Odden - Sejerø - Kerteminde

As promised in my earlier post today, here is the story of our trip since the day before yesterday and now with pictures.

To the North West of Sælland lies a reef (Sælland rev). In the reef is a narrow opening, the Snekkeløb. The pilot books contain lots of warnings about the reef and the Snekkeløb in particular. But it was a nice and relatively quiet day, so we asked the locals on the boat in front of us in Odden what they thought about going through the Snekkeløb and they assured us it would be no problem. So we set course to the bright red and green buoys that mark the passage. To the East of the reef, there were many small fishing boats. We passed through the gap, which is a few hundred meters wide and about 3m deep easily. On the West side was a bit of chop, but not more than we are used to on an average day. Once we got over the 10m depth contour, the water got much calmer and we could make coffee.
After about 3 hours we reached the island of Sejerø. There is a fairly typical Danish island harbour. We managed to get a prime spot, right in the corner near the kiosk, the harbour office and the shore facilities:





As always there is a church nearby, with nice mural paintings and the obligatory votive ship hanging from the ceiling:





Everywhere, from the Dutch island of Texel to the North of Denmark, kids fish for crabs in the harbour. These two lads were busy for hours in front of Onbekommerd.





As the peak season is drawing to an end (the Danish schools start in 8 days' time), there are 'havnfests' everywhere. The one in Sejerø last night went on until 1am. Fortunately, the music was not too bad.....

This morning, the plan was to go to Ballen, on Samsø. But as we left, our neighbours warned that it would be very full in Ballen and we would be lying 4 or more boats deep.
Outside the harbour we consulted the charts and the laptop plotter and as it was a beautiful day, decided to skip Ballen and go straight to Kerteminde, which is on Fyn (Funen). That is 34 miles, so close to 6 hours motoring. But hey, it was sunny and there was virtually no wind, ideal 'motorboat weather'.
On the way we even saw some dolphins playing around the boat! And also things like this:





A high speed ferry in the Store Bælt.

Kerteminde turned out to be a pleasant place with a good and big harbour. In most harbours you find 'grillpladsen', places to have a barbecue / braai. Here they even have fresh herbs at the grillpladsen:





As mentioned a few times before, the Danes love their ice cream. Kerteminde has a prize winning ice cream store, where the make their own cones, right in the shop:





So we treated ourselves to one:





As I write this, the Kerteminde havnfest is still in full swing. It is supposed to end with fireworks at 10:30, which is right now. Let's hope it's true....