Marianne Van der Linden

The title is a little misleading: this isn't really a reference handbook but a training guide, written by a professional skipper who runs a company giving sail training courses in Friesland. It's aimed in the first place at people who've built up a certain amount of experience sailing on (Dutch) inland waterways and want to have a go at the more challenging environment of the shallow tidal region between the coast and the Frisian islands, and it takes you through the various extra things you need to know about to navigate safely and without prejudicing the delicate natural balance of the World Heritage Site.

Not surprisingly, a lot of the book is devoted to the eternal topic of tides, currents and water-depths, which is a lot more fun in the Waddenzee than you might think: even though tidal ranges are fairly small, less than 2.5m in most places, most of the interesting passages are over places that dry at low tide, and you often need to be able to predict depths to within an accuracy of 10cm to know for sure whether or not you will get across. Although van der Linden doesn't really add anything to the information you already have in the introduction of the official tide book, the famous HP 33, she does manage to make it all a lot easier to follow, and gives clear practical examples to help you make sense of when you need to apply all the corrections and what they mean in real life. I knew all this stuff in theory and I've used it, but I have also once or twice managed to get it quite wrong, e.g. in dealing with the puzzling difference between "NAP", the standard Dutch map datum, and "LAT", the datum used on sea charts. Now I understand why that bridge was suddenly half a metre lower than I'd estimated!

The anecdotes and descriptions of actual trips over the Waddenzee (complete with things that didn't work out as planned) give the book a satisfyingly practical feel, as do little touches like samples of actual dialogue for questions you might need to ask over VHF. What I was hoping for was a bit more of an overview of what there is to do in different areas, where you can get to with which type of boat, and so on, but van der Linden obviously feels that's already well enough covered elsewhere.

Occasionally a little bit pedantic and repetitious, but on the whole a very useful book for a beginner, although it's not likely to be one that you will feel the need to refer back to once you've had the chance to put the information into practice.… (mais)