Friday, April 25. 2003

6 am: we get up because there is still a lot to do. Bring the dog to the kennel, pick up Peter's brother and - most time-consuming - drive 700 km . Estimation for the ride was 7 hours. That would be a slow drive already for we use to go fast - hey, this is Germany. Oh, a seven-hour-drive would have been wonderful! Not only was the traffic jammed on most of the route, no there was a guy who had kidnapped a bus and they had stopped in on the autobahn where we intended to drive. Detour. Big Detour….
8:30 pm: we arrive with only 3 hours delay and board the ship. It's a 43-ft. sailing yacht, good enough to cross the ocean. The skipper set a limit of only four cans of beer per person for that first evening. Geeze, two would have me plastered!
Peter an me share what they call a double-cabin. It is incredibly crammed but OK, I don't mind being close to him. Peter's brother is supposed to share another double with another guy. He is taken aback because he did not imagine the boat to offer so little (read: none) personal space. But hey! 8 people on a 43 by 13 boat makes it crammed. I crash late, past midnight - the others even much later.
Saturday, April 26.

We leave Fehmarn and head for the Baltic Sea. At first there are a few waves but around noon the wind fades badly until it is more or less gone. Luckily the ship has an engine and we can keep plowing the mirror-smooth sea. Anyway it's cold and I am very thankful for having a pair of super-warm skiing-pants and those good ol' extra-warm Kamik-boots from Canada. No way the cold will get a grip on me! I go to sit at the stern of the ship as we sail. It's great - just me and the sea. A very meditative moment, lot of Zen. The only sound comes from the waves crashing against the ship and a few seagulls. I fully understand Legolas and all the Elves for their love of the sea. I'm addicted within moments. This shall not be my last trip and I think I should make a test to get a sailor's license. In the middle of nowhere we come across an owl! It should not be there. After it flew by at the tip of our mast, it went down to glide only a yard or so above the water. We think that is wrong, that it should not be here. Around 7 pm we arrive at Langeland and dock with an ultra-smooth maneuver at the Bagenkop marina. The day ends for us at midnight after a late but tasty dinner. We must get up early tomorrow because our skipper wants to make 'a few miles'.
Sunday, April 27.

Tonight was extremely windy and rainy. In the morning I had to learn that the sole place of our cabin where water trickles in is right above the lower end of the bed where I store my clothes. Darn boat! My warmest sweater is wet at the hem and most things are damp. Bah! And - of course - all those guys don't believe me it's water from outside. They keep telling me it's from condensation. As if I couldn't differ! Looks like we're forced to stay at the marina. After tonight's storm nobody is leaving, not even the pros. No question the amateurs of us will stay then. We listen to the news and hope for better weather. Oh, Captain, my Captain! When will we leave?
12:30 am: we're setting sail. Wind has lessened to 4 - 5, 7 in gusts. The sea is still heavy but manageable and we're sailing due north for an hour until finally! The sun comes out. The sky clears up more and more and at3 pm we have a mostly sunny sky as we sail with some 6 knots. K. gets badly caught in the foresail sheet as it performs an unfortunately unattended swing and the one responsible to keep them tight was dreaming. Luckily nothing bad happens, we're only a bit shocked. We arrive at Fuenen at 6 pm. It's a small harbor in a tiny charming fishermen's village. We enjoy the sunny, windless evening on deck before yours truly gets lifted up to the mast's tip (yesss - some 19 ft up!): the VERKLICKER is constantly not working which is really bad for the guy who guards the foresail sheet-ropes. This simple but nifty tool shows the wind's direction relative to the moving ship. Very important. Somebody must get up there and see what is wrong. Since I wanted to get up there anyway and am by far the most lightweight on board, they pull me up in a boatman's seat, equipped with some lube. It turns out the thingy is simply too loose in its hinges and gets therefore jammed with its own indicators. A simple bending of those will hopefully prevent jamming in the near future without falsifying the indicated direction. The view up there is great and I finally know that heights do not scare me (too much - there was a moment on getting down when I slightly slipped on the seat which was a bit scary but I readjusted my position and went smoothly down all the way. The showers require Danish money which nobody of us owns. I have to admit shamefully that we are already so used to the Euro and that you can use it internationally - in Europe, that is - that none of us bothered to even think about foreign currencies. So I take it upon me to find some native who is willing to change some Euro-bucks to Danish Kronen. I succeed at the second trial and thus have ensured the crew's hygiene - talk about heroes, folks ;-)
Monday, April 28

We left for another day with wind going the completely wrong direction and fading after a while. I was at the rudder twice and it seems that is not exactly my profession - as with driving a car, too. Due to the lack of wind we needed to start the engine again and found quite a rhythm with each taking turns at the rudder while the rest of the crew stayed below deck to escape the rain. I took a nap before I got to my shift: 1 hour on the outlook for the man at the rudder and then another hour of yours truly at the rudder. Oh, what nice circles I can draw on the water! As a matter of fact my bed is getting rain-water from above. We don't know exactly how it gets there but with a bunch of Kleenex and spreading a nylon-sheet across the rudder to keep the rain from further reaching the leaking spot I finally can sleep without getting my stuff even wetter than it already is. All my clothes are by now wet and I doubt anything will dry until tomorrow - especially since we cannot open the windows: it's still raining. We arrived in a harbor at about 10 pm - it was a damn long day and I crashed quickly.
Tuesday, April 29.

Great! I paid 5 Danish Kronen go get an icy shower. Thanks a lot, I could have danced in the rain and earned money instead. My feet are cold even before we get off at all. Wind hates us. Again we cannot sail the course we would have liked. At least it is not raining and the sky clears up after an hour. While I'm writing this I wondered about the VERY closely sounding splish-splash. Opening the bathroom I discovered it was FULL with water. Somebody had forgotten to close the valves that keep the water from flowing backwards when the ship is heeling. Damn! It happened twice, then we discovered another yet unknown valve underneath the washbasin. Once it is closed, everything is fine - on our side. Looks like there's another hidden valve someplace because the guy in the cabin on starboard had now the same problem. 7:30 pm: We're grounded. Navigating through the Small Belt our navigator was too close to the sandbanks and we hit the ground. We tried to get free with the engine, with all hands moving to one side etc. - to no avail. You should have seen how they all quickly disposed of their beer! Luckily there came a clipper along who heard our radio and came to the rescue. That worked fine and as a thank-you we gave them two bottles of rum - which is fairly expensive in Denmark. It saved us probably thousands of Euros!
Wednesday, April 30.

We need to make some 50 nautical miles today. That means some 12 hours sailing. Tough day. Once more the wind is not completely with us and we need to tack a lot, which costs us more time. At least the wind is a bit nicer than yesterday and we seem to get ahead rather nicely. Well, we will need that! Funny thing is that we hardly seem to be out of reach of cellular phones since I just received a call from my banker in the middle of a tack. Anyway, we leave Middelfahrt in the Small Belt and head for Sonderborg. It's a really loooong trip and although we leave at around 10 am we arrive at dusk - after 9 pm! And while docking we got a very impressive demonstration that drinking and driving just don't work together: The man at the bowline was ready to jump onto the quai at any moment, the ship was coming by ever so smoothly when all of a sudden a rather drunk skipper felt like he had to interfere with the man at the rudder and grabbed for the engine's gas and instead of having it run backwards to move the stern closer to the dock, he gave full speed ahead, thus crashing the stern against the dock and nearly cutting off the bowline-man's leg. Luckily the guy (who wasn't quite sober as well) pulled his leg away soon enough and did not fall into the water but rolled onto the dock. He was bruised, we all were shocked, but nothing really bad had happened. I am really not somebody to patronize others, but that was shockingly clear:
DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE!

Thursday, May 1.

We can't leave. The wind is so heavy, it would be crazy to try and sail southward. No ship leaves prior to noon and then it's a competitive pro's ship, the Glücksburg. We finally dare to follow them at 3 pm. Way too late for the 70 nautical miles we need to go. As if to console us the weather is fine: sunshine and good wind - for two hours. Then it starts raining. Thank you very much. We arrive at our starting point at 3 am. Yes, you did read right. In the middle of the night, after some snowflakes and whatnot we finally can get sleep. Shifts were shared in a 1-hour-rhythm until we got there. Phew!
Anyhow: it was a great trip and I certainly need to do that again. Often. Soon.