In case you are wondering what I've been doing during my holidays: I have - amongst a lot of other things - visited Sail Amsterdam.
Quite an experience, I must say! So I thought I'd share a couple of pics here
Pre-Sail (the day before Sail-In); Tall Ships are arriving at IJmuiden harbour
Took me about 45 minutes to get there (I was early); took me about an hour and a half to travel the last 5 km to my home when I wanted to leave. Pffff... traffic congestion on water AND raod!
Harbour Patrol was working overtime!
Busy along the shores of the entire 18 kilometres of Noordzeekanaal
I was lucky enough to have a flight lesson scheduled for the day of the Sail-In, AND Ait Traffic Control NL had devised up a way to be able to allow VFR traffic ove the center of Amsterdam and/or IJmuiden (in between are approach paths for 18R and 18C, but 18R is out for maintenance at the moment). So I did all the flight preparation needed to go fly the "RED route Sail Area Amsterdam" (including filing a flightplan for it), and got my instructor to go along as an extra set of eyes. Off we went, navigating to the entry point SELIN - a temporary waypoint, exclusively for Sail-In, and Sail-Out.
Beautiful sight, such a busy canal full of boats. No time for me to take "real" pictures, though, because it was quite busy in the skies over Amsterdam.
The one with the green block: that's me. The other 15 symbols are 3 helicopters, and 12 other GA planes (including 2 banner tows). Really awesomely busy! It looked kind of like formation flying - you could see the expression on the faces of people in the planes next to you at some times. That's how close we got, especially the first lap. So I did a second one, after creating a little more separation, so that I could actually enjoy the view too
Not many people can say that they flew over Sail Amsterdam, and I bet I am the only one ever to fly over Sail Amsterdam during a flying lesson