Category Archives: Rancho Relaxo

Thursday we finally can hoist the sails again and we’re enjoying a wonderful trip through the ‘birthplace of sailing’. Via radio we listen a dramatic Mayday situation involving chopper, we see the Alinghy (although we don’t recognize her) and plenty of other racing yachts. We also come quite close to one of the last hovercrafts and have plenty of opportunities to practice the rules of way. There are more sailboats here than in the Kieler and Flensburger Foerde together. Hehehe. In the evening we put into Yarmouth – the oldest township on the Isle of Wight. A really lovely spot with plenty of nice pubs. (One main focus point as you can see ;-)

The next day – because there’s no suitable wind to continue – we’re using the afternoon for a little trip with our dinghy. We go up the River Yar and see some nice houses and an old church. In the evening it’s ‘harbour-cinema’ again. Because of the tide going in and out there are always quite chaotic maneuvers to be seen (ours not excluded). Quite before leaving we were actually crashed into by a smaller boat. Luckily we choose a steel ship – no harm done.

Friday we’re leaving the Solent and pass by the famous Needles – where we cheer with a nice Guinness. ;-) We sail nicely along the increasingly interesting coastline and while passing Anvil Point – we actually get our private flight show by the famous Rad Arrows ! In darkness we enter Weymouth, where we spend the night in front of the flap bridge that will open saturday at eight in the morning. We have fish & chips for a midnight snack and fall into bed. Early in the morning (for us it’s actually 7 o’clock, as we’re on UTC) – we enter the marina and see Michael to the train station. It was a wonderful week together with him – we really hope we’ll see each other earlier than when we return to Berlin.

And now I sit here typing away in the pub. The text that I’ve written earlier while on the ship, I now translated and put the pictures in order. In the harbour the internet costs 3,50 Punds PER HOUR (!!!!!!!) and that’s quite a normal tariff here. It’s really a punch in the face – especially since the marinas here are also impressingly expensive. Well, we’re gonna focus more on the Guinness and less on the internet. :-)

Together with Michael we leave Brighton and soon disappear in thick fog. Of course the wind also dissipates and so we steer towards Shoreham, because we don’t wanna motor through the fog. There we arrive quite in time to find our friends Silke and Dieter mooring their boat in front of the lock.

So we spend the evening chatting and using some remote WLAN to surf the net – thanks again to the LunaWLANnet antenna – it’s really amazing to have internet access in the middle of nowhere. And thanks to our on board WLAN, our friends get to use our connection while we spend the evening together. Late in the evening, the water is high enough an the lock opens and we can sail into the Lady Bee marina where we spend the night.

The next day we don’t have any wind, so we’re again using our engine to sail together with the SY Tamora towards the Solent. The best opportunity to put into harbour is in the entrance towards Chichester, where after motoring against a really strong current, we drop the anchor for the very first time since the beginning of our journey, two months ago. There’s a really nice and also interesting beach only two minutes away with the dinghy (rowing). The night is completely without wind and without the sound of nearby streets or cities.  Sweet dreams.

Yesterday the time has come and we finally crossed over The Channel towards England. So now we’re in Dover and already planning to leave as we we’d like to spend the next days in Brighton.

The crossing was quite uneventful and the traffic not that much I think it was more near Cuxhaven, at the exit of the NOK. In Dover we parked the Rancho Relaxo in the Granville Docks and soon after found ourselves in a really nice Pub drinking a pint of Guinnes, eating chips and burgers and enjoying ourselves.

Yeah baby… rock ‘n roll ! After having encountered our first storm at sea i will write my first posting to say that with the bravest captain in the world and such a  great ship … there’s nothing to fear.

And I have to confirm what I so often read in other sailors tales, that even though when in the middle of it I was wishing for a Deus Ex Machina to come and get me out of there (NOW!) … after all it was a cool ride. I want more.

The best of it: at the end getting to port and, completely soak and ice cold, use your last strength to mooring the boat, get out of that sticky foul weather gear and finding a last pair of clean dry socks. Ahhhh. Enjoy a beer in the cockpit, look at each other with proud and relief and just go-have-a-good-sleep.

…a dredger of course !

And now we must leave the harbour – they wanna work at our pier. We’ll make a second try towards west….

I think it was in the blog of the Spica that that I wrote something like our own story: After waiting a week for the right weather, they put to sea and tried to go westward. The habourmaster didn’t say good trip but ‘see you later’. And they were back, like six hours later… ;-)

Well we tried our luck yesterday and made 25sm to the west but after really heavy thunderstorms and a really rough sea we went back to Borkum. “But didn’t you say you wanted to go through the channels, inland ?” Yes, we did. But we decided otherwise, because: Motoring through the channels is reeeeealy boring. And the way through the channels takes a lot of time. So we’ll wait another day or two and try our luck again in the North sea.

In the end, the four days of waiting in Cuxhaven we could have gone to Holland. We *were* waiting for better weather but in the end got it quite bad…

So we started yesterday at 03:40 in the morning with the outgoing tide and had a pleasent sail with about 3 Bft. and were gliding out into the North sea. The sailing was perfect, the weather quite nice and the wind increased to a perfect 4-5  Bft. from the right direction. The kids are happy, the sindvane does it’s job.

But there’s something wrong. We’re in the North sea after all… What is it ? Ah, there….

The air pressure is going waaaaay down. From 1013Hpa to 996Hpa (!!!) But the next harbour for us is Borkum and we’re actually really good underway. So we slide past the Islands Norderney and Juist, the wind is increasing to force 6 and we’re sailing with the second reef. Finally we’re closing in on Borkum and it’s starting to rain. Wind still increasing, now force 7. What’s that ? Didn’t the weather guis talk about easy 5 Bft ?!?

We’re now sailing in the third reef up until the last 8 miles. From here we use the main sail and engine. The Rancho Relaxo is bouncing up and down the waves while the Kids are downstairs and reading (Bruno) or painging (Viola). Gui and me are trying to find our way through the dark. The spray fills the air and the water is now more white than black. I have no idea how strong the wind is but it’s rock’n'roll. And the waves are huge  – despite the land being quite near. At midnight we enter the safe harbour Borkum and fall into the beds.

But now I have to finish my breakfast. We want to go up the river Ems with the ingoing tide. To go through the inland channels towards Amsterdam.

After one month of repairs (ship and human-wise) and a little sailing we’re now leaving the Baltic sea behind us and enter the harsh North sea (tomorrow). We still hope for suitable winds to go quickly towards Amsterdam but right now it looks as if we would have wind in the right direction but waaaay too much of it. Meaning it will start easy during Thursday but will increase towards +7Bft during Wednesday night. And 7Bft are (maybe) ok in the Baltic sea but definately not in the North sea. So we’ll watch the weather report carefully and will make a decision on Tuesday morning.

But enough talk about the weather and the future. Today we had to say goodbye to our good friend Wolfgang who had to leave for Berlin. :-( But he made this wonderful picture of us:

Finally underway again. Ahhh ! What a great feeling.

So yesterday we started in Flensburg with enough wind to just use the main sail. But it died down quickly and we had to use the engine – while I was on the foredeck preparing our new sail, etc. But we couldn’t use it because despite a really harsh thunderstorm in the evening, we had little to no wind at all and had to sail pretty much the whole trip using the engine…

We arrived late at around 23h in Laboe where Nikola and Markus where already waiting for us. They’re planning to go on a two year trip with their beautiful ship ‘Supermolly’ sometime next year. And as they have two kids who happen to be the same age as ours, there’s a lot to talk about. AND of course we had to celebrate Gui’s birthday – that was yesterday as well.

So in an hour we’ll leave Laboe again to go through the NOK and into the North sea. We should arrive until Thursday midday as this is the time when the wind will change to NE – and that’s a pretty rare event. We’ll see if the low pressure system really will do what we expect it to do…