Category Archives: Sailing

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…

And what a beautiful sail we had. – Actually that’s a lie as we didn’t sail at all. There was NO WIND at all – so we drove the whole trip using our trusty old Mercedes Diesel. But despite that nuisance: I LOVE sailing through the night. The nights at sea are so magic. The sky is astonishing with it’s many stars and one has plenty of time to think, read, play with the chartplotter… ;-)

We startet at around 13h in the afternoon as we had a little problem starting the motor – which was actually an alectrical problem that was soon fixed. We passed Cup Arkona with it’s Chalk coast and it’s beautiful lighthouse. Going along the north coast of Ruegen, Gui was at the steering wheel and I went for a nap in the afternoon to take the steering at around 23h in the night. So while the crew was asleep and the radar and AIS were watching for traffic, I was finishing ‘A sea vagabond’s world’ by Bernard Moitessier. It’s a good book but it actually repeats a lot of stuff from earlier works. Well… still worth reading.

We arrived at around 07h in the morning at Grossenbrode Faehre – a lovely, small harbour where we surprised Dieter and Silke who also started their circumnavigation and are here to take a break before they’ll leave tomorrow. I sure hope that we’ll meet the crew of the SY Tamora again on our route – which is more than likely.

Our first dive into the Baltic seas was a slightly harsh one. The sailing was actually nice and fast since we had a constant 5-7 Beaufort but underway Gui’s throat became very painful – more on that in my next post.

So the trip started with wonderful weather – blue skies and barefoot in the cockpit. Until first the warm front hit and shortly before arriving in Sassnitz, the cold front pured down on us. With all the lightning and the only sailing ship around – spooky… But we arrived savely and I could use all that nice rainwater to finally wash our deck. Hehehe.

As for Sassnitz itself: What a horror ! This port is still one of the worst in the whole Baltic sea, I guess. There’s no internet. The showers and toilets are half an hour to walk. And it’s by far the most expensive port we’ve been to ! Sassnitz sucks !!

Our first day alone. We miss our friends and our families – but we knew that day would come… We also knew other things that are not so nice and many people would probably go crazy. For example: Our bedroom has 4 square meters, our bathroom has ONE – and it doesn’t even have a shower !! We also have no dishwasher, no washingmachine and our house is constantly shaking. But hey  – we’ve got tiiiiiiime !! Lots of time ! :-)

Today we had  a beautiful sailing day towards Swinemuende at the border of Poland and Germany and also our gate to the Baltic sea. The day was hot and right now we’ve got a little thunderstorm going on outside. But I’m sitting here, using internet (thanks to that great LunaWLAN antenna !!) and I’m already thinking of the todos for tomorrow. Most important: we’ve got to get some diesel. I think there are 10-15l left and that’s no good. But hey. That’s for tomorrow.

Here are some pics from today. Hopefully the easterly wind will come as promised – that way tomorrow I’ll send pics from the coast of Ruegen in Germany.

I didn’t mention that this weekend we had visitors: Our good friends Markus and Hille arrived with their kids Sol and Ida. And since they arrived yesterday and couldn’t do otherwise but support us with our work – today we HAD to go for a little trip.

After putting the sails in the morning, we started towards the Stettiner Haff in a light breeze that allowed for a very RELAXing crusing speed of 2-3 knots. That’s not much to go forward but quite enough to throw ropes into the water and have a lot of fun swimming around the ship and doing stupid stuff.

And that’s what we did: going there and back again jumping into the water every couple of minutes to bear up against that crazy heat we had the last days. But now I have to quit writing – the mosquitos are eating me alive !! We have to get into saltwater tomorrow !