Went to Amsterdam for Sail 2005.

GREAT number of tall ships including most of the class A's, also a rare
sighting of Mercea.

Not sure about Sedov masquerading as Pamir - the black and orange
paintwork was very rough (not neat at all). Suppose this wont show up
in the film though.

Great to meet Captain Klaus of the Europa, again.

Got on board Kruzenshtern and reminisced about our voyage on her.

Sadly Tenacious was not open to the public. We wanted to show some
friends around her - even as JST members we weren't allowed on
board.

Didn't get very far round the walking circuit. They do need to
provide some way of catering for those who can't walk far.

Found the new 26 tram route useful for getting TO the start of the
Festival route. But it was useless for getting back - the trams
simply didn't run frequently enough. Most people gave up waiting. On
the Saturday they stopped altogether due to a derailment at the far
terminus (it's a brand new line). On two days' running we had to
walk back to town - it's a long way.

Were a bit fed up when we were 'thrown out' of one section of the
Festival on the Saturday due to an impending visit by the Queen of the
Netherlands. Surely she could have visited during the week when less
people were about. As it is this made the open areas even more crowded?


Also the Festival had a stupid money arrangement in that you couldn't
buy anything with Euros but had to exchange these for something called
'munts.' The problem with this special 'currency' was that you
had to purchase a minimum amount. But the bank had already ripped us
off when changing our currency from sterling to Euros. So we would have
got ripped off again when changing from Euros to 'munts.' Then the
stallholders probably over-charged customers for things priced in these
'munts.' So we elected not to use 'munts' at all and told some
of the stallholders why we wouldn't be purchasing anything from them.
Luckily there were some proper bars available that took Euros for tea,
coffee, and snacks.

The other thing about this stupid currency was that the crews of some
of the ships (especially the Russian, Ukrainian and Rumanian ones) are
actually quite poor and cannot afford to purchase things priced in
currencies they do not understand. These 'munts' were a real
rip-off for those crew members. Indeed this was a disgraceful idea from
an organisation that should have known better.

As usual there was the circuit of smaller boats (and some very large
ones) in the inner harbour area. Especially noisy were the flower
bedecked steam tugs!! And one steam ship had a calliope - steam
driven musical organ - that actually sounded quite musical - from a
distance!!

With the weather just bordering on rain the weekend was quite an event.
But as with all Tall Ship Festivals we were sure that most of the tall
ship crews wished that they were away from the noise and the chaos and
out at sea, preferably aloft well away from the crowds!!