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, berries, and all sorts of fruit for a few krone in a jar.
Yesterday, the old wooden boats left on a three day passage to Copenhagen, where they sell their harvest in the old harbour during festival week, as they have done for over 100 years.
But the harbour is very shallow, and despite boasting a charted depth of 2.5-3m we just about squeezed into an end berth, where further in, the depth was only a few cm. There has been some silting since the chart was last updated!
And then the water level dropped. So we woke up this morning in -0.3m under the keel, well dug into the mud, and definitely aground.
The whole harbour smells of rotting weed, combined with a heady fragrance from some flowers in bloom along the shore. A most peculiar combination.
So a morning in the office is our revised plan, while we await the water rise and a short trip to windward to the next island, Vejrø.
Stuck in the mud awaiting the next tide, and that smell of rotting vegetation, reminds me of sailing the tidal estuaries of Kent, Essex and Suffolk!
Hope your seacocks aren’t clogged?
Great insider advice! Will check now ….