Flag day 2008

It was extremely busy yesterday in Scheveningen, when 250,000 visitors made it to the harbour to celebrate the 2008 edition of Vlaggetjesdag (Flag day), which celebrates the arrival of the "new" Dutch herring. Hollandse Nieuwe is the name given to young herring caught between mid-May and the end of June with a body fat of at least 16%. The fish are gutted and salted but the pancreas containing an enzyme which helps the fish to ripen is left in place. The first barrel of new herring was auctioned for charity last Tuesday, raising €55,000. The barrel was bought by online restaurant guide Iens.


Here one of the 100 fishes from the presentation of 100 kinds of fish caught in the North Sea. One had to evaluate the overall weight to win some prizes.

Fishing ropes

For some reasons, I always like the colors you can find around in the harbor, being the boats, or like here fishing ropes and nets.

North Sea regatta 2008

The edition of the North Sea Regatta 2008 ended yesterday. It was very busy in Scheveningen harbor in the last 4 days as nearly 400 boats competed in 24 classes along the Scheveningen coast. There was a very nice atmosphere, also due to the beautiful weather conditions over the week-end. Ver

Safe coast

Zirfaea is one of the ten ships owned by the Ministery of public works. The complete fleet of the north sea can be looked at on this page. She is a 63 meter long boat used to investigate the seabed, measure the waves, inspect pipelines, detect wrecks of the sea, etc... It is also used if containment in oil spills. It is also equipped with ROHP II, an underwater robot needed for all kinds of inspection ant taking of samples from the seabed. It must be very interesting to visit this kind of boat and understand how they work.

Leisure harbour

Many pleasure boats are moored in Scheveningen port. This part of the harbour is at the moment the centre of much attention, due to further expansion plans from the Town Hall detailed here that are creating many discussions, especially related to the proposed construction of two high towers as a flagship to the port entrance. The overall objective is to combine commercial, residential and recreational activities to attract more inhabitants and more tourists. The flats seen on the photo are part of the Havenkwartier, development project detailed on this page.

Piling up

I liked the colours of this pile of wooden pallets in the fish harbour of Scheveningen, reference to the tons of fish and shrimps sold here everyday. As a link to yesterday's post, you can watch here (in Dutch) a 10mn film from 1941 over the fishing activity in the Northsea.

Sport fishing

That's the great thing about living next to a fishing harbour: you can do all kinds of outings with friends or colleagues such as sport fishing, on one of the pictured boats. Being on the eastside of the North Sea, the coast is exposed to the westerly winds and thus can bring some stiff offshore sailing conditions when the wind is blowing onshore with large waves due to the long stretch, the sloping rising sea bottom en the tidal influence. Great for surfing, and fishing.

Stad Amsterdam

Just saw the Stad Amsterdam moored in the Scheveningen harbour... She is so beautiful! She is now often chartered by private companies for business events, but she is also sailing around the world. I wish I could one day sail on that clipper....