Musical chairs

Severe storm Antoni is on the way and will be wreaking havoc in a few days. Everyone knows it, and everyone was planning where they will go for safety when it arrives. All the chat on the dock was about destinations for shelter.

It was already quite windy, and the seas were very lumpy and uncomfortable. Still, weather forecasting is much more accurate, and we could see that we had a few days in hand.

In this part of the southern Baltic, there aren’t so many good harbours, and the distances between are greater, with no options along the way.

We have made to Ystad, a large marina with lots of space….usually. We set off from our previous harbour Kivik at dawn, and arrived in Ystad in early afternoon, to find it already stuffed with boats. And given the conditions, no-one was planning to move out.

Luckily, we spotted our friends on Blue Doublet, moored alongside with the fishing boats in the old harbour, and beckoning us over to tie up alongside them. Not so long after that, even the fishing harbour was crammed with yachts, three abreast. At least we were docked!

Most of the visitor boats in Ystad are Danish, Dutch and German, with a few UK boats, all of us heading southwest for the end of the season.

The following morning, quite a few boats decided to move on, and all the alongside boats dashed to grab a berth. Within minutes, each space was occupied. Great timing, we managed to grab one.

We wanted to avoid being the inside boat on a raft up as we planned to leave at 4am the following day, and make the long passage from Sweden to Denmark, and our chosen port of refuge in Hesnaes.

Hesnaes is just beside Falster on the wind model and as you can see it is well sheltered from the storm. The dark red indicates winds of 40-60 knots! (Up to 70mph)

And at 4am the following day, we joined a procession of boats leaving Ystad towards harbours in Copenhagen, South Denmark, Germany and the Kiel Canal. There was one day left before the storm hit.