laundry we had forgotten to do earlier in the day and figured now was the perfect time. It came to me to check on the dryness of our shirts after a few good hours of drinking. It's honestly a miracle I didn't fall into the water as I was walking along the docks because I wasn't anywhere close to being sober.

The clothes were still wet so I stumbled back to the boat for some more singing and drinking. While trying to step onto the deck, I tripped and fell over the beer crate we had put there as a step to minimize the height difference between the dock and deck. I must've made a huge thud cuz a few people came running up from below-decks thinking some cable had snapped. Nope, it was just my ass hitting the steel deck. The bruise that the beer crate left on my inner calf was probably the size of my hand and in due time changed from one color of the rainbow to the next. I wish I had pictures.

As for the fate of our laundry? I wasn't allowed to check it anymore and since the drier was broken, the shirts came out smelling like burnt plastic. We aired them for the rest of our time in port, but to no avail. They reeked for the rest of the trip and became unwearable.