Kröslin

My very good friend Anne says that as she's stuck at work, she really only enjoys this blog when things go horribly wrong. So hopefully she'd approve of today, as it has rained most of the day since around 5am, the wind has been building gradually, and we're currently in a nice, solid, reasonably well-sheltered marina... in the middle of nowhere. What's more, I have been suffering from a headache since yesterday morning (although I think it has now finally gone).

We had to leave Stralsund at 8am to go through the bridge, in the pouring rain of course. The north-westerly was more or less behind us all the way, so as we picked our way along the narrow channels we sailed well with just the jib.

When we reached the wide open spaces of the Griefswalder Boden we were able to get the main up and hurtle due east for ten miles at speeds up to 7.5 knots. Getting the main down was less fun, as we had limited space to manoeuvre, building waves, and a need to turn sharply into a narrow channel and gybe the jib as soon as the main was down. I'm afraid angry words were spoken, but what can you do with a man who wants to tidy his mainsail stow when you're about to sail sideways on to the mud?

Now we're at Kröslin, which was highly recommended by Kissen, but at the moment feels rather depressing. On the other hand it has very solid pontoons with lots of space, and we are head to wind so the only real annoyance is yet more bucketing rain. We've spent the past couple of hours playing bits of interesting music from each other's iPods, starting with A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra for Ben's benefit, and progressing via the theme from Star Wars and computer game music to Pink.

Tomorrow we plan to get the little ferry to Peenemunde, where the Nazis developed the V1 and V2 bombs and there's a museum. The forecast is for NW5-6 so it's a good day not to be sailing.

Miles covered today: 30, almost all under sail.

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