As always, the last weekend of October is Stormweekend! And this year, the weekend was for the most freedom and liberty loving Aquanauts!

Howdy Sailors!

It was once agian time to start the V8 Motors for a roadtrip to Fryslan! This year, our destination was the metropolis of Sandfirden, which boasts just a single street! After blasting american music all the way there, our little accomodation needed some decorations. Not one, not two, but three big beautiful Star-Spangled Banners were hoisted to make sure everyone knows that this was an American experience! Slowly, the crowd grew as more cars arrived. Some took the questionable decision to go by public transport (why would you, aren't you a real American?). With the party well underway, we enjoyed some stereotypical American games involving Red Solo Cups.

The next morning, it was time to go sailing! With quite a bit of wind to propel us to greatness, some took the wise deicison to reef the sails a bit. Others, suffering from a bit of impatience, decided to take out both reefs pretty quickly to reach the destination of our journey a bit quicker: the lovely town of Gaastmeer. On our way, a lovely charity gift from Anne (who also happened to be nearby) of candy was much appreciated. For the first time, we also took our own beautiful Laser 1, the Aqua'Akthar with us! Jelle, Emma and Julian got the opportunity to practice their dinghy sailing on a weekend, and enjoyed it very much. In Gaastmeer we warmed ourselves up with some lovely hot chocolate (and of course, freedom fries for some!). In the afernoon, we got to enjoy some sun during the journey back to Sandfirden.  After being treated to a delicious pumpkin curry, the freedom party continued with all kinds of games. Jelle decided it was time to revisit memories from 2 years ago by once again taping alcohol to his hands, to questionable results.

On Sunday we enjoyed a lazy morning, although it was for a bit of a sad reason: there was just too much wind to go sailing. Ironic isn't it, a storm during stormweekend? So, we decided to do something else: roadtrip to Hindeloopen! It is a beautiful cute Frysian city, where some got to cuddle with sheep and others enjoyed some classic fried fish on a boat! When we got back to Sandfirden, we treated ourselves to some hot chocolate to say goodbye.

But that is not the end of our adventures. Romee, Julian and Kees were only 20 minutes away from home when one of the tires on the trailer of the laser punctured. We probably jinxed ourselves when we said that our journey back was so smooth compared to Friday (when we took quite a while to leave Wageningen and had several traffic jams). After an hour, the dinghy got towed to a gas station. We then had to leaver the trailer there, as it likely could not be fixed that same evening. As of writing this, our little boat that could is still not home yet, but hopefully soon it will be reunited with its brothers and sisters at VADA.