Just after daybreak. It’s almost time to shove off and I have to find a hat. It’s technically still Spring, but the sun here is blazing hot, relentless, and I don’t have a good hat. Couldn’t figure out how to pack one in the carryon for the flight. This is my quest, to be completed before breakfast. I have thirty minutes. I will fail.
Stowage on Tidings is super tight. No room for suitcases, just one collapsable duffel. Everything I can bring for the next three weeks has to fit in a ten gallon cooler box. (And a doctor bag of tech gear, on special dispensation from the captain.) I could not figure out how to pack my favorite straw hat. Figured, “It’s Florida, right? Lots of hats down there. You know, for the tourists.”
The airport is only three miles from the harbor, one of the reasons we chose to connect here. Doug meets me and we hail an Uber for the short hop to the marina. It’s still mid April, but the sun is already a white hot glare off asphalt and concrete. Everything looks sun-bleached and pale.
Halifax Marina is a big municipal marina full of big boats. The GDP of a small country is tied up at the docks. He walks me down the gangway to a slip where Tidings is cheerfully holding her own.
We’ll spend the night here on the boat and get an early start in the morning. I get a quick tour of the layout and stow my duffle, then we’re off again – Doug wants to investigate all this fuss about “World Famous Daytona Beach”.
Beaufort, Port Royal Inlet, and Fripp Island from 30,000 feet.
From 30,000 feet I get a preview of what’s to come. The morning flight drops down out of the clouds, and there below is our destination: Beaufort, and a watery world of marshes, winding creeks, and inlets stretching out to the steel blue Atlantic. It’s deceiving from above as it is up close. The sun glints off obvious water and moves over what one would think is land; but the light strikes water there, too. What appears to be land ribboned with creeks is mainly water, as well. The Low Country and Sea Islands of the South.
One of our daughters and son-in-law moved overseas eight years ago. We tried for years to go see them. As teachers, they have regular breaks to travel. Our simple idea was to meet them somewhere, anywhere. But a worldwide pandemic got in the way, among other things. Plans were made, and cancelled, and made again and cancelled again. It happens. Finally, eight years later, everything fell into place.
They now live in the desert of Saudi Arabia, so they wanted to go somewhere wet and green for spring break. Where else but The Netherlands?
Water everywhere
We spent a week in a small cottage in the country, a bit north of Amsterdam. Water everywhere. And windmills. The nearest town of Zaandijk has a train station, bakery, brewery, and couple of cafes, and was just a short bike ride away. A ride along dikes and levees past a dozen working windmills.
Cafe in Zaandijk
One evening we took the train back from Amsterdam. We walked from the station to the cottage, stopping for dinner in a small cafe. After dinner, we walked the rest of the way back in the moonlight. It was amazing, the windmills whooshing overhead like giant birds flapping in a starry sky. Flocks of geese and ducks in the canals and the polders cackled, adding to the surreal effect.
One morning while the others eased slowly out of bed, I rode by as the windmill crews were just opening up. Several of the mills earn their keep doing the same work they’ve done for hundreds of years. One is a working sawmill. At that early hour there were no crowds to contend with – I was the only visitor. Most of the crews are older men who work the mill, and a few young apprentices have joined them. One of the old Dutch guys saw how interested I was and gave me a personal tour, explaining in detail how it all works (in fluent English), and the history of that particular mill.
“The Young Sheep”Young Apprentices
This mill, Het Jong Schaap (“The Young Sheep”), had been in continuous operation for over 400 years, right up until WWII and the Nazi Occupation. Things became so desperate during the war that townspeople needed to dismantle the mill for firewood. But before they did, they documented in detail every piece they removed. Years after the war those plans were found. Funds were raised and the mill rebuilt exactly as it was, along with many others along the Zaans River.
Work Shoes
Inside the mill, I was immediately struck by the sound – it’s like being inside an enormous breathing animal. The pace of respiration rises and falls with natural rhythm of the wind. From slow and steady, like the beast is sleeping, to rapid and muscular.
The canvas on the vanes are trimmed like sails to match the strength of the wind, and the whole head is turned with a crank to follow the wind direction as well, just like a sailing ship. In fact, as he was explaining how the gears work, he suddenly stopped short and made a quick adjustment to take advantage of a gust, which he heard instinctively – just like we do in our small wooden boats. “Just the same, it’s the same principle,” he said.
After the sound, there’s smell of fresh sawdust, and everywhere the rich golden glow of sunlight on wood. No reek of petroleum or exhaust, no screech and whine of industrial motors. Just heaving and sighing.
The whole apparatus is built like a big clock inside, and every step of the process is automated and facilitated by the power of the wind harnessed by the vanes. A windlass winds a hawser that hauls logs from the river up the ramp and into the mill, then lifts them onto a carriage where the log is dogged in place. Then another gear, ticking like a slow second hand watch gear, moves the log and carriage steadily into the blades as they pump up and down, the blades driven by a crank shaft turned in the attic by the wind.
The blades are spaced with wooden blocks measured down to the millimeter. Using a combination of blades and spacers, they can cut thin planks and thick timbers from the same log in a single pass. With good wind, they can cut three logs at once, running all three saws side by side.
Spacer blocks, sorted to millimeter precision.
My guide, knowing I was a sailor, told me they recently had a commission to make a new mast for a large sailing ship. Cut eight sided and tapered. They used a single log 40 feet long, floated down rivers and canals from the Black Forest in Germany. There are small doors at the back of the mill just for this purpose – opened to let oversized pieces extend out through the walls.
Found this on my phone this evening, and realized I never posted it.
Shot on October 10, 2024, in the hay field next to the house.
I walked out in the dark, not expecting much, so wasn’t prepared for what I saw. No camera or tripod. I took off my shoes to prop up my phone on a hay bale. I stood there barefoot in the wet grass, shaking from cold and wonder.
