Kalessin of Orwell

For my Valentine

2012-02-13T23:16:00.000Z

Today I'm in London and Sam is in Suffolk, which makes it hard secretly to sneak a handmade card or a box of heart-shaped chocolates on to the breakfast table.

So instead I'm posting to the blog to tell you all what a wonderful husband I have.

When we sail, I get jittery. Even in the super safe and sheltered Baltic there is always something for me to worry about. On every journey, Sam looks after me, reassures me and makes it all happen. When things get tough, he makes the decisions. He even tells me I'm beautiful and encourages me to sail with no clothes on. I couldn't go sailing without him, however many clothes I was wearing.

Thank you my love for putting up with me for all these years, and here's to many more...

Presentation skills

2012-02-12T12:37:00.000Z

Last night we gave a talk to Haven Ports Yacht Club about our adventures so far in the Baltic, entitled To the Baltic with Ben (thank you Griff Rhys Jones). Despite icy weather there was a really excellent turn-out and some very kind comments afterwards. We still feel a bit fraudulent, especially when Richard from Brave said his idea of Baltic sailing was to head up the west coast of Norway and across to Shetland - a stretch of water which is more the stuff of nightmares than dreams for us.

For those who are interested, the presentations are available on SlideShare in PDF format. As ever, we had so many photos and so much to say that the presentation just grew and grew.

Technical footnote: For various reasons we showed the slideshow from PowerPoint running on Windows on Camilla's MacBook. This was all absolutely fine up to the point where we finished the technical rehearsal and closed the lid of the laptop. Two systems trying to sleep at once was obviously too much of a challenge, and as 8pm rolled around we had a few worried moments when the projector would only display the Apple galaxy image. Huge thanks to the audience member who swiped the MacBook touchpad to find us the correct view.

Annual report from the Herrmann Browns

2011-12-27T17:02:00.002Z

Merry Christmas, and welcome to the annual report from the Herrmann Browns.

We've had some interesting experiences this year. We sailed Kalessin to the Baltic, getting as far as Copenhagen. Guy has been working as a flotilla skipper and has spent most of the year in Greece. And Ben didn't get to university this autumn but is definitely planning to head off there in 2012.

The year started badly for Camilla with tooth problems culminating in a nasty abscess. Just as she was recovering from that, Aviva Group Centre broke the news that her contract would have to be terminated early, in February, because of a financial challenge.

Meanwhile Guy, armed with his RYA Yachtmaster and numerous other sailing qualifications, toured potential employers at the London Boat Show. His efforts paid off when he was asked shortly afterwards if he would be interested in a shorebased job with Sailing Holidays. They are a great company with whom we've been on a number of excellent flotillas. They have a laid-back approach which suited Guy very well, and he flew out to Corfu in March. There was a huge amount to do preparing nearly 200 yachts before the season started in May.

Guy's hair being cut in Greece

Just before the first customers arrived, Guy was given an ultimatum: he could either keep his job or his dreadlocks. The dreadlocks got the chop and Guy became a standby skipper, running flotillas when things were busy, delivering yachts all over the Ionian, and the rest of the time becoming a world expert in repairing rubber dinghies and many other useful marine tasks. He's downed a lot of beer, coped with some spectacular problems and difficult customers, become very bronzed with blonde sun streaks in his hair, and is planning to go back out for the next season in February. For some reason he finds the UK cold, grey and somewhat boring L. Sadly during the summer Guy and Beth agreed to part, although they are still friends.

Ben spent the first half of the year slogging away at A-levels. He was offered conditional places at Sheffield, Nottingham and Heriott-Watt universities to do engineering, and rather amazingly also a place to do classical civilisation at Royal Holloway, although in the end he decided to go for engineering.

Meanwhile we prepared Kalessin for her Baltic cruise and Camilla made the most of her unexpected freedom to fulfil a few long-held ambitions: qualifying as a Prince2 practitioner (it's a project management thing) and sailing on the tall ship Stavros S. Niarchos from Liverpool to Glasgow, via northern Ireland. Things got really busy when Sam was asked to do a few days' training in China, by a company which trains ship's supervisors – up to now his gigs have been on the Isle of Man, although there was one unsuccessful effort to get to Libya.

View of Amsterdam

In late May we managed to find a short weather window for a North Sea crossing and Sam and Camilla headed across to Ijmuiden in Kalessin. Unexpectedly we encountered fog, and the brand-new AIS system, which tells you the location, size, speed and course of passing ships, proved fantastically useful and a great investment. We got the boat as far as Enkhuizen on the Ijsselmeer and parked her there for three weeks while we headed home (via train and Harwich ferry) to support Ben through the worst of his A-level exams. Then back to Enkhuizen and a very enjoyable (and warm) few days in the canals of Friesland before venturing out into the nasty North Sea for an extremely bumpy passage from Delfzijl to Cuxhaven in Germany, around the outside of the German Friesian islands. This is Riddle of the Sands country, and we had a few days in Cuxhaven to re-read the book and be grateful that we hadn't ventured inside the islands, before collecting Ben from Bremen airport in early July.

With Ben on board we said farewell to the North Sea (hooray) and hello to the Kiel canal and the Baltic. For the first few days the Baltic welcomed us with glorious weather. We headed a few miles north to the Schlei (still in Germany) and then turned east to explore Germany's Baltic coast, with a long string of beautiful Hanseatic cities including Lübeck, Rostock and Stralsund, alternating with resorts many of which have large and well-equipped marinas.

The weather became less delightful, with quite a lot of rain. Over one memorable long weekend we abandoned Kalessin in the resort of Warnemünde and headed inland to the Herrmann holiday home at Wulkow, east of Berlin. Our plan was to avoid the strong winds blowing in the wrong direction, but we also managed to avoid the wettest-ever 24 hours in Warnemünde and surrounding areas. It was very delightful to be in a dry house under a solid roof enjoying comfortable beds and hot baths, while back in the marina many people were unable to leave their boats for three days because it rained so hard. We got back to the boat to find a few unexpected damp patches where the water had made its way in, but on the whole we were very lucky, and able to carry on to explore Rügen and the V2 museum at Peenemünde.

The cliffs of Møn

At the beginning of August we headed north to our first Danish port, Klintholm on the island of Møn. From there we had our fastest-ever sail to Copenhagen, where we spent over a week. Sam lived in Copenhagen for a year in the 1980s so was delighted to re-visit old haunts. Ben and Camilla were visiting for the first time and we loved it – it's a beautiful, civilised and very interesting city. Highlights included eating smørrebrød in the rain in Nyhavn, and a wonderful sunny visit to the modern art museum at Louisiana, to the north of the city. On 8 August Ben flew home to await his results, and Sam and Camilla continued slowly east, picking our way through some very shallow channels between the main Danish islands and exploring small towns and tiny islands, heading towards our winter berth in Augustenborg, just north of the German border.

Sadly Ben's A-level results, although good, were not enough to get him into his chosen universities. As you may know this is the last year before the £9000 fees kick in and every decent university course was wildly oversubscribed. The Clearing process was mayhem, and Ben decided he'd rather re-take the exams than end up doing a course he wasn't interested in at a university where he didn't want to go. Fortunately Kalessin was only a few miles from her final destination and Camilla was able to fly home for a whirlwind few weeks of finding and visiting tutorial colleges. Ben is currently at Greene's in Oxford, retaking Maths and Physics in January, and spending a little bit of time appreciating Oxford's unique atmosphere. Sam and Camilla visited him in November and managed to spend a few pleasant days staying on a narrowboat on the Oxford Canal (we just can't keep away from boats).

The Baltic at its best

In October Sam and Camilla visited Guy in Corfu, just so we could remember what sun and blue sea looked like. We hired a car and explored the island a bit with Guy, and stayed in a lovely hotel owned by one of Guy's colleagues. The experience was slightly tarnished by Camilla's car being sideswiped by a truck on the M25 on the way home (no damage to Camilla), and getting home to find the ceiling in Ben's room had collapsed because of a problem with the water tanks above. The car was fixed in a couple of weeks but Ben's room is a bit more complex. Meanwhile Sam went on to Athens for a business meeting and was delayed by 5 hours by Greek air traffic controllers' strikes on the way home.

Camilla has just started a new contract, working with (whisper it) McDonald's Europe on development of a new intranet, which will mean a lot of time in London over the next few months. Sam is of course not really retired, and continues to chair and advise M&CM. He's still riding the BMW and in September toured the Normandy beaches with oldest son Tim. With the boat parked in a Danish shed he is turning his thoughts to the house, and in recent weeks we've sorted out some long-standing plumbing issues and acquired a new wood-burning stove (and a new car, a VW Passat estate).

Next year should see Guy heading back to the Ionian, Kalessin voyaging to Sweden with Sam and hopefully Camilla aboard (work permitting) and Ben making the most of his unexpected gap year before heading off to some form of education in the autumn. Fingers crossed all round.

Don't forget if you want to follow our sailing activities and see some pictures, it's all on this blog.

Much love to you all and wishing you the very best for 2012

Camilla, Sam, Guy & Ben

Save the Coastguard

2011-10-26T15:16:00.001+01:00

I've just sent a mass email to 72 friends and family members. It's something I almost never do, but this is a subject I feel strongly about.

Under the current round of cuts, a number of UK Coastguard stations are due to be closed. They include Thames (at Walton-on-the Naze) and Great Yarmouth. The whole East coast sailing area will be covered by Dover and Humber, with more than 300 miles of coast between them. After closures complete in 2014 there will no longer be any coastguard stations with local knowledge of the Thames estuary and East coast rivers. Many other coastguard stations will be affected; you can see the full list in the BBC news story.

The UK coastguard currently offers a fantastic emergency and support service to everyone in UK waters. Local knowledge undoubtedly saves lives. It is true that the coastguard service was due for some kind of restructure, but not the total devastation which these cuts will bring.

Please consider signing the petition at www.petitiononline.com/SHMCGS/petition.html if you haven't done so already, and doing anything else which you feel may make a difference.

Work in progress: Google map

2011-09-21T09:58:00.000+01:00

Inspired by Jonty, I'm working on a Google map of our route this year. It's still work in progress - I have now added the Danish ports, but I keep thinking of further refinements. Go to the larger map for a better view. You can click on each of the symbols to see when we were there and a link to the relevant blog post. On our longer passages I have shown our route, but not for the shorter ones as it would make the map too cluttered.

If you zoom in, you can see that Google maps is so accurate I have even been able to place us on the correct pontoon, except when I can't remember which one we were on, or the marina has been rebuilt since the aerial picture was taken. Most of the harbours look much emptier than when we were there!

Let me know what you think.

View Kalessin of Orwell Baltic cruise in a larger map

Sam is home

2011-09-04T17:12:00.002+01:00

Sam is safelyback into the bosom of the family after an interesting final weekwith the boat in Augustenborg, during which he was spoiled rotten bythe increasing numbers of Brits coming in to lay up for the season.Fully expecting to be living the lonely bachelor life and existing onfridge stock run-down and pilchard sandwiches, he was royallyentertained on a number of occasions.

Our old friends Jonty and Wyn aboardLady Cressida appeared shortly before the weekend, joined by Lizand Duncan on their Island Packet String Theory and later by Pauland Jean on their Hallberg Rassy. Also contributing to Sam’s socialround were a Dutch couple, Tom Boot (you pronounce it “Boat”) andhis wife on their New Zealand-flagged boat (it’s a long story!).

Liz and Duncan had a car atAugustenborg and very kindly invited Sam along for a “cross-borderraid” to Flensburg to splash the Euros in a vast supermarket and,of course, the chandlery. Besides giving Sam supper twice, Duncanalso ran him to Sonderborg Airport for the Cimber feeder flight toCopenhagen on the first stage of the trip home. For which muchthanks.

Kalessin is now nicely tucked up inAnders’ shed. All winterised and some maintenance done, includingvarnishing the cabin sole – which required some gymnastics to getfrom forepeak to galley and the head. Talking of heads, Sam didmanage to add yet another scar to his battered bonce when he duckedunder the low roof of the marina bike shed to escape one of the manytorrential downpours and forgot to duck again when he came out.

Our route

2011-08-27T15:32:00.002+01:00

Here's our route in the Baltic from July 6 to August 21. Click on the map to see a larger version.

You can also see:

our route from Suffolk Yacht Harbour to Ijmuiden, which was the same as in 2009. From Ijmuiden we went up the Noordzeekanaal to Amsterdam and across the Markermeer to Enkhuizen
our route from Enkhuizen to the Baltic - we took the standing-mast route (in blue).

Camilla is home

2011-08-24T11:04:00.000+01:00

Camilla travelled home via train from Sonderborg to Copenhagen, easyJet to Stansted, collection by Camilla's mother from the airport, an overnight stay in Essex, and home by train to Diss on Tuesday. Generally speaking it was very painless, and Denmark was sunny and fairly clear as we flew over, with Augustenborg clearly visible between the fluffy white clouds.

Kalessin is here. The island of Als seen from the easyJet flight

National Express East Anglia welcomed Camilla to the UK with a broken-down train between Ipswich and Stowmarket, and a 30-minute delay while it was cleared. Sigh. Still, it's good to be home, and between calls and website visits to colleges there's time to do the washing, start on the garden, and find out how to fix Camilla's iPhone - it has thoughtfully chosen this moment to fail to hold charge.

Meanwhile Sam has stripped everything except the boom off Kalessin - she's coming out of the water next Monday - and is starting on all the other maintenance tasks. He's also found more English people to talk to, as there are now at least four British boats awaiting lay-up. One of them already knew about us, having met Lady Cressida at Sonderborg. I think we are becoming part of the Baltic community.

Looking through the photographs, most of which were of course taken on sunny days, it all looks so wonderful we can't wait to get out there and sailing next year.

A typical day in the Baltic...

Voyage end at Augustenborg

2011-08-21T20:22:00.001+01:00

Saturday was a pleasant but breezy day, and with the wind from the west we thought it wise to stay another day in Fåborg. Camilla attempted to pack, which is always difficult. It's tempting to leave the heaviest stuff on board, but in fact it's the winter fleeces and woollies which will be needed in the UK, and the summer T-shirts which can stay behind.

We strolled east of Fåborg to a little beach, where Camilla braved the breeze, wavelets and sub-20° water temperature to have what she thought was a last swim in the Baltic. The water isn't fresh, but it's a lot less salty than the Med, for example, which means you feel more refreshed and less sticky afterwards.

At 6pm we gathered with Jonty and Wyn for the South Fyn Boules Championships, although Wyn didn't play because of her back. We are proud to announce that after two sets Sam was declared champion. He claims it's the result of many misspent hours in the Vendée. Jonty was runner-up and Camilla third. Then it was back to Lady Cressida for a delightful farewell dinner. They will be seeing Sam before he leaves Augustenborg, but not Camilla because of her early departure.

The forecast for Sunday was gentle southerlies, a reasonable direction for the passage to Augustenborg. In the event Denmark decided to treat us to a delightful farewell sail. After a misty start the sun came out and shone warmly, and the wind was ESE force 3-ish, which meant a comfortable broad reach or run for most of the distance. It was so warm Camilla was even able to sail with no clothes on for a while, a rare luxury at 55°N. We had a guaranteed berth in Augustenborg so no real need to hurry, and we were able to beat most of the way down the Als Fjord before giving up and motoring for the last hour or so. We couldn't have asked for a better final sail of the season.

Augustenborg is right at the end of the fjord and very sheltered - when we arrived, the anchorage just before the marina was absolutely stuffed with weekend boaters. The harbour manager Anders Dahl was there to greet us and take our lines. We are next to Kissen, whose website advice (www.kissen.com) we have been following all season. Sadly the crew are not on board - they may overlap with Sam for a few hours next week.

We made the most of the light winds and good shelter to take off and pack both the mainsail and the genoa, together with most of the running rigging. By the time we'd done all that and enjoyed a cup of tea, we were so hot that Camilla was forced to have another final farewell Baltic swim off the back of the boat - the water is a couple of degrees warmer here than at Fåborg.

This evening we went out for a meal in the little hotel by the marina. The food was very good, but at 7pm we were their last customers of the day and possibly for the entire season. The marina is livelier, probably because this is a top spot for laying up. As well as lots of Germans, there are also a number of Dutch boats here and a few Brits - it's highly recommended by the Cruising Association. We were glad we'd taken the sails off when we were lashed by a brief thunderstorm - at least they are properly dry.

Miles today: 38. Miles since leaving Suffolk Yacht Harbour on 29 May: 1,107.

Changing plans

2011-08-19T20:12:00.000+01:00

What with one thing and another, we felt it was best for Camilla to fly home to support Ben. How clever of us to be in a marina with a very fast, free wifi connection. The flights are changed and she flies home on Monday, while Sam sticks to plan A and flies back on the 31st. This means we have to be in Augustenborg by Sunday, but as mentioned before it's only 38 miles away and the forecast is for Sunday to have gentle southerlies. It's a shame to miss out on the Lille Baelt, but after all the boat will be here next spring so we can start with harbours we didn't see this year.

The wind has increased gradually throughout the day, peaking at around 20 knots from the north-west this afternoon - not really a gale (although it is very sheltered in here) but definitely too strong to sail into. Camilla was baffled that Simon Keeling's normally helpful forecast is still talking about southerly force 8. We have contacted Simon to ask if there could be an error with his model.

Other than that it's been a quiet day. In the rainiest and windiest bits we have hidden below, making good use of the internet to catch up with Stuff. In the quieter and sunnier moments we have explored Fåborg and its excellent chandlery, pleasant little shops and very good supermarket. And of course at 6pm we had the now statutory drinks with Jonty and Wyn from Lady Cressida, this time on board Kalessin. It will be a real blow having to split up and go our own ways, it has been so nice sailing in company for a while.

We had a strange moment when Wyn came on board a few minutes late, saying she'd mislaid her harbour smart card, and could she borrow ours to look in the ladies and see if it was there. Camilla, who was last to the shower, reached into her pocket to get our card, and found two. It seems Wyn must have put hers on top of the card reader and forgotten it, and a few minutes later when Camilla had a shower she put our card in exactly the same spot, then picked up both without realising. Fortunately our card is more faded, so we can tell the difference.

Tomorrow looks like a day for exploring a bit further by foot or bike: still too windy to sail into, but overall nicer weather.

Pictures: Kalvehave to Fåborg

2011-08-18T20:31:00.000+01:00

Square-dancing in the rain, Kalvehave

Kalvehave bridge

Fish shop, Omø

Carefully groomed field, Omø

Omø lighthouse

Stevns ships laid up in Svendborg

Civic pride: manhole cover in Svendborg

How we feel about being in a safe location. Sale in Fåborg

Fåborg and results

2011-08-18T19:52:00.001+01:00

What a strange day it has been. We left Svendborg just after 9am, as on our last passage, motoring straight into a light wind. The current in the Svendborg Sund is generally eastbound and this morning slowed us by almost 2 knots, gradually decreasing as the sound widened. So our speed gradually increased from 3.5 knots up to around 5, but wherever we headed the wind was still on the nose. Still, it was only a 17-mile passage and we reached Fåborg (or Faaborg if you prefer that spelling) by 1pm.

We have a number of different forecasts from our different weather sources, but it seems that some time early tomorrow morning a low will pass right over us, with (probably) strong-ish easterlies, then a calm in the eye of the storm, and then stronger north-westerlies. The German forecast (un)helpfully summarises this as follows:
Belts and Sound:
first southwest to south 3 to 4, increasing 6, shifting southeast, later var directions 4 to 7, isolated thunderstorms, at times misty, sea 0,5 to 1 metre.

Fåborg is very sheltered from pretty much every direction and we are firmly tied into a box, facing SW. We think this is a good place to be, and judging by the fact that this pontoon, almost empty when we arrived, is now packed all the way along, others agree.

Much more importantly today is A-level results day, and Ben was due to get his results just before noon our time. He called us, thoughtfully, just after we'd tied up here to tell us that he hadn't made the requirements for either Sheffield or Nottingham, although we thought his grades were pretty impressive. Phonecalls, emails and even Facebook discussions have been flying back and forth all day - we have a pretty good internet connection here. But the bottom line is that this is the most over-subscribed year ever for getting university places, and it doesn't look as though Ben will get in. Fortunately we are able to tell him not to worry, he can take a gap year, do retakes if required, get a train to Japan or whatever, and try next year when applications are likely to drop by 25% or more because of the fees.

In the middle of all this Guy's Facebook account suddenly popped up with a post which said "so excited I'm going to be a dad". Sam was all set to hide in the forepeak for the rest of the year, but fortunately it turned out to be a little joke from the people Guy lives with. It was nice to be able to chat on Facebook to both sons at the same time, albeit under somewhat bizarre circumstances.

(Lord) John Prescott said he would retweet any Tweets mentioning A-level results. I posted: "@johnprescott my wonderful son @JoetheArachnid got BB&C - didn't get his uni place :-( - but we still love him & are proud of him". And the wonderful Lord Prescott did indeed re-tweet it and we got some really nice comments from the Twittersphere. I'm sure nothing much makes Ben feel better today but I hope that helps a bit.

We are less than 16 miles from Augustenborg in a straight line, although unfortunately we have to go around the island of Als to get there which makes the actual distance around 36 miles. Still, we are basically home free even if the wind blows for a week. Fåborg is a small, pretty town with good yachting facilities and an interesting art gallery, so I'm sure we can occupy ourselves for a day or two.

Miles today: 17.

Svendborg again

2011-08-17T21:30:00.001+01:00

After extensive indecision this morning we decided not to head down to Ærøskøbing today, as it meant heading straight into a forecast south- westerly force 4. We are very sheltered in here, but we have never seen more than 11 knots all day and most of the time it was 4 knots or less, so probably we could have gone. Never mind, we had a lovely day here.

We managed to get a new 3kg gas bottle at the chandlery, and also to top up with diesel from our 20-litre can and refill it (at non-marine prices) at the filling station just across the road. Sam was shown a new way to reinforce our special patent siphoning tube by a man in Barhöft, and here in Svendborg he managed to get the necessary piece of plastic extension tube - plus an extra one and a half metres we don't really need - so the system now works well.

Jonty from Lady Cressida has discovered that this harbour was completely rebuilt three years ago after endless complaints from visitors. The loo/harbourmaster block is floating, apparently the only one in Denmark, although we've seen several in the Netherlands. Last night it was full in here, but tonight many of the boxes are empty, so people are definitely going home.

We walked eastward along Svendborg Sund for a couple of miles and across a bridge to the little island of Thurøby. It was all very pretty, with views across to various other islands, a nice sandy beach and a kiosk selling good coffee in polystyrene cups. The weather has alternated between bright, warm sunshine and showers all day, so we were able to paddle on the beach and 10 minutes later were hiding under a tree to escape the rain.

This evening we went out for a meal and decided to go Italian after being slightly shocked by main-course prices of 250kr or more (about £28) in the posher places. Afterwards we wandered around the docks, which surround an island within the harbour. For some reason we don't understand this seems to be a top spot for laying up, or even effectively abandoning, old ships. There are six coasters all called something Stevns, two more in front of the maltings, half a dozen small, grey, military-looking vessels, and three or four work boats of some kind in a very poor state. There's no sign that most of them are being worked on, although the docks also houses Denmark's top yard for building and repairing wooden boats, Ring Anderson.

The forecast now shows quite a deep low tracking over Denmark in the middle of Friday. We want to be somewhere secure for a couple of days, so once more will be following Lady Cressida, this time to Fåborg 16 miles away. Fortunately Jonty and Wyn don't seem to mind, and it is very nice to be able to compare notes and share drinks with another British yacht.

Svendborg

2011-08-16T21:07:00.001+01:00

Omø exacted payment for our peaceful and delightful day on the island. The first night had wind, rain and massive windshifts. The second was the Night of the Squeak. The wind was blowing us hard onto the jetty, and also kicking up just enough of a swell to rock us gently, and also to rock our Halberg friends on a slightly different rhythm. The result was that every fender on both sides of the boat creaked loudly all night, and so did most of the seven lines tying us to the jetty and three or four tying the Halberg to us. Not a good night for sleeping.

Today's passage was initially west, then south-west. Naturally, the wind was also west and then south-west (fortunately very light) so what would have seemed like a lovely day with the wind behind us felt like a chilly slog as we headed straight into it. We motored across the shipping lanes of the Store Bælt, then hoped to be able to sail between Langeland and Fyn. We beat into the wind for an hour and a half, then gave up and motored. When we turned into the winding Svedborg Sund we had a really great sail for another 30 minutes or so, but it's a bit traumatic hurtling along a twisting channel that you don't know, leaning right over at speeds up to 7 knots and unable to see anything behind the foresail, so eventually we put away both sails.

The Svendborg Sound is lovely and Svendborg itself is a pretty town. The town harbour seems to be entirely devoted to visiting yachts, with a very grand toilet block, all smart-card operated, which eats all your money while you shower. There is a very convenient supermarket, perfect as our supplies were running a bit low after Omø, where Sam found Newcastle Brown and pork scratchings. And there's a museum-harbour, only open to wooden boats (although they seemed to have made an exception for a steel Dutch botter).

We're not currently sure what we'll do tomorrow. We'd like to go to Ærokobing, but if the wind is SW it would be straight into the wind. We might stay here and sleep.

Miles covered today: 29.

Omø in sunshine

2011-08-15T19:26:00.001+01:00

As expected, we had an overnight crisis, although we didn't have to wait until 3am. The wind was due to go from east to west as a depression passed over. Unfairly, it did this by going northerly at 10pm, and at the same time dumping even larger quantities of water out of the sky. In this harbour, a northerly blows straight into the entrance. The Halberg alongside us was tied to us with two bits of washing line and had no lines ashore, so promptly drifted forward and hit Lady Cressida. Jonty was in his element waking sleeping sailors, advising them on rigging shorelines, springs, and extra fenders. We are currently tied to the mole with 6 or 7 lines, and we all got very wet indeed. The wind never got much above a 5, although it felt like a full gale in the dark and soaking rain, and the swell coming in was quite manageable. We all went back to our rather uncomfortable beds, and by 2am the wind went westerly anyway. By 7.30am there were clear signs of blue sky and sunshine.

This is a pretty civilised island, with among other benefits a free wifi hotspot for the harbour. With its aid we were able to determine that Monday looked like being a nice day to stay on Omø: westerly up to force 5 (ie on the nose for the next passage, so not very attractive for sailing), but with sunshine and improving visibility. Also, Tuesday looks quieter, although we haven't seen many properly quiet days recently.

So we stayed, and have been rewarded with a lovely day on this beautiful island. There's so much to do here:-) The ferry runs every two hours (as I type, the 8pm ferry has just whizzed out and I'm back in the sun again), and is often greeted by a small dog who trots on board to say hello, and narrowly misses being run over by the cars coming off. The restaurant also has a little shop selling basic foods. We bought two seriously fresh plaice straight from the fisherman when he came in.

And best of all, as you can see from the picture in the previous post, Camilla bought a scarf from the tiny handicrafts shop at the end of the toilet block. It's knitted by a lady called Lili, who normally makes socks, so it's double thickness. How wonderful it will be to wear a warm scarf this winter and know it came from a lady who spends her winters knitting on a tiny island in the Store Bælt.

This afternoon we dug out the folding bike, and separately went for rides around the island. As the visibility improved the views got better and better. You can see Sjaelland, the other little island of Agersø and the fabulous Store Bælt bridge to the north, Langeland and Fyn to the west, and from the other side of the island back east along the Smålands Farvandet. (South is mainly Germany, which is too far to see). But the island itself is pretty too, with thatched houses and tiny farms. Almost 200 people live here all year round and it's been a real delight to get a glimpse of their lives. This is what we hoped the Baltic would be like.

Tomorrow, if we can cope with plugging into the wind and if we can find a berth, we plan to go to Svendborg.

Shopping on the island of Omø

2011-08-15T11:05:00.001+01:00

One gorgeous hand-knitted scarf and two plaice straight from the fishing boat

Omø

2011-08-14T20:25:00.000+01:00

As planned, today we headed west from Kalvehave with what was supposed to be a gentle easterly behind us. To start with (at 7am when we left) we even had sun, and we could see why people enthuse about Smålands Farvandet - it really is pretty. We had to wiggle along the channel and under a couple of bridges, then head out of the channel across a bank to bypass an opening bridge and go under a higher bridge instead. At this point we had a helpful current giving us up to 2 knots extra speed.

Bridges done, there was a bit more wind from right behind us and we managed to get the cruising chute up for a couple of hours. But as we sped out into the wider end of the channel the waves started to build behind us, the wind strengthened, and we had to drop the chute, which was an interesting challenge. We experimented with combinations of sails and ended up running with just the mainsail. We can do this thanks to our expensive new toy, the GybeEasy, which acts as a preventer and stops the boom smashing violently over. It's expensive for what it is (a metal pretzel and a bit of high-class rope) but good value for what it supplies (peace of mind when running, and less banging of the boom when motorsailing).

We arrived at the island harbour on Omø at around 2pm, just as it started raining, and it hasn't stopped since. We are alongside an inner wall, as the boxes here are very wide (posts miles apart) but with very little turning space between the rows. When we came in it was pretty empty, but there is now an entire German sailing club in here, including a Halberg Rassy rafted to us :-( And the weather is unspeakably horrible: bucketing rain, wind still up to 16 knots or more, an uneasy motion made worse by having a heavy Halberg hanging on to us, endless banging from bits of rigging, yuck yuck. It's the sort of night when you leave clothes handy in case of a 3am crisis.

The annoying thing is that in nice weather this must be a lovely island. Camilla explored a bit, and there are little beaches, small cliffs, a lighthouse, and nice Danish houses with pretty gardens. We found a fish smokery where Sam, at 5.30pm, was the first customer they had had all day. The season is definitely ending. There's a little restaurant where we had several beers with Jonty from Lady Cressida (yes, they are here too) and then a meal for two of us, all for 390 kronor, about £43. Not haute cuisine, but hot, tasty and served in a nice warm room which is not rocking around at all.

From here it's only about 75 miles through the channels to Augustenborg, and we have around two weeks to get there. There are numerous options to explore en route or the whole of the Lille Bælt. But if it keeps on raining, it will be hard to work up enthusiasm.

Miles today: 42.

Kalvehave

2011-08-13T20:59:00.001+01:00

We have made it through the dreaded Bøgestrøm and never saw much less than a metre under our keel, hooray!

Jonty popped over from Lady Cressida at 8.30am to say he had chatted to the harbourmaster who said the passage should be safe this morning for anything up to 2.1 metres draft. Wind and waves had both eased at Rødvig, so we set off, having deployed a nice bit of springing off to get us out of the berth.

The bay, the Fakse Bugt, proved to be not as smooth as we hoped, in fact for an hour or so it was unpleasant. We approached the outer, dredged channel with some trepidation, expecting to see breaking waves, but it was ok - a bit hairy with the waves behind us, but Sam did an excellent job of helming with engine on and a bit of jib.

Most of the channel is well marked, although it could do with a few of the fluorescent German port-hand marks, which are brilliantly visible - these reds were hard to see and the greens even worse. Also from time to time there were cardinals or isolated danger marks, in one place (according to the chart) a depth of less than 1m inside the channel, and further on suddenly no buoys at all for half a mile. At this point we were suddenly engulfed in rain, which didn't help with buoy-spotting, and also meant we couldn't see the prettiest bit of the passage.

Like other places including Rødvig, Kalvehave has a two-part harbour. We initially went into a berth on the marina side, but we had only 0.1m under the keel and we suspect water level is high today - if it drops, we could have been stranded. So we ducked around to the "fishing" harbour and rafted up to Lady Cressida.

Kalvehave is a pleasant, sheltered spot on the south side of Sjaelland, in the shadow of the bridge to Møn, and surrounded by other little islands, with stunning sea views - this is what you imagine the Baltic to be like. Today they are holding a harbour festival, mostly musical. We've seen square-dancing, heard a Leonard Cohen soundalike, and are currently enjoying yet another set from the main band, who seem to be able to play anything.

The wind is due to go south-east 3-4 tomorrow and then go round to the west on Monday. We want to make the most of the easterlies to get as far west as we can, especially as these waters are pretty sheltered so waves should be modest. If we feel up to it we may get as far as the island of Omø tomorrow.

Miles today: 20, of which around 12 were very shallow ones.

More rain, more Rødvig

2011-08-12T21:29:00.001+01:00

The rain eased a bit in the night but returned at full pelt by getting-up time. In addition Camilla woke up with a headache which has continued to trouble her all day. And the waves are still big enough to make the prospect of entering the Bøgestrøm decidedly unattractive. Just in case we needed any more incentives to stay, the German boat rafted up to us wasn't moving, and Sam found a British boat, Lady Cressida, who invited us for drinks tonight. So we didn't move.

In the late morning we went out to discover all that Rødvig has to offer. We visited the Ships' Engines museum, which has a wonderful collection, mostly of diesel engines from around 1918 to the 1960s, but plenty of other oddities including a couple of British Seagull outboards. We got in for somewhat less than the going rate because they were desperate for change, so just took all Sam's small money and let us in. It's run by volunteers, who all apparently troop in on a Wednesday evening to work on the engines. The chap on the desk spoke excellent English (of course) and started up a couple of Junkers engines for our entertainment. One had been recovered from an E-boat at the end of the war, spent 20 years as a working engine out in Greenland, and is now 79 years old, still all original and starting on a swing of the handle. It seemed to have two vertically opposed pistons, not sure if we got that right. When we left he was explaining the engine to our German harbour neighbours, in fluent German.

Other than that Rødvig offers a small private railway with no sign of trains today, a baker/grocer/minimarket/video rental store, one posh restaurant, two cafés, and a boatbuilder - who was running a noisy extractor right by our boat this morning, but fortunately turned it off at lunchtime.

We also discovered that the green ticket which Sam obtained from the harbour ticket machine actually says "sorry, your credit card transaction has failed", in Danish. It takes you through the transaction in English but if it doesn't like your card it reverts to Danish, which is slightly unhelpful. Fortunately this happens quite often and we were able to pay the harbourmaster in cash.

We spent a pleasant couple of hours on board Lady Cressida, an Island Packet 42 from the Solent. Jonty and Mrs Jonty (memory failure, sorry) have kept her in the Baltic for four years and are overwintering at Augustenborg, so we may well see them again over the next couple of weeks. We also discussed the dreaded Bøgestrøm - it seems two Dutch yachts set off this morning but came back after seeing breaking waves at the entrance. The word is that it should probably be better tomorrow afternoon, when the wind is due to go slightly more southerly, or failing that on Sunday when the wind goes properly SE and moderates. Camilla has used almost all her 25MB daily data allowance on the iPhone looking at weather charts. Hopefully the upload of this blog post won't bust the limit....

Rødvig in the rain

2011-08-11T17:37:00.000+01:00

Sailing is a curious activity. There are times when you promise yourself that you will never never go sailing again. We had several of those moments today. And yet when you arrive at your destination, and you're tied up safe and sound, you have a sense of achievement which means you go out and do it all again the next day.

We left Svanemølle at 7am in the pouring rain, with a forecast of not much wind. The rain has been consistent all day, but the forecast has varied considerably, at one point suggesting we were going to see a force 6. In fact we never saw more than a 5, but as it was from the east, we started to see quite big waves building.

When you read shipping forecasts as a sailor, you tend to focus on wind and possibly waves rather than rain. But really non-stop, drenching rain gets you down quite quickly. It's cold, the sky is grey, the visibility is poor, and you have to wear full oilies which are always uncomfortable, the water drips off your hood, and (today's special) every quarter hour the wind gets a knot stronger.

Camilla, not having expected waves, didn't take a Stugeron and felt more ill than on any previous passage this year. No actual vomiting was undertaken, however.

We reached the approach to Rødvig around 1.30pm and remembered that one reason we didn't come here on the way up to Copenhagen is that the approach was said to be unpleasant in easterlies. Indeed it is, but not as bad as our approach to Oostende last year when Camilla had to hide below while Sam surfed the boat between the pierheads.

Once in we had to make a high-speed choice between the marina, described as "congested", and the fishing harbour. The fishing harbour was the only option with enough room for us to rig ropes and fenders before tying up, so in we went, to be greeted by a cheerful harbourmaster who told us to go anywhere there was space. So for the first time this trip we are tied up to a wall alongside old car tyres. We tucked into a small space rather neatly, and had it to ourselves for a few hours, but we've just acquired German neighbours.

All this time the rain has varied between steady downpour and bucketing down. We strolled into Rødvig briefly, chatted to some nice Danes who told us it would still be raining tomorrow :-( and we could get through the Bøgestrom ok with 1.7m draft, we got a bit wetter, paid at the ticket machine and came back to the boat. At least the wind and waves have eased a bit.

Miles today: 36.

Windy day

2011-08-10T20:46:00.000+01:00

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.

Pictures - Rügen to Copenhagen

2011-08-10T20:22:00.000+01:00

Lauterbach. This cloud followed us all day and never rained

Goodbye to Germany

The stunning cliffs of Møn

New headphones - Ben is happy

The authentic little mermaid

Yum yum, smørrebrød

Sam and Henry Moore, Louisiana

Invisible art in Copenhagen

Shop till you stop

2011-08-09T20:27:00.001+01:00

Today was mad extravagant shopping day, a chance to cruise around Copenhagen's luxury stores and splash out on something really special. At the end of four hours' dedicated indulgence, Camilla had purchased a can opener and Sam had three pairs of socks.

Our feeble excuse is that prices were very high, we don't really need anything (apart from a can opener and socks) and anything we buy has to be stored on the boat and/or transported home, which tends to rule out fabulous modern mirrored chandeliers at 9,000 krone a pop.

It has rained on and off through the day, so Camilla spent much of the time in larger stores, which minimised the time in the rain, admiring Danish household design and occasionally venturing into ladies' wear. There is a lot of wonderful Danish clothing design around, but colours tend to be cool greys, blues and beiges which get just a tiny bit dull after a while.

It's nice to get back to Svanemølle station, which is starting to feel like home (Sam says that means it's time to move on). There's a lot about this place which is reminiscent of Badalona, north of Barcelona, where Kalessin overwintered in 2007-8: a big modern marina (but less concrete here), a short walk to the station (although this is shorter) with easy connections to the city, lots of roadworks (why?) and even a disused power station with three enormous chimneys. Train tickets here are around twice the price for half the distance compared with Spain, though.

The promised bad weather seems to be passing south of us, with strong winds for North Germany while all we've had so far are thundery squalls. The most helpful forecast is the Danish one, which is in English but with wind speeds in metres per second, which is just annoying - what would Admiral Beaufort say? It also only goes 24 hours ahead. No doubt there is a longer-term forecast in Danish but we haven't found it yet. Anyway, tomorrow still looks windy: the wording is "Wednesday transiently locally perhaps gale, 15 m/s".

Tomorrow we plan to get a day's proper wifi Internet access (blog posts just use a data connection from Camilla's iPhone) which will not only help us get better forecasts, but will also allow us to make some decisions and book some tickets for going home.

Just the two of us

2011-08-08T18:08:00.001+01:00

It's been a quiet and (for Sam and Camilla) rather sad day. Ben's flight home took off around 5.15pm. He has spent exactly a month with us and generally was extremely pleased to be going. But the boat is very quiet and empty without him grumbling in the aft cabin.

For the first time on this trip we have dug out the folding bike. We need another Camping Gaz bottle, and the chandlery which might have sold us some is yet another victim of the flash floods from the weekend we spent in Wulkow. With the aid of the bike, Sam has identified a filling station a mile down the road which stocks the correct cylinders.

The other use for the bike has been a quick whizz around to the harbourmaster's office to top up The Card. Smart cards, on which you pay a deposit and/or a preloaded amount of cash, have been featured in many of the marinas we've visited from Cuxhaven onwards. Depending on the location and the technical complexity of the installation, cards may be used for access to the marina (rarely) and to the toilet block (almost always), to pay for showers (which can be measured by the microsecond), electricity, water and even parking your car. In here you can even check in to the marina and pay automatically, without seeing a harbourmaster. Of course there are a few snags: losing a card (which we haven't done yet) could be expensive, and you have to remember to return your card before you go. It would be interesting to find out how it works for a permanent berth-holder.

Currently it's drizzling quietly but the strong winds, due to arrive some time overnight, are not yet in evidence. Camilla is cheered by the prospect of wandering around some of Copenhagen's wonderful shops on her own tomorrow. Sam may sneak off and visit the Carlsberg brewery.

Burghers and burgers

2011-08-07T21:02:00.000+01:00

This morning, as promised, it rained pretty hard, and we spent the morning washing our smalls and relaxing. But by noon the rain had gone, and we were able to set off for today's cultural destination, the Ny Glyptotek, also known as the Carlsberg sculpture museum.

We spent the afternoon admiring Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Danish (oh dear) and French sculpture, and some nice French Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings. Ben liked the Greek sculptures best, while Camilla was rather taken with the bronze casts of Degas' quick sketchy sculptures (originally just made in wax and cast by Degas' family after his death). There are also various Rodins including versions of the Kiss, the Thinker, and as a reminder of 2008 for us, the Burghers of Calais.

We had a couple of hours to kill before our meal, so strolled across to the canalside neighbourhood of Christianshavn, and then in a burst of bravery we popped into the anarchist hippie neighbourhood of Christiania to admire the graffiti and inhale the fumes (in fact much less than you smell on an average Amsterdam street).

As a farewell to Ben we had a meal at Peder Oxe, famous for its terrific burgers (for Sam and Ben) and help-yourself salad (for Camilla). For pudding we went for rødkål med fløde, a kind of fruit soup, which is a Danish pronunciation challenge equivalent to Scheveningen in Dutch.

Tomorrow we have to spend the morning getting Ben packed and ready to go on his afternoon flight. He can't wait to get away, but we will miss him terribly. The wind still looks strong for Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thursday is now looking a little bit more promising for departure.

Louisiana and Helsingør

2011-08-06T18:49:00.001+01:00

As Saturday looked like being dry for most of the day, we decided to head north out of Copenhagen to the Louisiana museum of modern art, which meant going one stop on the S-tog to Hellerup and then taking the regional train along the Øresund, also known as the Danish Riviera. After some dithering at the ticket machine, we decided the best value would be three 24-hour tickets at 130kr each (around £14).

Travel here is not as cheap as Germany, where a slightly shorter journey such as Peenemünde to Lübeck costs less than €4 return. But then, Denmark is generally more expensive for most things - eating out, eating in, travel and of course drinking.

Louisiana was originally a 19th-century seaside villa, with wonderful gardens going downhill to the beach, and now extended with stunning modern galleries. Much of the sculpture is outside, backed by fantastic views across the Øresund to Sweden. It was a beautiful day with blue skies and big fluffy clouds, and the ever-changing light was so gorgeous we spent the first couple of hours outside, exploring the grounds and enjoying delicious Danish coffee and rolls outside the cafe with views of three works by Alexander Calder.

The interior was also fascinating, although Camilla is less keen on Giacometti than Sam is, and the summer exhibitions included some striking architectural concept stuff and a wonderful collection of the works David Hockney has been creating on iPhone and iPad.

In the end there was so much to see that we all felt a bit overwhelmed, and in Camilla's case convinced that she'd missed out on Important Stuff. Ben managed to lose our locker key, possibly while rolling down a hill :-) but we resolved that quite easily despite his worries, and no-one stole our backpacks. And we participated fully in the retail experience by buying a collapsible Swedish designer fly swat for Camilla's office.

We thought we'd make the most of our 24-hour tickets with a quick trip to Helsingør, or Elsinore as Hamlet called it. It turned out Helsingør was being shut down for the round-Denmark cycle race, but we managed to get some ice-creams with home-made cornets, a view of the castle, a walk around the town and a shared plate of chips in a nice pizzeria before getting the train back.

Our berth is still marked as green and the promised evening rain hasn't developed beyond a few minutes of warm drizzle, so we are able to enjoy the distant sounds of live jazz from the harbour cafe, and relax. Tomorrow we plan a morning on board and more museums in the afternoon, with a farewell (for Ben) meal out in the evening.

What I see when I wake up (on a good day)

2011-08-06T07:14:00.001+01:00

Exploring Copenhagen

2011-08-05T19:42:00.000+01:00

We thought we'd spend our first day in Denmark's capital just wandering about and orienting ourselves. We followed a route in the handy tourist map which goes from the main station to the Little Mermaid and back. It's supposed to take three hours but what with stops for this and that it took us more than five, which may have been a bit too long.

The S-tog (urban train) from Svanemølle was efficient and very quick, once we had found the station which is only about 10 minutes' walk from the boat. It was a quiet, warm, rather grey morning with poor visibility, so we were glad to be exploring rather than sailing.

The route took us through the Latin Quarter and along some quieter shopping streets to an amazing music shop, where Ben bought a pair of long-desired Sennheiser headphones and Sam very nearly bought a travel guitar, and we discovered that the shop lost more than a million krone-worth of stock when their basement flooded in the rain which we escaped while were in Wulkow.

Then on to the delightful Kongens Have (Royal Gardens) where we enjoyed iced coffee at the Hercules Pavilion. Ben, as a classics student, is very taken by the classical statuary all over the city.

Sam lived in Copenhagen for a year more than 30 years ago and we went to look at his flat in Olfert Fischers Gade. As we photographed him next to the sign, a Dane appeared from nowhere to ask (in perfect English) if he could tell us anything about the building, or the neighbourhood. It was a great chance for Sam to blether a bit. In fact Copenhagen has changed of course since he was here, and memories fade, so he remembers some things in the wrong places or looking quite different.

On through the Kastellet, which although continuously in military use since 1660 manages to be very pretty. Ben, who was already delighted by the green grass in the parks and the headphone shop, was so impressed with the cleanliness of the public toilets he asked if we could all move to Copenhagen. This is a very different boy from the one who loathed cities five years ago on our Mediterranean voyage.

Of course we had to visit the Little Mermaid, who is actually very little indeed and slightly uncomfortably perched just a few feet offshore. By this time it was starting to drizzle slightly and was definitely well past lunchtime, so we hastened down through the royal palace to the picturesque Nyhavn canal, where we went totally touristy and ate smørrebrød under big umbrellas (you even get a blanket) while watching the world go by.

Finally in slightly heavier drizzle we came back along the "walking street", the top shopping area, and managed not to buy anything at all, perhaps because we were all a bit weary, although we did admire the Lego shop.

We got back to the boat to find that our green board had gone red. This means that the berth occupant is due back some time quite soon, but we had no indication of whether it would be tomorrow or later. Actually this is the first time this has happened to us. Possibly this marina is more efficient, or possibly it signifies the approaching end of the Danish (and north German) summer holidays. Anyway we walked about a bit and eventually found a suitable berth which says it's free until 14 August, and moved over. Interestingly Svanemølle charges and controls berths by width rather than length, and all the other free berths we saw were much too narrow for our 3.5 metre beam.

Distance today: about 200 metres.

Svanemølle, Copenhagen

2011-08-04T19:32:00.000+01:00

So, this is unexpected. We left Klintholm at 7.30am expecting that the first few miles to Rødvig would be bumpy and unpleasant, but then we would have a more-or-less ok passage. For various reasons none of us had slept very well and although the easterly wind eased a bit overnight, it was still creating waves.

As expected, the first few miles around the corner of Møn, straight into the wind, were slow and bumpy - although the pain was eased by a great view of Møn's cliffs in the morning light. Once we headed north, however, our speed increased to more than 6.5 knots. It became clear that we would reach Rødvig so early that if they were feeling mean they could charge us for an extra day for arriving before 12 noon.

Was it worth making the most of this excellent wind? Copenhagen was still 50 miles away but at these speeds we would get there before 5pm. Conditions were bumpy, but manageable. A quick re-plan was undertaken and we decided to go for it.

And what a passage it was. The sun shone, the sea was blue, another yacht was on the same course as us a mile ahead (it's always helpful to have an aiming point in bumpy conditions, it's so easy to get knocked off course). And for mile after mile we made better than 7 knots. From about the halfway point, with Sweden on our right, the sea even got a bit flatter.

We covered 56 miles in 8 hours and 45 minutes, an average of 6.4 knots - and that includes the first hour where we were lucky to make 4 knots into the wind, and the last hour where Camilla got nervous about sailing goose-winged (one sail on each side, with the wind dead aft) up a narrow channel to a place we didn't know, so we dropped the mainsail and used just the genoa. Normally we might have expected that distance to take around 11 hours.

We were hoping to go to Hellerup, which is a little harbour north of the city. But we came in late enough to be uncertain of getting a berth, and we couldn't reach them by phone. So instead we are in Svanemølle, about a mile south, which is apparently Denmark's biggest marina. It feels quite manageable though, and it's full of traditional wooden boats, and numerous dayboats and dinghies sailing into the marina - which would never be allowed in the UK. Apparently they had to rebuild the whole marina in 2007 after a chronic infestation of, would you believe it, woodworm.

We have until Monday to recover (a long bumpy passage leaves you feeling as though someone has been kicking you for a few hours) and explore Copenhagen. Currently the forecast is for strong winds on Tuesday and Wednesday, so if these appear, Sam and Camilla may spend even longer here.

Miles covered today: 56, with almost 50 miles under sail. Top speed on the GPS: 9.4 knots.

Itchy feet

2011-08-03T16:58:00.001+01:00

Germany is behind us, but really not very far away. When we arrived in Klintholm we were surprised that although this is a purpose-built marina, the facilities were in portaloos. It turns out that in May a charter party from Warnemünde set fire to the sauna and burned the whole lot down. The marina has a big notice explaining this, in German (and not in Danish). I'm not sure why they felt they had to mention Warnemünde, though.

The other German legacy is dozens of Barhöft mosquito bites decorating Camilla's arms, legs and feet. The itchiness was bad enough to require taking a Piriton in the middle of last night. Most of them were probably acquired while waving the iPhone around to get a good enough signal to post the blog entry on Monday. See what we suffer on your behalf.

Klintholm is a remarkably international spot, considering that it's a little harbour on a small island loosely attached (by a bridge) to another island which is attached to a small country. Cars and camper vans seen here come from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Italy, Spain and Luxembourg, and boats from Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. No other Brits though.

Today has been one of those annoying days when it sounds scarily windy but is actually only a force 4, occasionally gusting 5. The forecast is much the same tomorrow, although the sea may be a bit lumpier after a day of easterlies.

And our plans have changed, slightly. We realised that we were just killing time ahead of Ben's flight, and after he goes Sam and I would have to rush back through an attractive part of Denmark, the narrow channel north of Møn. So thanks to Mr easyJet we have moved Ben's flight four days earlier, which gives us a couple of days to get to Copenhagen, three days to explore it, and a bit more time to sail back to our winter base in Augustenborg. Mr easyJet was quite modest in his demands really, we pay the extra on the fare (£32) plus a £35 admin charge, and they don't charge us again for Ben's luggage or using a debit card - I'm sure Mr Ryanair would.

Tomorrow we head for Rødvig, which is a convenient staging post en route to Copenhagen but can get very full. Hopefully if we leave here pretty early the wind will be a bit more modest (especially for the first five miles around the corner of Møn, which will be into the wind), and we'll be able to find a berth in Rødvig.

Klintholm, Denmark

2011-08-02T19:37:00.001+01:00

When Sam rose at 5.30am for his early-morning ablutions I couldn't resist a peek outside. All the fog had vanished and it was a gorgeous morning.

Barhöft is a passage port, a convenient jumping-off point for yachts heading north and west from Rügen, and numerous people were already up and about and getting ready for sea. By the time we left at 7am we were in the middle of a flotilla of departing yachts, but the vast majority turned left out of the channel, heading westwards towards Warnemünde, Lübeck and the other ports we've just visited. Only one headed, like us, north towards Denmark.

It stayed warm and sunny, with very light easterlies, all day. We managed an hour's sailing while we had lunch, but otherwise it was all motoring. A north-going current gave us a bit of a lift, and we reached Klintholm on the island of Møn by 2.30pm and were able to go straight into a space in the little marina.

So, a new country, and although Sam once lived in Denmark for a year this is the first-ever visit for Ben and Camilla. For Camilla, it's the first country she has sailed to without ever having visited it beforehand by other means. It also means new currency - no Euros here, so we had to visit the bank to stock up on kronor. On the other hand, our pontoon here features a couple of Swedes, two or three Dutch boats, a dozen Germans and possibly one Dane, so the mix is pretty similar to Germany.

Klintholm is another passage port, but a pleasant location with a little fishing port, a nice beach, various holiday homes, a Spar supermarket, a delicatessen selling local delicacies and smoked fish, some cafes, and even a bank (only actually open on Tuesday and Friday mornings). What else could you need? For the first time on this trip we have managed to be in a place with a beach at the same time as experiencing beach weather - Ben and Camilla even went for a swim. So we have decided to stay here another night to help us acclimatise to Denmark.

We have a bit of a problem from here. We have to be in or near Copenhagen by the 12th for Ben's flight, and for a few days beforehand so we can explore the city. We don't have quite enough time to go the long way around Møn, and anyway Sam and I may go back that way. So we may explore a bit to the north of Copenhagen, or even cross to Sweden for a brief visit. We'll have to see what the weather does next.

Miles covered today: 39.

Back in Barhöft

2011-08-01T20:08:00.000+01:00

Navigating in thick fog, a well-equipped boat has some advantages over a car. For a start, you don't have to stick to the road. Traffic is often very light indeed. And a combination of GPS and chart plotter, AIS and radar mean that you know where you are, where you're going and who else is out there.

Nevertheless, heading out between the pierheads of Lauterbach at 7am was pretty scary. Within two or three minutes of departure we could see nothing except our own boat and one cormorant, and grey murk. I would guess at its worst visibility was less than 100 metres. In some ways it's no worse than night navigation, with the advantage that if anything went wrong all we had to do was turn left out of the channel, anchor, and wait for the fog to lift. But good god, it's hard work.

We hoped that things would clear by the time we reached the main Strelasund channel around 9am. Indeed, it was possible to see one or two buoys ahead, and eventually even see the land. But the fog has never really cleared all day.

The object of today's early departure was to get through the Stralsund bridge at 1220 and avoid the terrifying 1720 rush hour. We made it, in fact we were early and had to trickle along for the last three or four miles at a couple of knots. When we finally got through, along with about 35 other yachts (where did they all come from?) we all took an interesting shortcut out of Stralsund harbour and roared the next 9 miles up to Barhöft, where we found a berth with no problem despite the rush hour.

Some time in the next 12 hours the wind is due to go easterly for a couple of days. If this has happened by tomorrow morning, and it is possible to see across the channel outside the harbour, we might go to Denmark (40 miles to Klintholm). If the fog is still there - and it's now 8.15pm and visibility is closing down again - we will be here another day. We can cope (just) with a quiet inland sea in zero visibility, but not the open Baltic.

This is a lovely spot, but I think we are all getting quite keen to leave Germany.

Miles covered today: 32.

Lauterbach

2011-07-31T20:27:00.001+01:00

This morning it was neither raining nor windy. It was, unfortunately, rather foggy - not ideal for buoy-hopping along narrow channels. So we hung about for a bit, dried some towels and jeans in the tumble drier, and by the time we set off visibility was adequate.

Having been within sight of Rügen for almost a week we thought it was time we actually visited it. So we headed for Lauterbach on the south of the island, about 17M from Kröslin. There was almost no wind so we motored the whole way, and the visibility gradually improved although a vast black cloud hung to the west of us all day and we saw a bit more drizzle, but then a bit of sunshine and some warmth.

Lauterbach has an old harbour and a marina side by side. We were very glad to have chosen the marina after we tied up and discovered there was a (loud) funfair in the harbour. We were followed by these all over the Netherlands last summer, and this is the first we've seen this year, so we mustn't grumble. Also it's now 9pm and all is quiet, which is even better.

This is a pleasant spot in a nice sheltered corner. It's home to a couple of charter fleets, but fortunately most of them are out on charter. It also has some rather cool holiday chalets on stilts over the water, with their own little moorings.

Lauterbach is the harbour for the 1840s show town of Putbus, which used to have a matching schloss until it was blown up by a DDR mayor trying to impress his bosses in the 1960s. Camilla walked up to Putbus to take a look, but was actually much more impressed by the Edeka supermarket en route, which was open on a Sunday - almost unheard-of in Germany. This is probably our last chance to shop before Denmark, so it was time to stock up on cheap spirits (ouzo and German-made 'London' gin) and basic supplies.

Tomorrow we plan to leave here fairly early and get the 12.20 bridge opening at Stralsund, pressing on to Barhöft. Then on Tuesday easterly winds are forecast and we hope to make the hop to Klintholm on the island of Møn in Denmark, about 40 miles.

Miles today: 18.

Still raining

2011-07-30T16:39:00.001+01:00

Yes, it's still raining and we are still in Kröslin. When we got up this morning it was still quite windy, and although the wind has now eased considerably, and there are periods when it's hardly raining at all, the prospect of a 20-mile beat into the rain was very unappealing.

One good thing about this marina is the clothes-washing facilities. There are six washing machines, six tumble dryers, an iron, and a drying room. What a great idea that is - every marina should have one. So we have washed the towels and duvet covers.

We keep finding more bits of the boat which got wet last week and haven't had a chance to dry out. Our fleecy Ikea blanket, folded neatly on the bunk in the main cabin, was not only wet but mouldy underneath. All the bulkheads have condensation running down them so nothing is really dry.

We spent some time working out the statistics on the journey so far. We have covered 780 miles since leaving Suffolk Yacht Harbour in May. Excluding canals, which are slow because of the bridges and locks, we have averaged 4.6 knots and spent a fraction under 50% of the time under sail - much better than we managed on our trip to the Algarve in 2006. Our fastest passage was our North Sea crossing, where tides helped us to average 5.8 knots. Most impressive was the 29 miles from Wismar to Kühlungsborn, 94% under sail at an average of 5.4 knots - no tides in the Baltic of course. During three weeks in the Baltic we've covered almost 300 miles.

I haven't recorded how many days it rained. Stralsund was a gorgeous day and only three days ago, but already I have lost faith that we'll ever see blue sky again.

Rocket powered

2011-07-29T21:32:00.000+01:00

Today's weather has probably been the worst we've experienced on the boat on this trip. Of course, we were in the fortunate position of being ashore in a nice warm house last weekend - we've discovered that many people who were on board their yachts then didn't get off the boat at all for three days, so by comparison, this is modest.

Still, it has rained pretty much without a break all day, with north-westerlies 5-6, and currently gusting up to 7. Yuck. We looked at the pictures we took in brilliant sunshine in Stralsund just a couple of days ago, and they seemed to be from another world.

Still, we never planned to sail today, and we enjoyed our visit to the Peenemünde museum, home of the V2 rocket. It is interesting to realise that the V2 would never have been developed without the passionate support of a small number of Nazis, including of course Wernher von Braun. What's more every rocket built subsequently, up to and including Saturn V, the Arianes, and the Soviet N-1, is a direct descendant of the V2. It's likely that more people died in developing and building the V2s than were ever killed in their raids, so from a military point of view it made no sense at all. But technically, it couldn't have been more influential.

The museum is housed in an old power station which is only a tiny part of the huge 1940s development site, which covered most of the northern tip of the island of Usedom. From our point of view, however, it was dry inside and relatively warm, with most exhibits labelled in English and German (and some in Polish - we're only 30 miles from the border) so was a great way to spend a few hours. It was very busy today - I should think if you are on a beach holiday in Usedom, or even worse a camping holiday, the museum must be even more welcome than it was to us.

The little ferry brought us back to Kröslin where we managed to stock up on a few basics in the bakery and tiny grocery, before heading back to the boat. We've only been out again for excellent hot showers, but got almost as wet walking back to the boat as we did in the shower.

If it's like this tomorrow morning I shall go on strike and refuse to sail anywhere. The German forecast just says NW5, locally 6, decreasing a little by noon, which is not encouraging. We are in a sheltered marina off a sheltered channel, leading from what is effectively a lake, so whatever the forecast says we ought to get a bit less than that, but we'll see.

Kröslin

2011-07-28T21:02:00.000+01:00

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.

Stralsund

2011-07-27T17:42:00.000+01:00

Just a short hop today, mainly under sail, from Barhöft to Stralsund. The weather has been very pleasant, with modest northerlies and sunshine and blue skies for most of the day.

Stralsund is the last of many German Hanseatic cities which we've seen on this trip - so far, Stade, Bremen, Lübeck, Wismar and Rostock. Each one has managed to be different from all its predecessors, and Stralsund is no exception. It's completely surrounded by water, partly by lakes, and partly by the narrow channel between Rügen and the mainland. Restoration is still well under way, with a few gaps and huge building sites, but there are many lovely buildings including a Rathaus and big churches.

The harbour is interesting. There are a number of massive brick warehouses, each seven to nine stories high. Each one has its own bar or restaurant on the ground floor, but we couldn't work out what the rest of the space is being used for, if anything.

We arrived before noon, with plenty of spaces in the marina which is right in the historic harbour, and time for a stroll around the town. We had lunch in a nice Italian restaurant which is not in a converted warehouse at all but has a shaded, sheltered terrace full of flowers, with a lovely view of the boats.

This afternoon's entertainment has been the bridge opening. The rail/road bridge to Rügen has limited opening times, and a key one is at 5.20pm. We were able to count more than 30 yachts jammed in a solid wedge, as they hurtled through the bridge and towards the marina on full throttle and roared into the last few spaces. We'll have to plan our route back to avoid that - either get here for an earlier opening when things are less traumatic, or go around the north of Rügen instead.

Miles today: 9.

Almost Rügen

2011-07-26T20:00:00.000+01:00

We rose at dawn today (4.45am) ready for the long passage from Warnemünde to Rügen. Unfortunately the engine started but then stopped, and refused to re-start. We had to wait a while before we tried again, but fortunately it then started and ran fine - just as well, as it's been a day of solid motoring.

In fact, today is the first passage in a long time when we didn't even get a sail up. Initially we were heading north- east and the very light wind was from the south-west, resulting in an apparent wind of zero on the boat, and making us the perfect landing place for 84 million aphids, fruit flies, hoverflies and mosquitoes.

The only distraction was playing with the autopilot - we have now discovered it needs a special setting for northern latitudes, although as we're only at the same latitude as Scarborough that seems a bit extreme. Still, it seems to help.

We took up a recommendation from the Kissen website to stop at a little harbour called Barhöft rather than pressing on another 10 miles to Stralsund. We were a bit doubtful about finding space but in fact went straight into one of the gaps on the central pontoon. Unfortunately instead of having boxes with posts, these moorings have stern buoys, and we managed to totally mess up the pick-up, much to the amusement of the Germans on either side (who were also very helpful).

Anyway this is a pleasant spot, obviously very popular as people were still looking for spaces after 6pm (we arrived just before 3pm). The sun has been shining on and off, and there's a very summer-holiday feel. We're next to a National Park, although the bit we saw consisted mainly of one long path, and there are a couple of restaurants and a pleasant little beach. It's not actually Rügen, as we're still on the mainland , but in terms of sailing area we think it counts.

Miles today: 49, and one advantage of the flat calm is that we were able to take a couple of shortcuts, lopping about 5 miles off the expected total.

Back to a wet boat

2011-07-25T20:17:00.000+01:00

Saturday evening's meal was at a family favourite, Gasthaus Paesch in Spreenhagen. Their top dish consists of four pieces of raw meat, plus salds and sauces, served with a stone heated to 350°C. You cook your own meat at the table. It's fun, it tastes great, and it costs €12 a head. I don't know why we've never seen it elsewhere.

Sunday saw the wind gradually diminishing, although we were so far below the treetops at Wulkow it was hard to judge. Camilla got restless, borrowed Heike's bike and went off for a ride, initially on roads (which are either very quiet, or have a cycle path, or even both) and returning along forest tracks which are mostly more cycle-able than they look. Toughest was a kilometre of pure sand, ok if you keep going, and about 200m of cobbled road - I had to get off and walk after a bit fell off the bike! The land around Wulkow is very flat and heavily forested, which makes cycling the ideal way to explore.

Today we left Hangelsberg around 9am for the journey back to the boat, which was pretty painless, although an hour at Berlin Hbf forced Camilla to buy a necklace from Bijou Brigitte and a nice polo shirt from the shop next door.

The boat was undamaged by winds, but very wet below. Duvets were damp, the cabin doormat soaked, the bilges full of water, and four little cushions which have never even got damp before were wringing wet. It turns out that Friday saw a record 24-hour rainfall here, of 160 litres per square metre, which we think is actually the same as millimetres. That's about the same as the heaviest rain which has ever fallen on Northern Ireland in 24 hours, or about three months' rainfall for Suffolk.

Still, we dined splendidly on a pot roast of the wild boar we rescued from the Wulkow freezer, and tomorrow at the crack of dawn we hope finally to set off for Rügen.

Treetop view from Wulkow's tower

2011-07-24T08:47:00.000+01:00

Landlocked Wulkow

2011-07-23T17:39:00.001+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts over the past few days - not only are we in a location with a poor data signal, but also we have been so laid back that blogging somehow got forgotten.

On Thursday morning we packed a few clothes (mostly washing), arranged with the marina to leave the boat for a few days, and set off for Warnemünde station.

We weren't at all sure how much the train fare to Hangelsberg would cost. A quick investigation on the ticket machine had shocked us with a quote of over €300 return, for three of us. The Deutsche Bahn website indicated that the standard single fare was €41.50 each, ie a total of €250 or so. In the end we bought cheap tickets to Rostock and found a helpful lady in the Hauptbahnhof ticket office. She sold us two special family tickets, €56 each way for (I think) up to five people, to anywhere in Germany, a rather more manageable total of €112. Not bad for a journey of more than 200km.

Rostock to Berlin took just under three hours, and about halfway along it started raining, so the views of the German lake district were a bit limited. Berlin Hauptbahnhof is very huge and magnificent, on three levels with trains running on the bottom and top levels, and people and shops in the middle. It opened in 2006 and I had never been there before, so was suitably impressed. Our ticket required us to go to Fürstenwalde, then take a train back to Hangelsberg, rather than get the direct train which would have got us there three minutes later.

It was bucketing with rain the whole time, but fortunately we were met at Hangelsberg station and whisked off to Wulkow by Herr Pacholke, the father of Heike Pacholke who normally looks after the house. By a vast irony we arrived an hour before Heike set off to spend a few days in the UK with various members of Camilla's family, but we were able to see her briefly before she left.

Wulkow was built as a hunting lodge with an interesting tower at one end. The house had a hard time during the DDR period but was reclaimed by the family in the early nineties, and restored to modern standards. We use the tower and a little bit of the long house, and Heike lives in the rest. It's surrounded by trees, which are surrounded by forest, close to the river Spree. It's very peaceful and spacious, and for the first few hours in the house we had to keep checking on each others' whereabouts - we're not used to being so far apart.

It rained non-stop until Friday evening, with lots of wind, and we were extraordinarily grateful to be under a solid roof, on solid ground, and enjoying the sound of wind in the trees instead of wind howling through masts and rigging.

We have the use of a car here, a mature Skoda estate, and on our supermarket run on Friday morning we made the mistake of opening the offside rear electric window. There was a loud clunk and the glass refused to rise again, leaving us with a large opening not ideal for weatherproofing or security. Sam spent part of the afternoon at the Audi garage where they investigated, reported that it needed a new motor, but as a short-term fix they were able to wedge it shut with a hand-crafted block of wood. Vorsprung durch technik and all that.

Today the rain has stopped and the sun has even shone occasionally, although it's still quite windy. We've been to a nice little spa town called Buckow, which has nice lakes with walks around them, and a number of hills. We can't remember the last time we saw a hill, but it's been a while.

Must end here as I must have another bath before we go out for dinner...

Running away from sea

2011-07-20T20:26:00.001+01:00

The weather forecast has continued to cause us considerable angst today. In the end I was so baffled that I emailed Simon Keeling to ask him why his forecast showed two or three forces less wind strength than the German one. He came back to me almost straight away, bless him, to say that he expected force 6 increasing 7 by Thursday night, and then two or three days of strong winds, and was there any chance we could set off today, Wednesday, otherwise we would be stuck.

So we dithered and bothered, and I went off and worried in the shower, but the bottom line is that even with today's NNE4 we would have been heading into wind and sea for 25 miles, which is no fun, and in any case we couldn't have reached Rügen in daylight, which we think is essential for negotiating the long, shallow, narrow entrance channel. If we left this evening or tomorrow the wind might free off a bit, but we'd still be very close-hauled on a lee shore, with a strengthening wind, building waves, and a north-facing long, shallow etc entrance channel. And on Friday the wind goes up to 6-7 for a few days and all bets are off.

So we are going to run away from sea tomorrow - leave the boat here, get the train to Berlin and then east to Hangelsberg, and spend a few days at the Herrmann holiday home in Wulkow, where we will indulge in hot baths, full-sized beds with no bicycles or kayaks in them, no rocking about or water slapping on the stern, and long walks in the forest 200km from the sea.

Oh yes, and in the meantime we spent today in Rostock, which is more pleasant than we expected (it hasn't really recovered from losing its position as the premium shipbuilding location for the Warsaw pact countries after reunification), but not hugely exciting.

Warnemünde

2011-07-19T21:25:00.000+01:00

We managed to be first on the fuel berth in Kühlungsborn when it opened at 9am. In fact it was quite a nifty bit of parking, though I says it as shouldn't. We didn't need much diesel as we've managed to do quite a lot of sailing between locations, but it's nice to be well stocked.

There really wasn't much wind for our epic 12-mile sail to Warnemünde but because we left quite early we were able to sail at speeds between 1.5 and 6 knots depending on the wind, with a short engine-powered burst when we lost steerage way in 2 knots of wind. We even got the fishing gear over the stern a couple of times, but the first time we had to start the engine, and the second time the wind increased and our speed hit 6 knots, which is far too fast for fishing.

We're in the new Hohe Düne marina, which is a bit like Kühlungsborn (new marina built around a new development) although its location is a lot like Travemünde (ferry ride across the river to a resort/port which is at the mouth of a river, with a Hanseatic port a few miles away by train. In this case the port is Rostock rather than Lübeck). The development here is very grand and upmarket, in fact if there was a golf course behind the hotel we might think we were in Vilamoura on the Algarve. However the superyachts have clearly not all arrived yet, as there are loads of empty berths.

We're still waiting to see what the weather does on Thursday and beyond. Simon Keeling says NW5, but the German forecast says NW6-7 gusting 9-10. We discussed the option of heading straight for Gedser in Denmark tomorrow, which would be manageable in a north-easterly and only 24 miles away. But the consensus is that having got this far, we should keep going to Rügen, which is most Baltic sailors' favourite part of Germany. So it looks as though we will have time to visit Rostock by train while we wait for fair winds.

Miles today: 12.

Kühlungsborn

2011-07-18T18:27:00.001+01:00

Sunday in Wismar proved quiet and rather wet. We popped out between showers to visit the Nikolaikirche, the only medieval church in the Alte Stadt which was neither bombed by the RAF nor demolished by the DDR. Like the Marienkirche in Lübeck it is an immensely high brick church, stuffed full of astonishing 15th century altarpieces and 14th century fonts. The route to the church took us through even more of historic Wismar, including Europe's first landscaped urban canal. It really is a memorably beautiful city.

In the evening we treated ourselves to dinner at the Alte Schwede (Old Swede), a rather smart restaurant housed in one of the oldest buildings in Wismar. The food was ok, perhaps a bit overpriced, but the setting was lovely and it was delightful to be in such civilised surroundings. Our waitress even spoke excellent English.

This morning we headed out at around 8.30 with a forecast of SSW force 4, increasing slightly. Despite the complex dogleg to get out of the Wismar Bucht, our course was almost all northerly or north-easterly, i.e. with the wind behind us. We sailed all but the half-mile at each end, using just the jib, at speeds between 5 and 7 knots. At one point we started to see winds over 20 knots but fortunately they abated a bit before we got to Kühlungsborn.

The marina here is new, part of a massive beach-side development, and said by some to be half-empty. Evidently that is no longer the case. Getting in at 1345 we were quite lucky to find a free berth, and a number of yachts are now rafted up along the outer wall.

We visited the pretty beach east of the marina for a paddle, and the very overcrowded supermarket for supplies. The older part of town is further west, with a promenade nearly 5km long, but we didn't get that far.

From here we have a problem. The next stop is Warnemünde, only 15 miles further east. Then there's a run of almost 60 miles without a break to Rügen, which is said to be lovely. But the wind is due to go easterly tomorrow afternoon (against us), stay that way on Wednesday, followed by two or even three days of strong north-westerlies - right direction, but the possibility of an unpleasant sea, a lee shore and no harbours of refuge. We could be in Warnemünde for a while.

Today's run: 29 miles, of which 28 were sailed.

Wismar

2011-07-16T17:37:00.001+01:00

From Travemünde to Wismar is 27M, but almost half of that is the channel from the outer shoals of Wismar to the port. When we left Travemünde at 8am we had a light southerly wind, and as we cruised along the coast we alternated between sailing slowly, sometimes with the cruising chute up, and motoring when our speed dropped below 3 knots to make up a bit of time. Once we turned south into the channel we were hard on the wind, which inevitably then strengthened, and it felt like a long slog to get here.

It was great when we reached the Westhafen yacht harbour to be greeted by a harbourmaster who directed us to a berth - the first time we've had that since Oostende last year. We were so pleased we immediately booked for two nights, and then wondered if we were mad.

But Wismar is worth it. It's the first place we've been which feels Baltic rather than German. It even reminded me a bit of Vilnius in Lithuania. The Alte Stadt is five minutes' walk from the yacht harbour and is beautifully restored, with interesting buildings around every corner. Like Lübeck this was blown to bits by the RAF but because it was in the East it has retained much more of its historical character, with fewer modern buildings, and a few still unrestored.

As we walked in along the cobbled main street we heard the sound of jazz. In an unlabelled cafe - or maybe it was just someone's interesting historic house, with the door open - a trio was belting out "Sunny side of the street". This is a pretty cool place, although it can also look creepy. Much of the original 1922 film Nosferatu was filmed here.

It's a gas

2011-07-15T17:49:00.001+01:00

I woke at 6am to the sound of pouring rain and a German forecast of southerlies up to force 6. Simon Keeling's forecast shows tomorrow considerably better, so it was an easy decision to stay here. It's been the first day since we arrived in the Baltic with rain on and off all day - up until now, most of the rain has tidily been at night.

Sam went off to find Camping Gaz in Travemünde, always an interesting adventure. Fortunately the people at the campsite next to the marina were able to give him accurate directions. The ferry people recognised him and said hello, which is worrying - it must be time to move on.

At lunch Ben sampled a strange cherry-flavoured soft drink which he bought a couple of days ago. He took a couple of sips and looked thoughtful. "It tastes like....silage," he said. We were disbelieving, but indeed it did. It was so horrible we poured it over the side.

In the afternoon we visited the tall ship Passat from which this marina gets its name (Passathafen). Launched in 1911, it was one of the last big sailing ships operating commercially. In 1957 its sister ship, Pamir, poorly maintained and crewed by cadets and a captain with inappropriate experience, sank in the Atlantic when its cargo of barley shifted in a hurricane. Passat, equally poorly maintained, was taken out of service and bought by the port of Lübeck, and here she still is.

When we reached Guernsey on Kalessin in 2006, Sam's oldest friend Robin Swift gave us a copy of Eric Newby's "The Last Great Grain Race", which is still on board. Newby was on a ship called Moshulu, and when they reached Australia to pick up their cargo, the first ship they saw was Passat. It's strange to read Newby's description of her, then look out of our portholes and see her across the harbour.

As we left Passat we were surprised to see visitors arriving in very smart suits, posh frocks and high heels. Even more surprising was the arrival of a basket of live doves. It turns out you can get married on Passat and the wedding party was just assembling.

Lovely Lübeck

2011-07-14T20:42:00.001+01:00

None of us slept very well last night. With the swell coming into the harbour, the forepeak berth was really uncomfortable - possibly the first time we've ever found that in a marina. I retreated to the main cabin fairly early on and Sam followed me about 1am, feeling very unwell - although he didn't think it was sea-sickness.

Still, we gathered ourselves to get the 10.30 train to Lübeck. En route we were entertained to meet some of the Royal Navy crew of three patrol boats we saw coming in yesterday, with a small supermarket trolley of food and a vast one full of beer.

Lübeck is an interesting city, for several hundred years a leading light in the Hanseatic League, and full of medieval buildings, but severely bombed by the RAF in 1942. It was only saved from total destruction by a canny move to make it the official port of entry for all parcels for British PoWs.

We visited the astonishing Marienkirche, built of brick and roofed in copper, with hardly an accurately vertical line in the whole thing. It is absolutely massive, hugely high inside with massive columns supporting a painted roof - the latter presumably all new, since the roof was one of the things blown off in the bombing. (The bells also crashed to the ground, and two are left there as a memorial).

There are a number of unattractive modern buildings in the shopping centre - even right next to the Rathaus - but there are entire streets of wonderful merchants' houses and tiny courtyards once you get into the quieter parts of the city, occupied by more interesting small or specialist shops. Ben found a splendid hi-fi shop full of valve amplifiers and millions of euros worth of other kit, so he was happy. Altogether, much more different from Bremen than we expected, but well worth the 20-minute train ride. (€2.70 each, one way. National Express take note).

We're not really sure what the weather will do tomorrow, so will take a decision on our next move in the morning.

Rocking and rolling

2011-07-13T20:14:00.000+01:00

One further thought for anyone planning a visit to Travemünde: this marina is not very comfortable in north-easterlies, although on the whole the worst aspect is looking at other boats rocking around, or looking at the entire length of the (floating) pontoon, wriggling like a snake as the swell goes under it.

Kibbeling in Travemünde

2011-07-13T16:57:00.001+01:00

As promised, we've had a quiet day today, although with the wind rising overnight we didn't sleep quite as well as we hoped. At 8.30 Sam went off to check with the harbourmaster that we could stay in this berth, and then went off for a walk, leaving me fretting that we might have to move. Eventually he returned with the good news that we were fine where we were, and we were able to relax, and take a load of washing down to the waschmaschine.

Around noon we finally persuaded Ben to get dressed and walked up to the ferry. Return journeys across the river for the three of us cost €5, which is modest but not as easy as the free ferries in the Netherlands.

Travemünde seems to consist of three quite separate bits stuck together. The beach is huge, somewhat bleak today, and seems to be lined with construction of new esplanades. The river front is where all the action is, lined with bars and restaurants and slightly tacky shops. And the old town is quiet, pretty and slightly Dutch in appearance, with a handy Rewe supermarket at the far end. There's also the port, with ferries heading for Sweden, Finland, Latvia and even St Petersburg in Russia (three times a week, taking 60 hours), but we haven't explored that.

We stopped at a fast food place immediately across the river from our marina and enjoyed kibbeling. In the Netherlands these are untidy scraps of deep-fried fish. In Germany they are much tidier and neatly shaped, but just as filling.

We did a supermarket shop and headed back to the boat, where the wind is gusting up to 20 knots or so but is still bizarrely warm (24° or so). How can a wind from Russia be so hot?

My current Kindle reading is an old favourite, "One Summer's Grace", Libby Purves' tale of her family cruise around Britain in 1988. It's quite humbling to realise how much things have changed. Not only did she and Paul Heiney have two children, aged five and three, as crew; they also had a 30ft boat with an unreliable Decca as their only electronic position finder. No GPS or chart plotter, no radar or AIS. They had a mobile phone, but most of the time no signal. There was no Internet then, so forecasts were only by radio shipping forecast, VHF or phone, with nothing like the luxury of getting the latest forecasts straight to your iPhone via 3G. Forecasts are also now more accurate and more tailored to sailors. And just to cap it all, tide-free, sheltered Baltic sailing seems so much easier than the exposed coast of Britain. How lucky we are.

Eastward ho

2011-07-12T20:50:00.000+01:00

We are in Travemünde, which is the port and beach resort for Lübeck, just up the river Trave. In fact we are in a marina in Prilwall, which is just across the river, and somewhat to our surprise it turns out that we have crossed into the old East Germany - the river was the border. That explains the vast, gloomy buildings which line the waterfront here. Beyond them, however, there is a nice beach and lots of tall trees. On the river, vast ferries depart for Scandinavia, towering over the yachts.

We had another early departure from Heiligenhafen, with light north-westerlies and blue skies. We passed under the huge bridge connecting the island of Fehmarn to the mainland, before turning south. Eventually the wind veered north-east and strengthened slightly and we had a delightful, gentle sail, the last hour with the cruising chute and the wind strengthening to a force 4 or so.

The good news is that the mesh food-cover from a posh department store in Bremen seems to be doing a good job of holding the anti-magnetism cover on to the cockpit speaker, and the autopilot now works, which makes long passages a bit easier.

We had several goes at finding a berth. Our first attempt was definitely marked green (available), but was along the main entrance pontoon and we had our stern to the wind, and to the swell which evidently comes in here when the wind is northerly, so was somewhat bouncy and splashy. The harbourmaster suggested an alternative, but although we told him our beam we very definitely didn't fit between the posts. Now we are in our third option, a tight fit, but head to wind and a lot more comfortable. The only problem is that we don't know how long we can stay; we're planning three nights here to get some rest, visit Lübeck, do some washing, shop for food and hopefully let a day or two of bad weather pass by. We may have to move again, but we hope not.

Miles covered today: 37.

Another nice Baltic view (Heiligenhafen)

2011-07-11T19:42:00.001+01:00

Holy harbour...

2011-07-11T19:31:00.002+01:00

...or Heiligenhafen, as they call it around here, is our overnight pausing spot. With more than 1000 berths it is more than likely the biggest marina in Germany, and quite possibly the whole Baltic. The Baltic system is that you cruise around the marina looking for green boards which indicate a free spot. (Red means that the owner will be home tonight). This is all very well in a modest marina, but here you could be cruising around for hours. Fortunately the observation crew (Ben and Sam) found a green berth quite quickly, and it's a very good location with a view of the sand dunes and swallows swooping around.

It seems like a very long time since we left Kappeln after a good meal out and an incredibly quiet night. We could even hear the couple coughing in the boat next door.

We left about 0745 with quite a bit of mist around, although still enough visibility to see the buoyed channel. Out in the sea visibility was better although the sun didn't come out until after 11am. The north-westerly wind was almost dead astern, and we had a couple of goes at using the cruising chute, but with only 6 or 7 knots of wind, when we sailed we were making only just over 3 knots, which would have meant a very late arrival here. So most of the day we have motored over a sea with annoying bumps in it, in brilliant sunshine.

The forecast is for another day of gentle north-westerlies tomorrow, but strong easterlies on Wednesday. So we plan to press on tomorrow to Travemünde, where we can pause for a day or two and visit Lübeck, and see what the weather brings.

Miles covered today: 47.

Kappeln

2011-07-10T14:19:00.001+01:00

Today we thought we would explore briefly up the Schlei, not all the way to Schleswig, which is 20 miles, but just enough to get a feel for it. There are two opening bridges, the first opening at quarter to every hour, the second on demand (call on VHF or fly flag "N").

We did just as planned - left Maasholm in time to get the 1145 opening, pootled down for half an hour and turned just before the second bridge, came back through the first bridge on the 1245 opening and moored on the visitors' pontoon in Kappeln.

The Schlei, in the bits we saw, is rather like the Orwell: gentle green slopes on either side, attractive houses and open fields, and lots of little marinas and moorings.

We picked this mooring because even Brian Navin calls it magnificent, and he is not given to hyperbole. Kappeln is a nice little town which is obviously a top spot for booze cruises by Danish yachts - there is the most amazing drinks shop I have ever seen, right on the quay. The sun is shining, the views both over the river and into the town are delightful, we're sheltered from the wind, and the bridge opening every hour gives us something to watch, and in between it's pretty quiet.

Tomorrow we plan a longer passage east to Heiligenhafen, weather permitting. Thoughtfully, the wind is forecast to go northwest, although still very light.

Miles covered today: 6.

Schlei ride

2011-07-09T20:00:00.000+01:00

Sam managed to fix the fuel cut-off lever this morning, but by the time we left the British Kiel Yacht Club it was 11.15am. Once again it was one of those days when sun alternated with clouds and occasional squally showers, with a south-easterly wind varying between 6 and 18 knots.

Our passage made the most of the wind, heading north out of the Kieler Förde, crossing the Eckernförde where U-boats manoeuvre, dodging the restricted area where you may not be allowed to go (and we didn't want to try) and finally turning in through the narrow entrance to the Schlei, the 20-mile fjord which leads eventually to Schleswig. We sailed almost all the way, except for the last couple of miles down the Schlei where the channel was very narrow. Then finally the bit I'd been worrying most about, into the vast marina at Maasholm, where we managed to find a green (available) berth after only a few minutes, even though it was 4.30pm on a Saturday. Phew.

Sam said the marina check-in was very casual - you just fill in a log entry with the name and length of your boat, and its berth number, and pay (€13). We were pleased to see Penguin again, the yacht we met in Rendsburg, and shared beers with them during a brief but exciting thunderstorm, before dining on chips from the Imbiß and salad - very nutritious.

Tomorrow we hope to explore a bit up the Schlei before turning east towards Heiligenhafen and Rügen.

Miles covered today: 23, of which about 20 were under sail.

Here's our view of the Baltic...

2011-07-08T19:43:00.000+01:00

Into the Baltic

2011-07-08T19:38:00.000+01:00

Well, we are in the Baltic. Even better, we are at the British Kiel Yacht Club, traditional first port of call for all British yachts after leaving the Ost-Zee-Kanal.

We started the day with lots of rain, and didn't leave Rendsburg until it eased a bit, around 10.30am. The canal was quiet, with modest levels of both shipping and yachts, and eventually the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Even better, when we reached Holtenau we were able to go straight into the lock, and pay our canal dues, a whopping €12. The water in the lock was suddenly quite clear, the sky and the Baltic were both blue, and we popped out into the Kieler Förde for the one-mile voyage here.

Our first attempt at mooring was in a vast box where it took all our lines tied together to reach the posts. The second was better, although the posts were said to be exactly 3.5 metres apart (our beam) we fitted quite easily. Then the engine refused to stop because the cut-off mechanism failed. While Sam and Ben worked on this, and also hauled Ben up the mast to fix the courtesy flag halyard, Camilla jogged (almost) into Friedrichsort 20 minutes' walk away to find the Lidl, jogged back, and rewarded herself with our first Baltic swim.

From here we plan a short venture north to the Schlei, said to be a lovely, sheltered inlet, before heading east towards Rügen in eastern Germany.

Miles covered today: 20.

German exchange

2011-07-07T17:13:00.001+01:00

The Polish yacht moored next to us in Brunsbüttel planned to leave on Tuesday evening, heading out into the North Sea, but had engine problems. They were all up at 6am, looking ready and trooping over our decks, so we got up too in spite of the fact that with a dodgy engine they were unlikely to push the tide, which didn't turn their way until after 8am. And indeed at 8 they finally got going, so we did too.

It turned out this was a bad move, as a mile along the canal we encountered three red lights, which means no navigation for yachts. We thought this must relate to a vast ship coming our way, but in fact the problem seemed to be fog, or at least mist. By 9am it had lifted, the lights went green, and we finally got going.

The Ostzee-Kanal took 9000 people eight years to build. It was completed in 1895 and widened in 1914 to permit Germany's warships to use it. It is wide, deep and all the bridges are at least 40 metres high. The ships which use it are quite small by modern standards, up to around 200m long and many only partly loaded, but they dwarfed the flotilla of yachts of which we were part, and created some interesting wash.

It has been a perfect day though, sunny and warm with occasional clouds and almost no wind. No locks, no opening bridges, just motoring between the wooded banks.

We are moored in Rendsburg, two- thirds of the way along the canal, where Guy came on a couple of German exchange trips many years ago. Fortunately we found a berth in the marina quite easily - our first Baltic long box mooring, with posts six or seven metres behind the stern of the boat, and the bow tied to the jetty. We came in pretty well, thanks to the help of Ben and a handy Englishman ashore to take our warps. It's a pleasant spot, at the head of a lake, with trees around the edge. We even managed to find a Bijou Brigitte, my favourite jewellery shop, in Rendsburg. So all in all a good day, and tomorrow we should actually reach the Baltic...

Goodbye North Sea

2011-07-06T18:21:00.000+01:00

After numerous anxious recalculations of the Elbe tides, we left Cuxhaven around 1pm, having filled up with diesel. The calculations paid off, and the south-easterly wind backed south, and then west, allowing us to sail most of the way to Brunsbüttel at eight knots over the ground or more. We rapidly decided that it was easier to follow the north side of the channel, as the red buoys are continuous but there are fewer green ones.

Waiting for the Kiel Canal lock was a less pleasant experience, as you have to hang about in the river, motoring into nearly three knots of tide, up to 15 knots of wind, and a delightful thunder shower which picked just that moment to arrive. It wasn't clear what we were supposed to do, but fortunately there were numerous other knots to follow.

Still, our experience was probably a delight compared to the yacht who called in on the VHF (in fractured English) to say that their engine had failed, and were told they would have to arrange their own tow. I hope they're ok.

We're now in the Jachthafen at Brunsbüttel rafted three deep* - a 28-footer on the inside, then us, then a vast wooden Polish yacht. We're in a great place for shipwatching as the big lock is about 50 metres away. I don't think it will be a quiet night here, but it will be an experience. I'm so shattered I may just sleep anyway.

* now four deep. And the entire Polish crew is walking over my head.

Now we are three

2011-07-06T07:34:00.001+01:00

We spent yesterday morning in the Rewe supermarket, stocking up on bottles, tins and other heavy stuff while we had the car. Then it was off down the autobahn to Bremen, to give us a bit of time to explore the city before meeting Ben off his flight.

Bremen helpfully tells you all the numbers of spaces in its car parks, and directs you to them until you actually get to the point when you need to find the car park itself. Then there are no more signs. After a couple of traumatising laps of the city we found a car park, on a main road but backing on to a quiet residential street, so that when you return to the car park the pedestrian entrance just looks like another door in a row of houses.

Bremen is lovely, not as pretty as Stade but full of big impressive buildings, including a Ratskeller with the largest wine range in the world. We didn't try it, instead dining in a rather amazing biergarten in the courtyard of the old law courts and prison building. Most people were eating vast roasted pork shanks, while I had salad and Sam a plate of sausages. We are finding the richness and volume of German food a bit indigestible.

Meanwhile two important things had happened. The sun came out, for the first time since last Friday. And back in the UK, Ben set off on his journey towards Stansted in the little Ford Ka, only to have the brakes sieze on, half a mile down the road. He was planning to leave the car at his grandparents' house in Essex and have Grandma give him a lift to the airport. Fortunately our dear friend and neighbour Alex was at home when Ben ran back from the car, panicking, and even more unusually had her son Tom's car available. She was able to run him down to Ipswich, where Grandma met him - complete with passport and boarding cards which he had thoughtfully left at their house - and ran him to Stansted. Huge thanks to both of them for rescuing Ben in his hour of need.

So, Ben arrived early at the nasty Ryanair terminal at Bremen (actually a large shed) and is now, we hope, asleep in the aft cabin.

We have light easterlies and pale sunshine here this morning. At high water (around 6am) which is departure time for westbound people, the wind got up and woke us up. I then fell into a terrible dream where Sam was trying to sail Kalessin alone down a tidal river full of weirs, and when he ran out of water just abandoned the boat, now the size of a large model yacht. I was desperately trying to rescue all our possessions while Ben was screaming... and woke to the screaming of a gull.

Today we plan to head up the Elbe on the afternoon tide and lock into the Kiel canal at Brunsbüttel. Baltic, here we come (and goodbye tides...)

Taking it easy

2011-07-04T17:51:00.000+01:00

It's been a quiet few days as we have sat tight in Cuxhaven waiting for Ben. Well, quiet is relative. The wind continued to whistle through the rigging and the boat continued to rock until late Sunday evening, when it finally calmed down. Still no sign of any sun though.

We really didn't do much on Sunday after a splendid buffet breakfast at the yacht club (€8.50 each) filled us up for the day. We made use of the washing machine and as it wasn't actually raining, managed to get most of the clothes mostly dry. And in the evening we entertained Peter and Sue from Safir, who were able to give us lots of useful info about where to go (and where to avoid) in the Baltic. They did induce a mild panic when they pointed out we didn't have one of the crucial harbour books from our Danish chart packs. Fortunately I found it in the middle of the UK pilot books, which I had put away because we won't need them for a while... oops.

Today we picked up the hire car which we have for a couple of days. We decided parking in Hamburg was too much of a challenge, and we'll see Bremen tomorrow when we collect Ben, so instead we visited an Elbe port called Stade. It's full of old houses very beautifully restored, a nice centre and lovely church, and surrounded by river and canals. We had an excellent meal right in the middle of the prettiest part, including a massive apple waffle, fortunately shared between us, for a total of €30. Germany seems to have forgotten to increase its restaurant prices to the dizzy heights now seen in the Netherlands and the UK.

It's now very calm, which is nice, but still only about 16 deg C. A bit of warmth would be welcome....

Safe and warm

2011-07-02T15:38:00.001+01:00

As I write on Saturday afternoon the wind is howling through the Cuxhaven marina at up to 25 knots. We are sitting in the cabin in the warm, with the lights on. Sam is reading Hornblower and I've been reading Riddle of the Sands, set in various locations around here. It's delightful to know that we are snug and safe and don't have to rush off anywhere.

We're suffering slight culture shock. We know bits of Germany (in the south near Nürnberg) quite well, but this is the first time we have ever sailed here. It's strange to go into the centre of Cuxhaven and find a Rewe supermarket, just like the one in Ebermannstadt where we usually go, and stock up on German delicacies like erdnussflips (peanut flavoured snacks), teewurst (a kind of pate), and Frankenwein, delicious white wine from Fraconia. On the other hand we forgot to stock up on Dutch favourites like genever gin and stroopwafels before we left Delfzijl. You win some, you lose some.

German bite

2011-07-01T22:20:00.000+01:00

We have arrived safely in Cuxhaven after probably the bumpiest long passage we have ever undertaken.

In the end it was the wave heights which decided us. There have been steady north-westerlies since Wednesday, due to increase gradually over the weekend. In this part of the world a NW wind means that waves have the entire North Sea to build in size and crash on to the shore, which is probably why they have such great sandy beaches in the East Frisian islands. The waves were forecast to be around 1.5m on Thursday but almost 3m by Sunday, and although the winds are due to die away early next week, waves take much longer to diminish. Light winds and big seas make a truly loathsome combination for a yacht, so we gritted our teeth and left Delfzijl at high water on Thursday, around 11.30am.

The Dutch forecast was for NW3-4, the German forecast for NW5-6. We went with the in-between forecast from the ever-helpful Simon Keeling, whose new SWIS forecast gives a seven-day forecast for the area of your choice (he also provided the wave heights). Unfortunately any NW wind more than a 3 means that you can't safely get into most of the German Frisian islands, so we had to miss out on Nordeney and do the whole 125-mile trip in one go. It's hard to believe it can be so far, but that includes the long trip up the Ems and down the Elbe.

The Ems was by far the worst part of the trip, despite the negative reputation of the Elbe. We were heading almost into wind, with the tide under us, and the waves just got bigger and steeper as we approached the island of Borkum. Off the Borkum Riff - which is a sandbank as well as a brand of tobacco - we were running out of tide and making almost no progress into horrible grey mountains of North Sea.

Eventually we turned to cross the Riff, then turned again on to our route, and suddenly everything was lovely, the sun was shining (it had been before, but we hadn't noticed) and we were sailing fast on a lovely broad reach. Only two problems: the waves were still there, although a bit more manageable; and we had to keep our speed down to reach the Elbe buoy around high water at 7.30am. Still, we were able to cook and eat some lasagne, although two cups of tea which might have been very welcome jumped right out of their mugs on a big bump and sprayed themselves liberally across all Camilla's clothes, the chart table (thank goodness for waterproof Imray charts), the floor and the galley.

It's only dark between 11pm and 3am at the moment, so although we had to cross the Jade and Weser entrances in the dark, most other challenges were in the light. Despite reefing twice, we still reached the Elbe buoy too early and crept cautiously down the edge of the river, waiting for the tide to turn, watching out for the promised horrendous wind-over-tide conditions and admiring the huge ships - one Felixstowe-sized monster every 10 minutes or so.

We finally reached Cuxhaven just before 11, to be greeted by a couple from Maldon who took our lines (and later welcomed us for drinks and chat). We'll be here for a while as Ben flies out to Bremen on Tuesday. Time to wash our salt-stained, tea-stained clothes, relax and regroup, and plan the next stage.

A few pictures

2011-06-29T21:16:00.000+01:00


Wacky lifting bridge


Kalessin in Leeuwarden


Cows and horses on the Lauwersmeer

Fish smoking sheds at Zoutkamp

Serious culture in Groningen - the modern art museum

End of the canals - for now

2011-06-29T20:47:00.001+01:00

For the first time in what feels like weeks I'm posting from a computer, which makes it nice and fast to type. I have a deal with Vodafone where I pay an extra £10 a month on my contract and get 25MB of data a day in the Netherlands and Germany (unfortunately only 5MB a day in Denmark). I've also set up Blogger so that I can post by email. So I compose a blog post offfline on the iPhone using the email app, turn on data roaming and 3G, post the email, check the weather, Facebook and any other emails, check that the post has loaded, and turn data roaming off again. So far I am very well under my limit. Isn't technology marvellous?

Kalessin in Groningen

Groningen was great, except that the place where we planned a quick dinner took almost an hour and 20 minutes to serve the food. If you happen to be in Groningen, avoid De Brasserie on Poelestraat, especially if it looks busy. Enough said. The promised storm broke in the late evening with spectacular lightning and downpour. We were fortunate to be well away from the nearest storm drain - in fact we had avoided it because it smelled a bit. When the rain came down it did a good imitation of Niagara, pouring into the canal. If it had poured into our cockpit we'd probably have sunk.

Today has been mostly on the straight, dull and deep Eemskanaal to Delfzijl, which is the end of the Netherlands for us. Delfzijl is an industrial port but has a convenient marina out in the sea - well, it's salty and has tides but is tucked behind a massive sea wall well up the Ems estuary, so not really open sea yet.

And it's open sea that is the problem. The forecast for the next few days is north-westerlies, anything from a force 4 to 6. This makes all the Frisian islands a lee shore, and even the few entrances which we might be able to get into become unfeasible. From here to Borkum, the easiest island to access, is straight into the wind, so since we have to leave here on the ebb tide, we'd have wind against tide. Under most conditions a force 4-5 is a good sailing breeze. Here it gives us the prospect of a 125-mile passage in lumpy seas with no opportunity for a bolthole. We also have to cross the Ems, Jade and Weser and run into the Elbe - some of the busiest shipping channels in Europe.

Ben arrives by air to Bremen next Tuesday, the 5th, when we must be on the mainland - either here or (preferably) in Cuxhaven on the Elbe. We need 24 hours of SW3-4 and daylight all the time - could someone arrange that please? Failing that, we may see more of Delfzijl than we planned.

In the middle of Groningen

2011-06-28T17:20:00.001+01:00

Well, this is unexpected. It's been a long, hot day in which we covered 26 miles, a lock and dozens of bridges. We were halfway around Groningen when we hit the tea/rush-hour break: the bridges stop opening between 4 and 5.30 pm. We were lucky enough to stop in one of those spots you will know if you have ever been to Amsterdam: canal down the middle, semi-pedestrianised streets down each side with trees and bicycles on the canalside, and lined with traditional merchants' houses (probably reconstructed, as the Allies blew most of Groningen to bits when they liberated it). Now it seems we can stay the night here if we want, so we are. There are no facilities except mooring rings and a rather dodgy-looking tap, so I don't know if we'll be charged.
We were expecting rain today, but none has been forthcoming. The hazy cloud has made the heat feel less intense, although stuffier.
We crossed the Lauwersmeer, which was somewhat like running down the Waveney into Breydon Water, but on a larger scale, and without the tides; the entrance to Lauwersmeer was dammed off in the 1970s. It was full of wildife including some very masculine cows with big horns, pretty, half-wild horses and possibly marsh harriers.
Neither it nor the Reitdiep which is the canal which brought us here were quite as shallow as we feared, with usually around 1m under the keel. We shared the last few bridges with a traditional Dutch sailing boat, with leeboards, whose crew didn't really understand our problems when we touched bottom a couple of times. They draw 50cm.
Most of the bridges along the Reitdiep are push-button operated, another hark back to the French canals; you can call on VHF too, but then you might need to speak Dutch :-( It was all very pretty and rural, and we believe we may even have seen a hill.
Groningen is apparently a happening and culturally hip city, believe it or not. We will report back when we have explored further.
Miles covered today: 26. In a straight line from Lunegat: 15.4.

Lauwersmeer

2011-06-27T17:45:00.000+01:00

It seems churlish to complain, but currently the temperature in the cabin is 31 deg C. Two days ago it was 17. A middle ground would be nice.

We left Leeuwarden at 9am and spent the morning on pretty (and of course shallow) canals, heading towards Dokkum. We reached the edge of Dokkum just in time for the bridge lunch break and for me to rush into town to find a supermarket, and then rush out again as the nearest one was actually a couple of hundred metres further out of town than Kalessin. (fortunately the supermarket was air conditioned or I would have melted). I rushed back to the boat just in time for the first bridge lift, but we didn't make it as we were stuck on the mud. Reversing out of the berth finally got us off and into the centre of town.

On our brief encounter, the centre of Dokkum is charming, but the deeper berths set aside for yachts were not quite so charming, and after a brief lunch stop we decided to press on. Excitingly, we passed a boat fuelling stop where we were able to fill up with diesel and water - probably the first canalside filling station we've used since St-Jean-de-Losne in 2008.

Now we're in a pretty, tree-ringed marina at the entrance to the Lauwersmeer. It's so hot we have rigged the canopy, possibly also for the first time since 2008 (which must be why we argued about it), and we both went swimming in the peaty brown water.

Miles covered today: 21. In a straight line from Leeuwarden: 15 miles.

Shallow brown

2011-06-26T16:45:00.001+01:00

I am here to report that we have made it to Leeuwarden, via the shallowest water we have ever been in with our mast up. When we got to Grou a large green sign directed us to the Staande Mast Route. Possibly the size of the sign was impressive, but we decided to follow the signs, and the ANWB atlas, rather than follow Brian Navin.

And what a good thing we did. We've just met another British boat who followed the Navin route, only to find that the key opening bridge is now permanently closed. They had to retrace their steps to Grou and follow us.

Actually the route was delightful, a little canal winding through the Frisian landscape, slightly marred by the fact that we had as little as 0.3m under the keel at times. Mostly it was around 0.7m, just like the French canals.

We got to the outskirts of Leeuwarden in time for the Sunday lunch break for bridge openers. We hoped that meant a fast passage once they opened, but unfortunately the main rail bridge had a mechanical problem and they had to send a man in a reflective jacket to open it, which took around 45 minutes. In addition the route covers considerable extra distance (and more bridges), looping to the west and then the north, in order to avoid the fixed bridges in the city centre.

The municipal moorings in Leeuwarden are wonderful. We are on the banks of the oldest public park in the Netherlands, the scent of lime trees is heavy on the air, and just behind us is the leaning, asymmetrical and unfinished tower once planned to be Leeuwarden's cathedral, before it started sinking and they had to stop building. When we arrived I went for a short walk, and the youth orchestra of Friesland was just finishing an afternoon prom with selections from Peer Gynt. How very civilised.

Total covered today: about 23 miles. Distance in a straight line from Sneek: about 11.5 :-(

Depth charges

2011-06-25T21:12:00.001+01:00

Late addition to my earlier post. It seems that the ANWB standing mast route atlas, which we had thought of as the bible of cross-Friesland sailors, plans to take us up a canal north of Grou which is only 1.4 metres deep, ie a foot shallower than we are. This is baffling, as otherwise the only general thing they say about depth (in Dutch of course) seems to be that only yacht harbours offering a depth of 1.5m or more are mentioned.

Fortunately pilot book author Brian Navin, who up to now has always proved totally reliable if not exactly chatty, recommends an alternative route on bigger canals. We will report back tomorrow, but the thought of retracing our steps and heading out into the North Sea is very depressing.

Sneek peek

2011-06-25T17:13:00.000+01:00

Despite what I said yesterday, tonight we are on municipal moorings in Sneek, although on the edge of town with an excellent view of a car park rather than in the middle.

We are taking the standing-mast route across Friesland. It's not very speedy because it goes under a lot of lifting bridges and it also goes round in some rather random loops to avoid fixed bridges as it gets further north. However today we covered 17 miles in the general direction of Denmark, mostly sailing with just the jib, on a day when the IJsselmeer would have been grim and the North Sea utterly horrible. It has rained most of the day, on and off, it's cold and it has been gusting up to 18 knots or so.

We last visited Sneek in our Winkle Brig, which was a gaff-rigged trailer-sailer, 18 years ago when Ben was just four months old. We launched it from the De Domp marina on the north side of town, and the owners were really helpful and brought us cups of tea with lovely Dutch teaspoons, while we struggled with rigging the Winkle Brig in the hot sunshine, and dealing with a three-year-old and a baby. The Winkle Brig was just nine inches deep with her centreboards up, but nowadays we draw 5ft 6in and sadly we can't get into De Domp to see if they remember us.

That was a memorable holiday. At one point it rained hard without stopping for 36 hours, which is tough for two adults and two very small children on a 17ft boat. On the other hand with our tiny draft and lowering mast we could visit a lot of Friesland which we won't see this time around. I'm not even sure if we will recognise anywhere. But it's nice to be here, and hot sunshine is promised for tomorrow....

Lemmer nice

2011-06-24T17:44:00.001+01:00

There's a tradition in the Netherlands of mooring up in the middle of town. This can be a very pleasant option, or it can mean rafting up to seven boats deep, with a busy road along the harbour and lots of loud and friendly people a few feet away or trampling over your boat. Consequently we often look for a quieter option just out of the town centre. We do however feel slightly guilty that we are not entering into the spirit of Dutch sailing.

We are currently in Lemmer, which is basically a large village with a canal through the centre and at least 10 marinas. In France this would never be permitted, a single municipal or centralised authority would control the whole lot. But the Dutch believe deeply in free enterprise. I think we are in Jacht Haven Lemmer, but it was really a question of finding a free hammerhead where we could easily tie up and find some kind of harbourmaster.

The iJsselmeer likes to remind innocent sailors that it is not a sheltered lake but a proper sea, capable of being scary. We left Enkhuizen in sunshine and a light breeze but with a very dark cloud approaching. As the cloud approached it brought 20 knots of wind, from almost astern. We logged more than 9 knots on the log before deciding that discretion was the better part of valour and lowering the mainsail. Under jib alone our speed dropped to around 6.5 knots and the squall gradually overtook us, bringing lots more nice rain to wash the decks again.

Two successes though. Sam has encapsulated the starboard cockpit speaker in three layers of expensive American anti-magnetic insulation (plus about 10 layers of gaffer tape) and the autopilot now works. Also our even more expensive boom brake did an excellent job of preventing jibes.

Lemmer is a curious place. We found a Lidl, next to it a Super de Boer, and next to that an Aldi. It's not often you find a town with a supermarket quarter.

I can't stand the rain

2011-06-23T09:01:00.001+01:00

So here we are in Enkhuizen and it's raining. In fact at the moment it's bucketing down, and also chilly and rather dark. The wind has dropped from the 5-6 overnight, but there's still enough breeze for wind chill. We are due to leave today but it's hard to feel any enthusiasm for a four-hour sail to Lemmer in this.

One noticeable change on our return to the Netherlands is that whereas two weeks ago the roads were edged with dry scrub, now they have lush green grass which has to be trimmed by men with strimmers. Clearly this rain has been going on for some time. The problem is obviously that we can't remember how to deal with it.

Unusually, today I am broadly in favour of setting off and Sam wants to stay. I feel that if we don't get going we may never go at all.

The coot is still sitting on her eggs under our pontoon. The grebe's nest, which was under construction right next to the coot's nest when we left, has vanished completely. Maybe the coot chased it off, or it got disrupted when the adjacent yacht left its mooring.

I like Enkhuizen, but I do hope we're not still here when the coot's eggs hatch.....

Posting by email

2011-06-19T12:04:00.003+01:00

Just a quick test to post by email from the iPhone.

Not sure if I like all this wind. We plan to set off on the 23rd when the Dutch coast may be getting SW5 - hopefully a bit less in the IJsselmeer. Then by next weekend, when we could be heading out to the Frisian Islands, current indications are for up to a F6 from the north-west, i.e. a lee shore. Let's hope the GFS weather model is wrong, it's still a week away....

WindGuru's view of the GFS model for Defzijl. Image added from the MacBook (I'm not qualified to do PhotoShopping on the iPhone)

Back home

2011-06-10T15:58:00.001+01:00

It's strange to be back in the UK when in our heads we are still away sailing. The strangest thing is when one of us says "Where's the xxxxxx? Oh, it's on the boat...." and then remember that the boat is 173.6 miles away. (According to Google Earth).

The journey went well, with the slight snag that the ticket machines at Enkhuizen wouldn't accept any of our cards or cash. On the recommendation of a helpful ticket inspector we leapt off the train at Hoorn, where there is a proper ticket office, rushed off and got some tickets, and managed to get back on the same train. The change at Amsterdam was confusing and we had to change again at Schiedam, but in the end we made the ferry with plenty of time to spare, and the crossing was calm and clear.

We spent this morning being slightly boaty though. The inflatable kayak is of course on the boat :-) but we went down to Bungay and hired a canoe from the nice people at Outney Meadow, then paddled up the Waveney for an hour or so. I managed to drag both Ben and Sam out of bed early enough to get a bit of sunshine, and it was very delightful and peaceful. We timed it perfectly too - as we dragged the canoe out of the water it started to rain, and two hours later it's still drizzling.

On the the recommendation of Libby Purves in Yachting Monthly we have acquired a Wichard Gyb'Easy. This small and expensively engineered piece of metal should allow us to sail safely downwind without having to run around all over the boat rigging preventers, and without the mainsail slamming around in light airs. I do hope it's worth it.

We just had to stop all work in order to admire a very pretty muntjac deer nibbling a vast climbing rose in the garden. We're very lucky with the wildlife we see here...

Safely to Enkhuizen

2011-06-04T19:19:00.001+01:00

So here we are in Kalessin's final destination for the time being, Enkhuizen. We could have rushed home today, or tomorrow. But it seems a shame to rush when this is such a pretty place and the weather is gorgeous. And the Sunday trains are quite slow. So we are chilling out and basking in the sunshine. The most recent Navtex forecast says force 5-6 for Thames, but in this sheltered marina it's relatively peaceful and warm.

Yesterday didn't look anything like as promising. The entrance to Edam is extremely narrow and shallow and at 9am, when we started to think about leaving, the north-easterly wind was blowing straight into it, and no yachts were moving. The sky was dark grey, it seemed to be about to rain, and the forecast was for the wind to strengthen. And our passage to Enkhuizen was a straight line dead into the wind.

Eventually a few boats started to move and we gritted our teeth and headed out into the grey Markermeer. The entrance itself was fine but the first few hundred yards of the outer channel were very choppy. After that we got the sails up and tacked out into “deeper” water, i.e. 2 metres under the keel instead of only 1 metre. Upon experimentation it seemed we could make the best course by tacking north, which also took us into more sheltered water in the lee of Hoorn. Then, as is often the way when you're slightly dreading a passage, the sun came out, the wind gradually eased instead of strengthening as promised, and we had a pretty good sail.

Unfortunately Sam was having a grumpy day. It transpired this was because I had mentioned that the solid, steel, expensive motorboats, of which there are many in the Netherlands, must have some advantages because they only draw about half a metre, aren't too high, and can consequently go to lots of places on the Dutch waterways where our mast and keel don't let us venture. In addition I had mentioned a few days before that if he dies and I am still fit enough to go sailing (which is possible given our 16-year age gap) I wouldn't try to sail Kalessin on my own, but instead would sign up for voyages with the Tall Ships trust on Stavros S Niarchos and the Challenger yachts. Sam decided this meant I hate sailing, would rather have a canal boat, and only go sailing to keep him happy. He didn't ask me what I meant though, nor observe that I have planned and arranged this sailing trip to the Baltic with some enthusiasm, nor notice that I had only mentioned sailing rather than motoring in my post mortem plans, he just sulked for the rest of the day. Men, I ask you.

Anyway we are now speaking to each other again and relaxing in the large, solid, well-equipped Buyshaven, which is not only a pleasant marina but also only 100 metres from the station. There's even a jazz festival in the just-audible distance. The only snag is that, in my humble opinion, winds should die down in the evening and allow you to have a quiet night. This one seems to strengthen from about 5pm onwards and shows no signs of disappearing. Tut tut.

Ever-decreasing circles

2011-06-02T19:52:00.002+01:00

I spent the afternoon of my birthday (Tuesday) trying to work out the best option for where to leave the boat for three weeks while we return to the UK by ferry (we'll be giving moral support to Ben during the worst of his A-levels). We are thinking of heading inland through the Frisian canals, revisiting the scene of a couple of happy holidays almost 20 years ago. Leeuwarden looks nice, but on closer examination it appears the only mooring options are almost completely insecure. So instead we are heading for Enkhuizen, which we know well, and which has one large and one vast marina so we are very likely to be able to find a suitable berth. It's closer to Amsterdam so we should be there by Friday.

We nearly skipped Amsterdam, as we spent so much time there two years ago, but in the end felt it was a shame to miss out. We reached the Sixhaven Marina at almost exactly the same time we did on the last visit, about 11.30am, as we found it a good time to get a berth. The Sixhaven has changed, however. No longer are there box berths between wobbly posts - instead there are very solid, new finger pontoons. This must reduce the number of boats they can cram in on busy days, but the rate had increased only 40 cents from the €15 of two years ago.

We had no special destination in mind as we drifted around Amsterdam in glorious warmth and sunshine, but decided to climb the tower of the Westerkerk - the church whose bells Anne Frank used to hear from her attic. You have to go in groups of six with a guide, which wouldn't have been our first choice, but in fact it was a really excellent and informative half hour, with a potted social history of the Netherlands thrown in. The view was great too.

This is the Westerkerk...

...and here's the view.

Today we decided to try to get to Edam, an option we've always fancied but it only has a little marina and shallow town moorings. Heading out of the IJ into the Markermeer it was a wonderful, calm morning with clear blue skies and very little wind.

Backtrack a bit. We had to hand-steer all the way across the North Sea because both of our (identical) autopilots refused to work properly, which is an absolute pain as it means at least one person has to hold the tiller at all times. Today was the perfect day to try calibrating the autopilots and see if that solved the problem. To calibrate them you attach the autopilot to the tiller, then motor in very slow tight circles until it decides it knows where it is going. We have done this before and it normally takes about one-and-a-half circuits. After three circuits nothing had happened so it was clear something else was wrong. We removed one of our brand new cockpit speakers and tried again. Fantastic, it worked. So we know the problem, but fixing it leaves us with two further problems: (1) a big hole in the side of the cockpit and (2) no external speaker connected to the VHF. Fortunately we can do without the autopilot for the next few weeks so for now Sam has re-fixed the speaker. Perhaps we could wrap it in lead sheeting?

Anyway after that the wind freshened and we had an excellent beat up to Edam, and found a good (tight!) berth in the marina after being chased away from one which was too big for us. Edam is a really lovely little town about 20 minutes' walk inland, with not much cheese in evidence, but the usual mix of little canals, gabled houses, big churches and boats. We were entertained by the progress of an enormous two-masted vessel called Atalanta, complete with two bagpipe players, up the little canal - it barely fitted in the lock, and turning and parking it was quite a challenge.

Camilla in Edam

Atalanta jams into the Edam lock

Tomorrow, straight into the strengthening NE wind, heading for Enkhuizen.

Murkily across the North Sea

2011-05-31T17:46:00.000+01:00

In the ultimate triumph of patience over technology I am posting this from my Kindle. You may ask why. It`s because I get free 3G access from anywhere including IJmuiden i the Netherlands where we now are. Typing letters is ok but punctuation is a real pain so do not expect many commas.

On Sunday morning I suddenly found a weather window for the N Sea crossing if we left that very evening. We were pretty much ready except for the insides of our heads which are always the last to be prepared. We feared a bumpy passage after the weekend winds but the winds were due to be mostly SW three to four. Tuesday looked windier, Wednesday no wind at all, and on Thursday the winds are due to go NE, ie on the nose.

So at eleven in the evening we headed cautiously out of SYH, trying to remember how to do night sailing, always a challenge off the bright lights of Felixstowe. The winds had dropped as forecast and once we were past the choppy entrance to Harwich Harbour the seas were quite manageable. We motorsailed through the brief hours of darkness, snatching odd bits of sleep.

At dawn it was bright for a while and by 6am we were able to kill the engine, but sadly at that point visibility also deteriorated to at its wordt only half a mile or so. Fortunately we have a new toy, an AIS receiver, which combines with the radar or chart plotter display to show you the exact position of nearby ships, their name, sixe and type, and teir speed and course. It even estimates the closest point of approach so you know if a ship is a threat or not. This invaluable tool was our best friend and on several occasions we were able to change course in plenty of time to avoid a ship which was only visible at the last moment, or in some cases only audible.

My Kindle fingers are wearing out here so suffice it to say we only got about six hours of good sailing and the rest was a bit of a slog. By around eight in the evening the Netherlands welcomed us with better visibility and pouring rain. We reached Seaport Marina about ten UK time, tired, wet, cross but very pleased to be here. Tomorrow, Amsterdam.

Guy update

2011-05-24T17:31:00.002+01:00

Guy is now a flotilla skipper! It looks as though the haircut paid off. This is how his lead boat looked on Monday:

He'll be living on board with his engineer and hostie until September....

Shaken down

2011-05-24T17:18:00.001+01:00

Our dear friends at Rig Magic finally fitted the mainsheet track last Wednesday, which meant we could actually go sailing. I see that I originally posted that they were going to bend the track on 23 March. We like Nigel but may not use his services again if we're in a hurry!

By good luck there was an HPYC cruise to Burnham-on-Crouch at the weekend, which we joined. They weren't sure if we'd be able to join them for the restaurant meal, but as it happens the inshore waters forecast issued on Saturday for Sunday was somewhat horrendous (WSW6-7 increasing 8) and a number of people who started heading down the Wallet with us chickened out and went home.

The sail on Saturday was excellent - it looked as though we would be motoring into a headwind but in fact the wind went slightly to the west, and with a good tide we made it to Burnham Yacht Harbour at an average speed of 6.2 knots, sailing more than 70% of the way. The only downside was that Ben wasn't there to enjoy it as he felt he should be revising.

Burnham on Saturday afternoon

We've never sailed into the Crouch before and it is notoriously full of very sticky mud, but in fact all was well, helped by the new optional position for the chart plotter under the spray hood (we can transfer it back to the chart table for security or for planning). Burnham was looking sunlit and very pretty and we had a nice meal at Sgt Pepper's diner.

Sunday was a bit different. A deep low off Ireland was bringing very strong winds to the north and west of the UK (as it transpired, over 100mph in Scotland). We didn't know how much we were going to get but it was definitely going to be windy. However Monday looked worse and there was no guarantee that Tuesday was going to be much better. Furthermore Sunday's wind was WSW, almost astern of us or on the port quarter most of the way, and we would be in the lee of the Essex coast so wave height should be modest. We had a helpful SWIS forecast from Simon Keeling which showed winds easing a bit in the evening. And finally other boats from HPYC were doing the same route at similar times, which is always reassuring.

Of course I was a nervous wreck in the morning and during our visit to the RNLI - especially worrying about leaving the marina. Someone up there was on our side, though, because at around 1445 there was a real lull with the wind easing from 20-25 knots down to about 7-8 knots for a short while. We chucked off all the ropes and headed safely out into the Crouch before it picked up again - pushing the tide initially, but worth it to get out of the marina safely.

The most we saw was 32 knots of wind, with a fairly steady force 6 initially, easing to a 5 as we came out of the Crouch and finally a 4 in the last bits of the Wallet and the Orwell. The worst bit was crossing the Spitway at right-angles to the tide and almost into the wind, but it was only 20 minutes or so of hell. The rest of the time we sailed with a tiny bit of jib at 5 or 6 knots through the water. And the last couple of hours were really pleasant - quiet enough for us to be able to eat supper, albeit rather carefully.

Here's the list of stuff we forgot/still have to sort out:

Kayak
Kayak paddles
Cobb barbecue & charcoal
Petrol can for outboard
Fresh food
Clothes for the summer
Batteries for torches
Charts and pilots
(Nordics is in the chart table)
CQR anchor?
New dinghy cover (not really new, cost us £15 from Seamark Nunn, but better than the old one)
coffee
hand towels
iPhone cables!
4-way adaptor
Sink plug chain
Log book insert

Professionals and amateurs

2011-05-24T16:11:00.003+01:00

A couple of interesting encounters over the weekend which formed an odd contrast.

On Friday Willie Wilson, chairman of the chart and pilot book publishers Imray (full name, Imray, Laurie, Norie and Wilson - yes, he's a member of that Wilson family) gave a presentation at Haven Ports yacht club about the work that Imray does. Willie looks exactly like one of the many printers and publishers that my father worked with in the 1960s and 70s. He is endearingly vague and not switched on to technology.

Imray produces most of the best pilot books in the English language, and also most of the paper charts which we use on board Kalessin. They use official data from the UK hydrographic office and turn that into charts which are actually useful, and often include detailed insets for key harbours, unlike Admiralty charts which often require you to buy 15 charts for a single passage. (Not that I ever do). Their pilot books are expensive (usually between £35 and £45) but indispensable. All this comes from a large Georgian house in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, with a small specialist printing press at the back. Most of their employees join as youngsters and never get around to leaving again. The impression is of a small group of gentleman amateurs, somehow managing to produce excellent work.

Front pod on the small (D-class) RIB

On Sunday morning we visited the RNLI lifeboat station at Burnham-on-Crouch. All of the crew, launch officers and the rest are volunteers and the funding is exclusively charitable, with no government money. They have two RIBs at Burnham, a smaller one mostly used for going up-river, and a big Atlantic 75 (about to be replaced by an 85) which can operate 30 or 40 miles offshore if necessary. These are very impressive bits of kit, built by the RNLI itself, completely overhauled each year and fitted with the sturdiest equipment around. If a lifeboat is damaged, it is replaced from HQ at Poole within 24 hours by an identical one. The impression in this case is of a group of consummate professionals, who just happen to be volunteers.

More about Imray in an article from Cruising World

Book now for the experience of a lifetime

2011-05-15T15:25:00.002+01:00

Stavros S Niarchos at anchor in Bangor Bay, Northern Ireland

I've just got back from a five-day voyage on the tall ship Stavros S Niarchos. It's one of those things I've always wanted to do, and as I'm currently not working I finally made time to do it. Now I wonder why on earth I never took the opportunity before.

Stavros is a 600-tonne brig, with two masts and around 65 metres long. That makes her small compared to a Nelson-era ship of the line, but much much bigger than anything I have ever sailed before. Helming her up Kilbrannan Sound (between Kintyre and Arran), under sail in brilliant sunshine, has to be one of the top sailing experiences of my life.

And yes, I did climb the rigging - twice, although both times we were still tied on to the dock in Liverpool.

We left Liverpool around 10.30 on Monday morning and did an overnight passage to Bangor in Belfast Lough. At that point there was enough south in the wind to enable us to clear the south of the Isle of Man, but it started to veer in the morning and we couldn't make Carlingford Lough, which was the original destination. You realise the limitations of a square-rigger; with the wind just forward of the beam she's really pinching, and doing only 5 knots or so, where tiny Kalessin would be loving it and flying along at well over six.

I managed to get ashore in the RIB at Bangor, which is my first-ever visit to Northern Ireland. We were only ashore for an hour - just time for a quick walk and even quicker half of Smithwicks.

Working aloft. There is a safety line on the top of the yard and you are clipped on with full harness

From Bangor an exciting passage with lots of wind to Campbeltown on Kintyre. The wind was still veering, so as we came out of the lee of Northern Ireland we were exposed to a F7 and respectable Atlantic waves from the west-north-west. At that point I declined to climb the rigging to take the sails in. I still feel like a wimp for not going but I would have been utterly useless up there. I was also glad not to be out there in Kalessin - you'd want to wait for a really quiet day before crossing that bit of water.

Campbeltown Loch is lovely, very sheltered and wonderful Scottish scenery. Campbeltown itself is quite small, and has a couple of pubs where (according to Captain Liam Keating, our skipper) things can get a bit nasty. The fact that he's a bloody-minded individual from Waterford has, I'm sure, nothing to do with it.

The Davaar light at the entrance to Campbeltown Loch

On Friday morning we left Campbeltown at 0800 with our watch on the bridge. It was the most amazing privilege to be up there, helming for over an hour in my case, as we came through the stunning scenery. I was too busy to take many pictures but here's one taken by someone else (from the land) to give you an idea:

View from the AIS tracker at http://www.shipais.com

We arrived in Greenock exactly on time on Friday afternoon, and I discovered why the RIB has two 50hp outboards - it's so that it can act as an additional bow thruster for tricky mooring exercises. A lot cheaper than hiring a tug.

We were fortunate with this voyage in a number of ways. We covered 251 miles of which 137 were under sail, a higher proportion than usual. I was part of Red watch, a great group of let's say mature individuals, and we bonded very well with the support of our lovely watch leader Jo. We had very squally weather but in between each gusty shower we got warm, bright sunshine. And we sailed through some absolutely stunning scenery.

Red watch. Back row, from left: watch leader Jo, Anthony (who owns a Storm like ours), Margaret and Glyn from Liverpool, John who describes himself as a "washed-up drummer", Ron who used to run Staffordshire county council, Jennifer in front of him, and Les (71) on the right. Kneeling at the front Dave (73) who's also a Scouser, lovely Gillian from Glasgow, Jim (Jennifer's husband) who's currently building a nuclear plant in Abu Dhabi, and me.

If you're in East Anglia, Stavros will be at Great Yarmouth for an open day on 11 June. Or find out more on the Tall Ships website at www.tallships.org. If you hurry, you can book for Belfast to Cardiff from 21 May for an astonishing £99!

Thank you to the permanent and volunteer crew, the rest of my watch, and in fact everyone on board and in the Tall Ships organisation, for making it such a memorable trip.

..and here's the real thing

2011-05-07T13:04:00.000+01:00

Pictures borrowed from Facebook, with thanks to Nikki Camp

Sad news

2011-05-03T13:45:00.002+01:00

All those of you who have met Guy will be sad to hear of his recent tragic loss: his dreadlocks have had to go. His boss at Sailing Holidays said he had to choose between dreads and the job. I think this must indicate that he considers the job worthwhile. On Facebook he said "awesome job sitting in Corfu working on yachts loadsa drinking and [mention of illegal substances deleted], awesome people, going out on a drinking session tomorrow all paid for by the company. Life could be worse I suppose ;)".

He hasn't sent us any pictures yet but here is an artist's impression of the before and after:

Planning, planning

2011-05-03T13:26:00.002+01:00

So slowly we are starting to get into gear and seriously consider options, at least for the delivery trip. Sometime between 27 May and 8 June we need to get Kalessin across the North Sea to IJmuiden and as far in the general direction of Germany as we can.

It is tempting to aim for somewhere within reach of Bremen airport as Ryanair does ridiculously cheap flights there to Stansted (down to as little as one cent per head, plus check-in of course). On the other hand they are ridiculously cheap because they are at horrible times of day, so easyJet from Schiphol might be a better option.

I spent yesterday afternoon looking at possible places to leave Kalessin, with many hours on the ever-helpful DeutscheBahn timetable and the Dutch transport site 9292. Naturally both of these include buses and ferries (and walking times) as well as trains. Favourites so far are Monnickendam (15km from Amsterdam and very friendly); Hoorn (direct trains to Schiphol); and Enkhuizen (station is almost in the marina) - all of these we know already. Then on the other side of the IJsselmeer in the Frisian canals we could go to Leeuwarden (pretty moorings and good trains) and Groningen (excellent connections to everywhere). The latter two only work if we take the inland standing-mast route. If we go round the outside, the stopping places are almost all islands, which are definitely not ideal for leaving Kalessin!

This morning I've been working out tide times for the Harwich to IJmuiden route. In 2009 it took us almost exactly 24 hours and is quite an easy passage, but is really dependent on a couple of days of confirmed settled weather.

I'm still waiting for delivery of both electronic and paper charts - we have some, but not all we need. Easter, Royal Wedding and May Day are all very lovely, but they seem to stop anybody from doing any work or delivering anything at all (except Amazon). Once we have these we can start to do a bit of further passage planning.

Slight rethink...

2011-03-25T08:44:00.002Z

We have finally, after weeks of asking, seen Ben's A-level timetable. His last exam is 27 June, his first is 18 May, and he has a huge gap between 26 May and 9 June. Bother. A slight re-think is called for. Watch this space...

Spring has sprung

2011-03-23T15:46:00.003Z

Spring must be here, because when we go down to Suffolk Yacht Harbour, the air is filled with the sound of scraping, polishing, hammering, sawing and Radio 2.

Kalessin is still out of the water. We're not in a big hurry to launch as we decided not to pay for the full year's berthing at SYH, because we might only use a couple of months of it. If we're paying the weekly rate, it's a lot cheaper to pay for storage ashore than for a visitor's berth.

The plan is that some time in May, Sam and I will take her across the North Sea as far north as we reasonably can. The working thought is somewhere like Monnickendam in the Markermeer, which is handy for trains or planes home. Then in mid-June, when Ben finishes his exams, we will head up through the Kiel Canal, or Nord-Ostsee-Kanal as it really should be called, and into the Baltic. We sail around Denmark and Germany until the end of August (which is pretty much the end of the Baltic season), leave her somewhere jolly nice (to be confirmed) and head home. Then repeat in the opposite direction in 2012, covering Sweden and maybe another country or two.

It's all a lot simpler than our trip in 2006. For a start, Guy is working for Sailing Holidays in Greece, and is 21, so can look after himself to some extent ;-) The boat doesn't need so much work, as many of the major works were undertaken last time. We won't be away for so long and we won't be taking Ben out of school. Communications are better, we have smart phones and 3G (probably). Apart from the long passage across the North Sea, and the scary (very tidal) hop from Cuxhaven to the canal entrance, most of the passages are shorter.

So far we have a new plotter-cum-radar-with-AIS which is still not quite working as it should (probably my fault for upgrading the software), a new mainsheet track which doesn't quite fit yet (Big Nige said it would bend, but it doesn't), a new stereo which we can plug the iPhones/iPods into (not quite installed yet) and new cockpit speakers, two pilot books and a full-sized Admiralty chart of the whole Baltic. Still to come, the rest of the charts including the electronic ones, cleaning, polishing and antifouling, a new marine bucket, and lots more.

Forgot to say...

2011-03-22T15:50:00.007Z

Guy has a job at Sailing Holidays in Greece as a shore botherer. I don't know the official title, that's what Sailing Holidays used to call it when we sailed with them. He seems to be enjoying it, especially the drinking, and the sunshine. You can follow him on Twitter.

Report & Accounts of ourselves

2010-12-16T08:59:00.003Z

Festive berries

Merry Christmas, and welcome to our annual report.

At the end of 2009 Guy discovered that he really did like sailing after all (just not with his family) and in January he embarked on a four-month training course with Flying Fish to become a Yachtmaster with commercial endorsement (and other qualifications covering such diverse areas as food hygiene, fire fighting and PADI diving qualifications).

Guy runs away to sea

For the first half of the course he was based on the Isle of Wight, and for the second half in Sydney, Australia. During the summer he did a delivery trip from the Netherlands to Valencia in Spain, and he passed his Yachtmaster exam in November. He's now doing the rounds of the flotilla companies applying for skipper roles, with quite a few possibilities on the horizon. Next month, Guy and Beth will have been together for an astonishing five years.

Camilla spent much of the year working with Aviva Europe, creating a single intranet in multiple languages for each market. It's included some brief but interesting trips to cities where you might not normally go, such as Moscow, Bucharest and Vilnius, as well as weekend break hotspots such as Madrid, Prague, Budapest and Paris. Possibly the travel highlight was a sleeper train from Budapest in Hungary to Bucharest in Romania. After a while all airports look the same, but train travel is always interesting.

Russia from the air

Getting on the sleeper train in Budapest

She is now working with Aviva Group Centre on an intranet upgrade, due next year. It really must be time to do some work for another client.

One advantage of the new contract is that Camilla can spend more time working at home in her magnificent new office, converted by Sam from the old workshop which formed the end of the house.

Camilla's office

The theme is grey, silver and minimal – the family sneered but it's amazing how often they come and sit in the office thinking chair for a while.

Tim and bikes at Pretzfeld

Sam is slightly less retired following changes at M&CM this year. We suspect he is enjoying being indispensable and doing the odd bit of training. He's still finding time to work on the boat (new radar and plotter this autumn) and undertake motorcycle tours on the Continent with his oldest son Tim, this year to Luxembourg and Germany.

Ben likes to paddle his own canoe

Ben is going through the pain of A-levels and UCAS. He is still hoping to do engineering but his fifth choice was classics, just to show that he is truly a Renaissance teenager. For practical reasons he has had to drop Philosophy and Further Maths but he would really like to study a little bit of everything. Away from school he is a dedicated nerd, playing online games and building amplifiers for his increasing collection of headphones.

View from the balloon basket

Camilla's father Frank is looking a bit fragile, with a number of trips to hospital this year, although he's still soldiering on at 83. Patricia is coping well but not surprisingly getting worn out. Otherwise, our families are doing well. In July, Camilla and Patricia fulfilled a long-held ambition and went ballooning together.

We started the year with a New Year trip to Schloss Pretzfeld with all the family, Beth, plus our friends Alex and David and their family. In the summer Ben joined us for a sailing trip to the Netherlands.

Redesigned rudder

Unfortunately we made an attempt to redesign Kalessin's rudder on the rocks at the edge of Breskens marina – we like Breskens, but never planned to see so much of it, although we were immensely lucky that Breskens Yacht Services were able to haul us out, straighten and repair the rudder and get us back in the water within four days. Sadly the weather was also not on our side in August, with a fair amount of wind and rain. In the end we had to leave Kalessin for a few days in Oostende and take the train home, although that did give us an unexpected chance to see Brussels. Subsequently, Kalessin starred in a secondhand test in the December edition of Yachting Monthly (86%, and a cover shot!)

We're already looking forward to 2011, when Ben will be 18 and Guy will be 21. We hope to take Kalessin to the Baltic in June for a few months, with one or more boys. Don't forget we'll be updating this blog with our adventures (if any).

Much love to you all and wishing you the very best for 2011

Camilla, Sam, Guy & Ben

Sam and Ben playing Poohsticks in the snow

Guy is a Yachtmaster

2010-11-21T17:47:00.001Z

Please give me a job

Hooray! Our son is now better qualified than we are. He is a Yachtmaster with commercial endorsement, courtesy of Flying Fish. He has covered more than 8,000 miles at sea, many of them in weather where we would hesitate about leaving the harbour! (Some were with us though). He is a pleasure to have on board.

If anyone would like to offer him a job, please put a comment on this post and we'll come back to you within minutes....

We're famous (slightly)

2010-11-21T17:35:00.004Z

Quick, rush out and buy a copy of December's edition of Yachting Monthly - Kalessin is on the cover, with a four-page, 100-point test inside where she scored an impressive 86%.

We went out for a morning in September with Dick Durham and photographer Lester McCarthy. Originally they planned to do a comparative three-boat test but getting the three boats in the same place at the same time proved a logistical challenge, so they decided to do the Storm on its own.

It was a gusty day and we had an embarrassing moment getting out of the berth when the feathering prop did its thing of refusing to drive us forward. Other than that Kalessin performed extremely well and we were proud of her.

It was also a pleasure to have Guy on board with us. At that time he was not quite a Yachtmaster - now he is - see separate post. But short tacking up the river is really good fun with a keen, agile young crew member on board. And he knows what to do without being told! It's brilliant.

It was a Thursday, so SYH was pretty quiet, but on our return to the berth a few people saw us coming in and also obviously observed that our crew looked uncommonly like Dick Durham. Word clearly got about, because a couple of days later at the Southampton Boat Show we were chatting to the electronics sales chap from Seamark Nunn and he said "what's this I hear about you being in some kind of boat test?"

Note: the images and PDF attached are from a draft version of the feature - it may be slightly different from the final version.

Back across the North Sea

2010-09-04T22:00:00.001+01:00

We are home again, and so is Kalessin this time, after a quick dash to Belgium and a better sail back than we expected.

Eurostar took us back to Oostende on Thursday afternoon with absolutely no problem - in fact it was the emptiest Eurostar I've been on for ages - and we were in bed on board by 11.30pm local time.

Most of the passage is cross-tide but we didn't want to be heading into the tide for the short stretch paralleling the Belgian coast. That forced us to have a relaxed start, with time to pop to the supermarket to get a few provisions, pay the marina fees, and generally tidy up and sort out. Early on it was sunny, but as it clouded over it got a bit cold. As we headed out through the lock and into the North Sea, a much flatter North Sea than last time we were out in it, we were a bit shocked to realise that visibility was very poor - probably less than two miles, which is a problem if you have ships charging down on you at 25 knots. Even worse, it transpired that the radar wasn't working - there seems to be a problem with the switch, which has happened before, but this time we couldn't find a solution.

The forecast didn't mention poor visibility but it was delivering, as expected, very light north-easterlies and a pretty calm sea, so we motored on regardless. Once we crossed the first shipping lane at the West Hinder it seemed for a while as though our course was going to take us straight into the wind. Fortunately it strengthened a bit and swung further to the east, so we could actually start to sail - and the visibility improved hugely at the same time.

A downside is that neither of our autopilots seemed to be working. One is the repaired original which failed on the long trip, one a new one delivered to us in Spain four years ago, but both of them went wild when we set them up, steering us in an increasingly zigzag course with their internal compasses apparently fluctuating. We can only surmise that something on board was causing major interference with their delicate electronic insides, but we have no idea what. Hand steering is a real pain as it takes a lot of concentration and you can't leave the helm to do a proper look around with binoculars, check charts or position, or even have something to eat if it needs two hands.

It was strange sailing without Ben, but halfway across the main Traffic Separation Scheme we picked up a passenger:

After extensive research we believe he was probably a chiffchaff or other member of the warbler family - these tiny birds typically migrate up to 4000 miles each year. He hopped around in the cockpit, flew below and hid in the forepeak for a while, explored the galley, had a trial flight and came back to the boat, and finally left us after an hour or so - having left no bird droppings at all as far as I could see. He was a great distraction from the terrifying Assyrians* bearing down on us like a wolf on the fold (*or container ships as they are more generally known).

The passage continued in a fairly uneventful way and we even had a bit of sunshine at supper time. It's interesting to note that at the same time Richard and Cathy were sailing Brave from Cherbourg to Gosport in more wind and non-stop sunshine.

So in the end we reached SYH about 1.30am having sailed more than half the distance, in a respectable time of just over 15 hours. I'd forgotten what a pain it is coming into Harwich harbour at night - every light is lost in the glare of Felixstowe, and you could even hit the very dimly lit Roughs Tower (which is huge) if you weren't careful. Gosh, I wonder if it would cause a diplomatic incident? (The tower is home to the nation of Sealand).

It was very nice to be home.

Back to Belgium

2010-09-02T09:31:00.000+01:00

Eurostar and National Express East Anglia successfully got us home just after midnight on Sunday morning, with no problems at all. It was nice to be home, although with the odd little worry like the phone line - it broke the day before Guy left home, was mended by a BT engineer, and thereafter took to making 999 calls all on its own, apparently. We even had a message from a policeman who had popped round to check that everything was OK.

There's currently a settled high over Scandinavia with a ridge over the North Sea, which means relatively gentle north-easterlies. We had to stay in the UK until today as Sam had a crucial meeting this morning which had been fixed weeks ago, but this afternoon we'll be back on Eurostar again with the expectation of getting to Oostende around midnight UK time, sleeping on board, rising early to pay the marina and buy provisions, and then heading out on the mid-morning tide. I am very jittery that there will be a sudden change in the weather, the wind will strengthen to a 6 or go north-westerly, but at the moment it all still looks ok. We left buying the Eurostar tickets until the last moment (expensively of course) to accommodate my fears. Ben has to go back to school so we'll have to manage without him - at least that reduces the fares a bit...

Guy texted a couple of times to say he spent just two hours in Baiona, just north of the Portuguese border, on Monday, and rounded Cabo St Vicente on the bottom left corner of Portugal yesterday afternoon. It's a very different kind of sailing from ours, and I'm very proud of him!

Oostenders

2010-08-27T17:08:00.000+01:00

Thought: Oostende is a much more interesting place to hang out than Dover. Apart from an excellent range of the normal type of shops it also has wonderful food shops interspersed on the main streets - so right next to a Zara or H&M there's a vishandel with beautifully displayed lobsters, trout, sole or mussels, or a traiteur selling ready-cooked chickens, lasagne, ready to serve meals with local shrimps and salad, or even tubs of mashed broccoli. And that's before you start on the patisseries, chocolate shops and even a specialist oil and vinegar shop. Why aren't all the Belgians very fat?

Not Dover

2010-08-27T14:32:00.000+01:00

So after two bites at the passage from Breskens we have made it 36 miles down the coast to Oostende.

The first bite, on Thursday night, was straight into a south-westerly which showed no sign of moderating and going northerly as promised. The tide was with us so our speed over the ground was 5-6 knots, but our speeds through the water plugging into wind and quite large waves were only 2-3 knots, and it was clear that once the tide turned we would be going nowhere. In addition it was bucketing with rain and visibility was pretty poor. So we headed into Zeebrugge and were surprised to meet Skipjack, the UK First 32 with which we'd left, in there ahead of us. They saw winds of 27 knots on the nose and decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

Once more we tied up to the fuel pontoon and awaited the promised wind change. It wasn't there at 0530, or 0630, but by 0730 the wind had finally dropped and gone northerly, so out we headed.

Turning south-west things looked excellent for a while with a very fast broad reach and speeds of 8-9 knots over the ground. But again the winds and waves were building, and we started to see consistent winds of 23-25 knots and waves up to 2m - not ideal when the whole passage is in water which goes no deeper than 10m. So we headed for Oostende, which turned out to be even braver for a while as the entrance is a big, scarey surf in onshore winds. Probably the new outer breakwaters, currently under construction, helped, but Sam helmed us in brilliantly while I hid below.

So now we have tickets for tomorrow evening's Eurostar and will head home for a while, hoping to collect Kalessin next weekend if wind and waves permit. Yes of course we feel like wimps compared with Skipjack, which carried on, but our excuse is that Oostende to SYH represents the shortest passage home - any further progress down the coast actually takes us away from home.

Meanwhile Guy is completing his second Channel crossing, en route to Brest and due in tonight. Hope he's ok - he said he was sick a lot on the first passage. I want to be there to give him a cuddle - which he would hate :).

Dover or not

2010-08-26T12:58:00.001+01:00

I had a long conversation with weather guru Simon Keeling, and decided there was no safe window for a passage home. After a few days of changeable winds, with some strong patches off Suffolk which means we would probably encounter at least force 7 somewhere en route, they go north-westerly for a few days which is as bad as possible. Sam was deeply pissed off, we all shouted at each other and went to bed in a very depressed mood. My preference was to abandon the boat, take the Eurostar home, and worry about it later. Sam just wanted three days of settled southerlies, which is not looking likely. Please note, the weather is not my fault.

This morning brought new counsel and a chat with a British 32-footer moored opposite us, which is heading for the South coast. They reckon they can make Dover with modest winds all the way and have invited us to tag along. The advantage of this is that there are possible havens at Zeebrugge, Oostende, Dunquerque or even Calais, so if things turn nasty we are never more than two hours from port.

Breskens doesn't really want us, there is no guarantee of a berth, and this at least gets us to the UK. So unless things change we will be off in around three hours.

Goodbye to Guy

2010-08-25T16:17:00.004+01:00

One small benefit of the horrible weather is that Guy was also unable to set off on his delivery trip from Stellendam. So yesterday, after extensive planning and phone calls, we trotted down to the ferry terminal in Breskens, headed to Vlissingen where we were met by a nice man from Avis, and rented a Corsa for the day. From Breskens it's 115 km to Stellendam by road, via the tunnel under the Westerschelde; from Vlissingen it's only 65km.

Anyway after a couple of unintended laps of Middelburg we made it to Stellendam and saw Guy - hooray! We met his skipper and the mate and took a quick look at the Najad 50 which he'll be crewing - impressive, but stripped down and with every chippable surface covered, to avoid damage. Apparently it took them a whole day to find all the kit they need. It seems not every yacht has its first-aid kit in a first-aid locker, marked First Aid on the outside, as we have on Kalessin. And on some boats, flares can be hidden at the back of a locker in a cabin, not in a waterproof tub in the saloon ready for easy use. Very strange.

Guy and his 50ft Najad (ignore small motorboat in front)

Anyway we had a pleasant, leisurely lunch at the Stellendam clubhouse and headed back, admiring the white horses on the Oosterschelde en route. It was very nice to be in a car rather than a boat on a day with so much wind. We even had time for a trip into Vlissingen after nice Mr Avis dropped us back at the ferry terminal - partly via a solar-powered tram, which was exciting. Vlissingen was pleasant but quiet.

Dutch schoolchildren are now back at school and things are much quieter here - the few children around seem to be German. The main excitement in Breskens is preparation for Breskens Sailing this weekend, together with the erection of a giant scaffold covered in 10ft red plastic penguins. The latter apparently is Art and cost €300,000 from Cracking Art group.

Giant red penguins

And of course we need to find a weather window to cross the N Sea - I'm hoping to speak to Simon Keeling in the next few minutes to get some advice. Guy left this morning and has texted us to say he is off Oostende in the rain - his boat is leaking like a sieve. Hmmm.

Back to Breskens

2010-08-22T16:20:00.002+01:00

Internet access has been erratic over the past week so our exciting progress has not been updated as we might wish.

From Middelburg we headed up to the Veersemeer and a pleasant lunch on one of many moorings on the islands in the lake. Our plan was to head for Wolphaartsdijk, where our sailing club used to go for its summer cruise but we have never been. Our lunch-stop neighbours warned us it might be very full however, and the forecast was looking a bit iffy, so we headed instead for a marina north of Veere at Oostwatering. They managed to find us a berth for a couple of nights. The first day (Sunday) was windy but quite pleasant, and we headed into Veere to join the tourists and see the sights. Monday however was utterly vile, with gusting rain all day. In the morning we moved the boat about 30 metres across the marina, and in 15 minutes we all got soaked.

Windy Veersemeer

It was good to see a better day on Tuesday - the wind was strong but fortunately behind us, so we hurtled along the Veersemeer with just the jib out, rounded the corner of the Oosterschelde and headed up the canal to Goes.

WV de Werf in Goes was our favourite Dutch mooring ever when we went there in 2004, and although the roads are a bit busier now the marina is just the same. Trees overhang the box moorings, old machinery furnishes the quays, and the little lighthouse at the end provides a small but perfectly formed lavatory.

the path to the loo

In the town, once more we were greeted by a funfair - what is it with the Dutch and these terrifying rides? But the excellent outdoor shop is still there, and numerous bakers' shops, plus - heaven for Ben - an extremely high-end hi-fi shop stocking real examples of some of the headphones he has only dreamed about up to now. We also discovered, on the edge of town, an excellent park with adventure playground type stuff around and over a little lake - enough to make us all behave like 10-year-olds.

Possibly more manageable than Kalessin

On Thursday we walked up to the station to explore the stoom trein (steam train to you). We only planned to look, but somehow we managed to let ourselves be persuaded to buy excursion tickets. We grabbed the first-class accommodation, which was absolutely straight out of Harry Potter - red velvet seats, only four to a sliding-door compartment. We chugged slowly through the Dutch countryside behind a small but magnificent red steam engine, with lots of people waving to us.


our locomotive


Epic journey...

... in first-class comfort

After 40 minutes we arrived at a small town with unpronounceable Dutch name somewhere on the Westerschelde, walked down to look at the river, had a cup of coffee, and then chugged back again. It was a really excellent afternoon which we all enjoyed very much.

From Goes we determined to visit Zierikzee. We originally planned to head further north, maybe to Willemstad, but we wanted to meet Guy at Breskens before he heads off on his first delivery trip to Valencia, so that cut short our plans a little. Zierikzee is part of the classic circuit enjoyed by British boats, famous for rafting visitors seven deep. We went there once in 2003 and didn't care for it much, so wanted to give the place a second chance. It is a very pretty town, with a great sailing atmosphere, but it still didn't quite enthuse us as much as Goes. However, we had an excellent and unexpected meal - walking into an eetcafe we liked the look of to discover it was Thai night, with a no-choice, three course meal. Service was a bit slow, but otherwise a real pleasure.

On Saturday we headed back into the wind for the first time, a bit of a slog from Zierikzee back to Middelburg. And here we are today, back in Breskens, only to find that Guy isn't here at all, he is in Marina Stellendam which is 32 miles away in a straight line and god knows how far by boat (not that we plan to sail there). The weather, which was looking promising for the long crossing, is now very much not - pleasant and peaceful today, but the Met Office forecast for Thames says: "Southwest 4 or 5, becoming cyclonic, then west later, 6 to gale 8, perhaps severe gale 9 later."

So the curse of Breskens strikes again - no Guy :-( and no way we will be able to sail home before Wednesday, with a possibly even worse storm now expected for Friday.

Rudder repairs

2010-08-22T15:00:00.020+01:00


First sight of the damaged rudder as Kalessin comes out of the water


ouch!


Visible bend


Repairs under way at Breskens Yacht Services


Straightened and repaired - antifouling still wet


It fits....

Back in the water after only three days. Our thanks again to Breskens Yacht Services

Middelburg

2010-08-13T20:17:00.001+01:00

Very quickly from my iPhone on a connection from a pizza restaurant in the middle of Middelburg...

We are back in the water with the rudder all mended - and launched on Thursday afternoon. What a very good thing it wasn't today (Friday 13th) as that would have been incredibly unlucky.

We travelled the three bumpy miles to Vlissingen in about 40 minutes and the further four miles to get here in a further three hours.... Middelburg is so nice that having got here we decided to stay two nights. We were last here in 2003 in Magewind.

Ooops

2010-08-08T14:15:00.003+01:00

Sunday has not been a good day so far. We wanted to stay an extra night and were asked to move to another berth just on the other side of the pontoon. The wind was a steady 11-12 knots blowing us back out of the berth. We reversed out OK and up to the end of the pontoon, then somehow when we tried to turn into the wind it all went wrong. In the course of going backwards and forwards we went aground on the mud two or three times. [Later note: the mud is actually full of rocks from the seawall.] The upshot was that at some point the tiller jammed completely, with no way to steer the boat at all, and it appears the rudder is bent. Bugger.

The very helpful crew of a German Halberg Rassy 29 at the end of the pontoon managed to take our lines and we are rafted alongside them. The harbourmaster will arrange for the yard to look at Kalessin tomorrow. She'll have to be hoisted out and inspected. The rudder hangs from a long steel shaft which goes straight up through the bottom of the boat, with the tiller fastened to the top. If the shaft is bent, the repair could be a long and expensive business. Luckily our insurance will cover us, but at best we'll see rather more of Breskens than we intended, and at worst we might have to go home and collect Kalessin later.

It's hard to say just when the damage occurred, but I helmed out of the berth and I lost control initially when the wind caught us. After we touched the first time, I asked Sam to see if he could turn the yacht as I was struggling, and he went aground harder. So we are probably both to blame, and all of us feel awful. Sam is currently asleep, Ben is hiding in his cabin, and I am typing this and wishing it wasn't true.

Just to make things worse, the wind is blowing from astern with waves running all the way up the marina and slapping our sugar scoop, which is very noisy, and this internet connection is nearly useless. The loo is still not flushing properly, we can't connect to shore power because we're rafted up, but on the good side it looks like we have mended the cafetière, so we can have coffee without lumps in tomorrow morning.

Across the North Sea

2010-08-07T14:07:00.000+01:00

We successfully made it to Breskens on Friday morning, after a fast crossing mostly under sail. The promised occasional force 6 never materialised, with winds mostly between 10 and 15 knots, initially from the north-west and later from the south-west.

The route is a complex one: first you have to follow the edge of the Harwich shipping channel, then cut across the Roughs sands, then there is a (relatively) new Sunk gyratory system and traffic lanes, so you dog-leg down the edge of the traffic lane to cut across at the approved point. At last you get on your proper course, but only for two hours and you then cross the main Channel traffic lanes at right angles, which takes another couple of hours. From Garden City buoy on the edge of the traffic lanes you go to the West Hinder beacon, which would be a straight line if it wasn't for the Fairy Bank in the way, then you cross yet another traffic lane system which runs along the Belgian coast, and finally you run up the southern edge of the main shipping lane for as long as the tide favours you.

We left Suffolk Yacht Harbour at 9am, which was a bit later than we planned, because Sam very kindly rushed off to Sainsbury to get me some Stugeron (seasickness tablets). Who knows, I might have been fine without them, but it's a security blanket thing, and the North Sea was quite bumpy. It was a chilly morning, but bright, and we didn't get rained on for the whole crossing although we got a few splashes of sea!

Tidal timing and good winds meant we saw lots of speeds over the ground of 6 or 7 knots, even occasionally touching 8. From Landguard point to the entrance to Zeebrugge took us 15 hours at an average of exactly 6 knots, which is a record for us. Our first-ever 2003 North Sea crossing in Magewind followed a similar route (although simpler in those days without the Sunk traffic system). It would have been about 12 miles shorter although in fact we went tacking around and covered a lot more ground, and took us 24 hours altogether. We remembered it fondly as we went storming past the Oostendebank buoys at 7.5 knots, when seven years ago we spent two or three hours in that spot making no progress against wind and tide.

We ran out of tide somewhere around Zeebrugge, and were starting to get very tired and cold. We decided to head in rather than trying to make way into the tide out of the Westerschelde which runs at 2 knots even at neaps (which it was). Just as well we did, as when we pulled the string to furl the foresail nothing happened and we had to lower the sail. Zeebrugge is a vast port, 1.5 miles from the entrance to the yacht harbour, and when we got there at 0140 it was very full, but fortunately we found a spot on the fuel dock. Ben was really pleased (not) to be asked to untangle strings, raise and furl the foresail at 2am, but we got it all done, fell into an exhausted stupor, and woke at 0745 (Belgian time – so just four hours of sleep) to find a beautiful, warm morning, a gentle breeze, and no-one around. We headed out without paying ;-) and carried the morning tide the 15 miles to Breskens, where they squeezed us into a small berth and we have been enjoying the fairground noises from the Fishing festival.

We can't believe it's six years since we were last here. There have been a few changes and the yacht club restaurant is a fair bit more expensive than we remembered. At the moment every nook and cranny seems to be full of market stalls and fairground rides, but behind that I think it's still the same small, pleasant resort.