A final season in the Baltic
Timeline posts
It’s September, and the island ferries are busy taking lorries loaded with harvests to the mainland . On Fejø, the harvest is fruit. The largest farmer here has 3000 tonnes to pick. It’s a lovely island, and on the walk to the tiny local shop, there are stalls at garden gates offering plums, figs, apples, […]
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What a lovely city. Pretty waterfront restaurants, framed by old wooden boats in cobbled streets and a happy vibe. There are hardly any cars, everyone travels by bike. Apparently the taxes for car ownership almost double the price of a car. It helped that the weather was gorgeous, and we spent the first afternoon riding […]
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Eventually the wind subsided a little, and blew from aft of the beam, so we ventured out towards Copenhagen, via a series of 4-6 hour harbour hops, and some very fast sailing in 20-25 knots of wind. Often the excitement is not the journey, it’s the arrival, and at one port of call we were […]
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This pretty town was a delight. The marina had great facilities, including working wi-fi – quite a treat! But the real attraction was the beautifully preserved house and gardens of the Danish artists Johannes and Ahled Larsen. It was charming, and stuffed full of their own paintings and gifts from their visiting artist friends. Everything […]
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Here we are, tied up securely in Stubbekjøbing harbour, as outside 38 knots squalls howl and torrential rain pours down at sudden unanticipated intervals. The harbour is full, mainly German charter boats, and the sea outside is empty of boats but churning away in the rain, wind and spray. Yesterday, one of the charter boats […]
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Sometimes the most unlikely spots really are the most memorable. Kolding is at the end of a long channel, and the marina is beside a large industrial port that seems to specialise in scrap metal shipping. The marina itself is mostly long term berths, with only a couple of visitors. But that meant that the […]
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Last weekend, we decided to sail to the pretty German city of Flensburg. We’d been chatting to German sailors who assured us there would be no Covid travel issues. And in fact all that we encountered was the harbour master there asking where we had sailed from, and when we said Denmark, he was happy. […]
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Way back last year (or was it even the year before?), the anchor had a rather too close encounter with a wooden post on a diesel pontoon. Oops. At first, we didn’t really notice that anything much had happened, but later realised that we were having more difficulty getting the anchor to hold, and then […]
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The fifth day is free in Sønderborg Marina. We didn’t expect to be here this long, but we get a free ticket today. The problem now is to get off the boat to go to the harbour office to claim it, as all the water has returned, and more! I asked the harbour master where […]
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This is Melodrama’s fourth day in Sønderborg Marina. We came in for a new anchor (another post ….) but the forecast was for strong south-westerly gales for three days. And indeed, here they are, complete with lightning, torrential rain and all the trimmings. In the tide-free Baltic, the trimmings include sudden drops in water level […]
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There are lovely walking trails around Høruphav, which stretch across the country, and are now a popular 84 km trekking route, called the Gendarmstein. The route markers all show a gendarme figure, and we were intrigued to know why. The gendarmerie was founded in 1839, a customs and excise foot patrol to check along the […]
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It’s now the last week of the Danish School holidays, and harbour mania is coming to an end. It’s been like this. If you want a berth in Ærøskøbing marina or in its harbour, you have two options. Arrive at 10am when there is a mass exodus (we counted 70 boats leaving as we arrived […]
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