Windy day

The wind finally arrived this morning, giving us the perfect excuse to stay on board and pay for a day's internet access, this first time we've done this for... actually we can't remember the last time we paid for internet access. Still, it's been 60kr well invested. After endless dithering we have now booked flights home on 31 August: a short hop from Sonderborg to Copenhagen, several hours' wait, and then an easyJet flight to Stansted. The short hop is cheaper than a train ticket, and the whole thing is still less than going to Esbjerg and getting the DFDS ferry, unless we waited until early September when ferry prices start to drop.

Hooray for easyJet. In the slight stress of booking interconnecting flights while the boat rocked around in winds up to 29 knots, Camilla managed to spell her own name wrong. It turns out you can phone a Danish number and easyJet will correct the error at no cost.

We've invested in an extra gas bottle. The 3kg Camping Gaz bottles we use seem to be hard to come by here, so after more dithering, aka careful consideration, we have purchased an extra 2kg bottle as a reserve. At least you can buy the stuff here - in Sweden and points north we will probably have to adapt to local bottles. En route to the filling station which sells the gas, Sam discovered that what was the Tuborg brewery and dock is now a very upmarket residential and shopping development. There is a shopping centre with two supermarkets and an H&M, plus a few other random boutiques. We explored Irma, which is like a kind of Waitrose on steroids - think £2.20 for a tin of organic chopped tomatoes. Then we went to Netto and bought non-organic tins for 40p each.

This afternoon, for the first time since Maasholm, we were able to entertain a British couple on board. Sea Pilgrim is a Catalina 34 formerly based in Woolverstone, just up the Orwell river from us in Suffolk Yacht Harbour. Tony and Anne have spent much of the summer in Denmark, and we were able to exchange hints and tips. Apart from them we have seen a British motor boat, Samphire, in Barhöft and Stralsund, another motor boat very briefly in here last week, and one sailing yacht in the bay off Wismar. There really aren't a lot of Brits in the Baltic.

Camilla has been continuing to worry about the Bøgestrøm and Stege Bugt around the south of Sjaelland. This evening we met a helpful sailor, possibly a Swede, who assured us he does it twice a year in a yacht drawing 1.8m. So probably we should go for it. Hopefully tomorrow we may even get some light easterlies which will be helpful on the leg back down to Rødvig.