Drejø

We are now on Drejø, an island with 70 inhabitants.
200 years ago, an 80 year old woman living on the island remarked that they were so lucky to be 1 mile from Funen, 1 mile from Taasinge and 1 mile from Æro and therefore at the centre of the world.....
The island actually has 2 harbours, the Gamlehavn (gamle = old) is really really small:





We are in the Nyhavn, built in 1905, which can take about 40 boats. It is also small, next to the ferry landing and really nice:





As you can see, we can look over the sea from the boat!

We arrived after a two and a half hour trip from Faaborg in stunning conditions, got the bikes out and went for a ride around the island. It has well known bird colonies and from the cliffs on the Western shore you have a nice view of some of the other islands in the archipelago:






Finally, another example of the 'honesty box' system: if you want to rent a bike for the day, you put 40 Kroner in the jar, take the bike and return it at the end of the day. No personal intervention involved at all! This is a service near the ferry landing. The (small) selection of bikes is not in the picture:

Fyn, Faaborg

Yesterday, we borrowed bicycles from the hotel at the marina in Dyvig and cycled around the lake near Norborg, on Als. We of course have our folding bikes on board, but this was easier. The weather was excellent for a ride, we covered about 20Km. Although we get a reasonable amount of exercise by walking everywhere plus our standard 'after dinner walks', it was still good to use the muscles a bit in a bit of off-road riding.






The weather forecast for today was lightish winds in the morning, building throughout the day. As we wanted to go to Faaborg, on the island of Funen (Fyn, in Danish), which at 30 miles is about a 5 hour trip, we set off a bit earlier than normal, at 8. It was a wonderful crossing of the Lille Bælt, with little wind to start with and about 16 knots towards the end. No problem, we even made coffee! On the approach to Faaborg, you see the characteristic small 'cliffs' and the rapeseed fields, very pretty:






Once tied up, we noticed this is quite an international setting: there were 5 different flags visible next to one another: Danish, Norwegian, British, German and of course Dutch.

Faaborg is a medieval trading and fishing town. It is quite well preserved in its old style, the old trading harbour is very close to the town. It is much nicer than the marina, which is well known and also mentioned in the pilot so it's the first choice. Fortunately there was still space there for us.





During our 'recce walk' we noticed that there would be a 'night watchman' at the belfry at 9pm. We were not sure what this entailed, so after dinner we set out to see what it was all about. It turned out to be a guided walk through the old town:






As it was all in Danish only, we missed 99% of what was said, but at least we saw all the interesting places. Tomorrow, we'll visit the tourist information and see if there is an English language translation available!

Also tomorrow we'll have to do some restocking of the larder. And there is an oil change coming up, for which I need a tool, hopefully I can get that here too.

The weather forecast for the next few days is quite good. Our plan is to visit some of the islands South of Funen, some of which are very small. They are mostly one or two hours motoring apart, so it should be easy going. We'll leave here either tomorrow or Tuesday, we'll see about that later.

Location:Kanalvej,Faaborg,Denmark

Dyvig, den smukkeste bugt i Danmark

As you can see above, we are in Dyvig, the most beautiful bay in Denmark.
It's very beautiful indeed, also very quiet and quite remote. So the mobile Internet is slow, no 3G but only 'Edge'. Therefore only one picture today, of the marina where we are, in front of a hotel:






The trip here was also through very nice surroundings, ending in going through a narrow called "Stegløb". As the weather predictions for tomorrow are quite good, we'll probably stay here and explore the surroundings on bike. On Sunday we then plan to cross the Lille Bælt to Faaborg on the island of Fyn (Funen).

Augustenborg

First of all, I need to make a correction: the place we were yesterday, was called Sønderborg, not Sönderborg! With these unusual vowels, one can get confused. One of these days we'll still get to somewhere starting with Æ!
Talking about Sønderborg, here is quite a nice picture Lyn took during our walk last night (note especially the windmill on the hill which has a historical significance as the battle in which Denmark lost Schleswig-Holstein to Germany was fought there):

The trip to Augustenburg this morning was very nice, no wind to speak of and some interesting clouds:

Augustenburg is a small town that was built around a palace built by someone called Ernest Günther, who named it after his wife, Augusthe. Later, one of the Danish kings established the head of that line as the Duke of Augustenborg. The palace, which is now a hospital, is rather grand:

The houses around it were built by those serving the palace in different capacities. Some have quite ornamental woodcarvings on their doors:

The town seems quite deserted, except that trucks full of rowdy students keep on driving along the road to Sønderborg, which runs quite close to the harbour.
All in all, nice to have seen it. Although the trip here, through the Als Sund and the Augustenberg Fjord is very nice, one visit is probably enough.

Denmark!

At 12:09 this afternoon, Onbekommerd entered Danish waters. We took a picture of the chart plotter window on the laptop to show this:





The border runs through the middle of the channel in the Flensburg fjord: the green marks are in Denmark and the red ones in Germany.
The trip across was nice, all in all about 4 hours in 12 to 15 knots of breeze. Early on a few drops of rain and later a few waves over the bow, but the going was steady enough to allow coffee to be made just after 11!

After we had tied up in the Sönderborg marina, the courtesy flag needed to be changed:






We walked the 20 minutes into town to get a Danish SIM card for the iPad. On the way we noticed again how clear the water in the Baltic is:





This is taken from the boulevard, the rocks are on the bottom, under water!

Sönderborg is not all that special, but it has a nice waterfront:





You can tie up there as well, but the road along the quayside is busy / noisy and there are awkward mooring posts sticking out. The marina is less quaint, but more comfortable. We managed to get the card for the iPad so we are in comms reach again (although there is good free wifi in the marina as well).
The weather outlook for the next few days is quite favourable. We plan to go to Augustenburg, on the island of ALS, just like Sönderborg, tomorrow. It's important to arrive early at each stop: school holidays have started in Denmark (they start at midsummer) and with more boats on the water, the harbours tend to start to fill up from midday.

Location:Lystbådehavnen Ringgade,Sonderborg,Denmark

A day in Kappeln

As mentioned in the previous post, the weather 'out there' is not all that attractive, but much more promising for a few days from tomorrow. But Maasholm, although not unpleasant, has not a great deal to offer, so we moved back up the Schlei just for a couple of miles, back to Kappeln where we also stopped a few days ago.
Kappeln is nice, the local harbour consists of 32 berths where you moor in boxes, bow to the quayside and tie onto two poles at the back. This is it, seen from the water:





And from the shore:





Looks simple, but it isn't! The water is the Schlei, a 40KM long fjord. When the winds are westerly, the water blows out of the fjord, into the Baltic. When it's an easterly, obviously the other way around. The difference in level can easily be 30cm up or down, as can be seen from the barnacles on the mooring post behind Onbekommerd:





The problem is, that all of this brings with it a pretty significant current of sometimes a knot or more (for landlubbers: a knot is a nautical mile per hour, a nautical mile is 1852m). The effect when you try to enter a box is that you are pushed sideways by say 0.5 m/sec. So you aim for the middle of the box and there is no way of avoiding being pushed onto the pole! And the slower you move forward, the worse the sideways component of your combined movement becomes..... All of this produces the "Kappeln harbour entertainment". The tourists along the boulevard stand and watch how yachts have several tries to get into the box and the boat tied up. And the successful yachtsmen run around to help others. One is only at ease when both boxes next door are occupied and there is no more risk that an unsuspecting prospective neighbour will charge into you. Fortunately, the boxes are separated by ropes to reduce the chance of damage. When we first arrived here a few days ago, we helped to provide the entertainment quite well, yesterday was a bit better, but there is no way avoiding touching the poles. Everyone does and laughs about it. Fortunately, you see little or no damage and also Onbekommerd is unscathed.

Once tied up, you can walk the old stairs into the town itself:





There is good shopping, and you also see this:





A large fish smoking outfit. We treated ourselves for lunch:





A beautiful, fat, smoked eel. Once it had been cleaned, it tasted wonderful on fresh rolls:





Now Lyn is playing the piano in the 'studio':





And I am about to clean the bilge.....

Finally, these days with on-board Internet via the iPad, communications are so easy! Apart from blog posts and emails, yesterday we communicated with Sean in London via Skype IM and with Greg in Cape Town via iMessage. It all goes over the mobile phone network, many yacht harbours advertise that they have wifi, but so far we have found that few of those work well enough to use them on board. So the iPad with the German 3G card is a blessing, it works everywhere. We get 3Gigabyte for a month for €25, I have only used 1GB so far with heavy iPad usage. The only drawback is that it won't allow VOIP (that's voice over Internet), so normal Skype does not work, only the message facility. And then there is the Kindle to read books. Yesterday, before we left Maasholm (where the wifi was good), We quickly downloaded a few books as Lyn had run out of reading material. Many books (all of Dickens' works for instance) are even free!
Modern communication devices make our way of living a lot easier.

We'll have to get a Danish card for the iPad when we get to Sönderborg tomorrow. That will be the fifth one.....

Still Maasholm

We are still in Maasholm. The plan was to go to Sönderborg today, but at 7 this morning it was already raining and the visibility was poor. In better known waters we would have made the trip, but the Baltic is a 'real sea' and we don't know it enough at this stage to take any risks. So we stayed put. It rained all day and it was cold as well. Comfortable inside, so no worries. And the bakery was open on Sunday, so we had fresh rolls for lunch. The only slightly bad moment was when the owner of our guest berth came back and demanded his spot. He had forgotten to put up a sign indicating he would return today, as is customary. So we had to start the engine and move the boat to another vacant berth. In the rain, of course.

The weather for tomorrow does not look all that inviting either. Maybe a little less rain, but possibly more wind than we like. We'll see tomorrow morning. If we can't go 'out to sea', we might go back up the Schlei to Kappeln as Maasholm is very small and has extremely limited shopping whilst we need some provisions.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures we took on our walk last night. Note the nice sunshine!