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 as the strong wind sweeps the water up the Baltic Sea, and where in Sweden and beyond they will be experiencing large rises in water level.
So it’s been quite exciting, to say the least. This marina is 3m deep, and our boat is 2m deep, so when we arrived, we had a metre under our keel. That’s plenty, and typical of a lot of boats and marinas around.
In fact we have a small stool that we usually place at the bow to make it easier to step off the boat as it can be quite a long way down to the pontoon.
All day yesterday we watched as the water level dropped and dropped until we were reading 0.0m, and wondering what next! The bottom is sand, so unlikely to have caused any problems for us, but a deeper draft boat may not have been so happy.
Meanwhile, Force 7-8-9 squalls kept powering through, and the boat strained over to one side, held by the wooden posts in the water and on the quay. To us Lough Swilly sailors used to a 4-5m rise and fall, 1m doesn’t sound like much, but in tidal areas, the marina pontoons also rise and fall with the tide. Not so here! So we watched the boat, made sure we were far enough off the quay not to break the bow sprit, and tied tightly enough not to bash the wooden poles as the boat swayed, and loosely enough to allow the boat to drop with the water.
For now, we’re stepping up onto the pontoon, and waiting for all the water to flood back south and the level to rise again. Hopefully, it won’t be too dramatic!
That’s a whole lotta water movement from prolonged winds – here we’ve a deep low pressure parked over the Scillies and Cornwall so unusually powerful winds for this time of year blowing from West along the South coast.
It must be megatonnes!