I think our friend is not telling the whole story.
The part between Texel and the mainland is a protected nature reserve (razende bol), I'm betting thats why he got the ticket.
Ho,hO.....Tony yre questioning my credibility here.
Mmmmm....as a man of honour I would have challenged you to a duel in the old days, but now in modern information-times I will confine myself to some remarks.
This story played in the early years of the eighties. The place was between Lands-end (Den Helder) and the barracks of the Dutch marines in the Mokbay on the island Texel. We were sailing (windsurfing) there always in force 7 to 8 westerly (ingoing) winds combined with an outgoing tidestream.
In fact in those same days Stephan vanden Berg (then our worldchamp windsurfing) wanted to change from course racing to sea surfing. So he asked if he could join us and we did rape his "sea maidenhead" overthere.
Authorities were not happy with this new surfing thing, because it was at the same place were the ferry-boat to Texel was crossing. They didn't understand that with outgoing tide there was always this automatically separation between the ferry and us. Because when we went down we were always sucked away by the tidal stream from the ferry.
However that made us so reckless that we used to sail (on the windside) just beside the ferry and making jumps on the bow-wave, being photograhed by hunderds of holiday passengers.
So, Tony, if you speak of a reason for my appearance for the court of law (toenmalig kantongerecht denhelder) I was indeed not complete with my story. It has nothing to do with the nature protection program (natura 2000) which was first installed around the year 2000. No, it had to do with uneasy authorities who couldn't cope with this new phenomenon windsurfing.
And in this accident with my friend and him being nearly drowned, they found reason for blowing this whole thing up infront of a court.
To finalize the story: After the prosecution we decide to move 1 km westwards to the tower of the coastgard (Huisduinen) and discovered the outstanding spot of the Razende Bol (little sandy island, complete deserted) and passing from there to the southpoint of Texel.
Arjan, try the clawfinger-grip handgloves from ION!
