Leaving Germany today

We’ve spent more time in Germany than we originally thought we would, mostly because of bad weather, but we’ve enjoyed it here. We have especially liked the small yacht clubs at Büdelsdorf and Bad Schwartau (Stettiner Y-C) where everyone was very nice and helpful to us.

We made it back here to Ancora Marina in Neustadt just ahead of a downpour followed by strong westerly winds. This is a huge marina, but the harbormaster himself came to help us with our lines as we came into the box he’d assigned us. We were grateful for the help!

We’re in the area of the marina farthest from the office where the big boats are. It’s strange to be one of the smallest boats around. People are nice, but not particularly friendly except for Klaus. Klaus has a huge Swan (a 56, I think), and he had spotted John as being from the American boat. Klaus’s English is quite good as he does business all over the world, including in the States, so he gets lots of practice. He bought us drinks last night at the bar, and it was good to hear him say that Klintholm (our first destination in Denmark) was a good place.

In the first 24 hours we were here we had the privilege of observing a phenomenon of the Baltic: the strong wind affects the water level. We had strong westerlies of 30 knots and more, so that moved the water east and we lost two or three feet of water under us. The passerelle, which was pretty level when we docked, developed an ever-greater slope until we took it down altogether the second night because it was too steep to walk. When we got up the next morning, the winds had eased some, the water had come back, and we put the passerelle back out.

It looks like we should have a nice sail to Klintholm later today with 10-15 knots of wind out of the west. At our average 5 knots, we figure it will take 18 hours. We won’t be leaving until early afternoon in case we go faster. We don’t want to get too close to the Danish coast at night because of fishing nets with stakes that you can’t see in the dark. The marina at Klintholm doesn’t claim to have Internet, so we may be out of touch for a few days. We’ll try to get position reports out on the short-wave radio, but that doesn’t always work either.