HappyWanderer.org

We’re quickly learning about Danish fishing Harbors.  We’re used to the East Coast approach to harbor building: find a navigable river or stream, dredge it out a bit if need be, and sprinkle it with marinas and moorings.  Lots of room and shelter from the wind.  Not so in these parts.  Often the only shelter is an artificial harbor, so we haven’t anchored as often as we did Down East.  These tiny harbors are rings of stone and riprap, set out from the shore a bit into deeper water and connected to dry land via a causeway.  Space is at a premium, boats are small, and the fishermen know how to handle their boats, hence the docks and pilings are packed in tightly. 

This is a good time to talk about the favored Baltic mooring method: “The Box”.  Start with a long wooden dock or stone quay, and parallel to that set a line of pilings a boat length away and a boat width apart.  The idea is to squeeze your boat in between two of the pilings, then nose up to the dock.  Two lines hold the stern to the pilings, and two more hold the bow to the dock.  You board the boat by crawling over the anchor and the bow pulpit.  The upside of this is that you can fit more boats in than if there were finger piers between all of the boats.  The downside is that most of the boxes are only 3.5 to 4 meters wide (the distance between the pilings).  Happy Wanderer is 4.2 meters wide, and therefore won’t fit into most of the boxes.  So far this has not been a problem: it’s early in the season and we can usually find a quay to lie alongside.

Case in point is our visit to Onsevig Havn, a tiny harbor surrounded by wind turbines (Yes, we’re also learning that the wind turbines are located where it’s windiest…).  When we left Bagenkop, we close-reached all afternoon and anchored for the night in the lee of an island near Nakskov.  Early the next day, we set out for Onsevig in brisk winds.  The wind and chop picked up as we rounded Lolland into the Smålands Farvandet, the shallow sound between Lolland and Sjaelland.  By the time we got near Onsevig the wind was touching 30 knots.

The nice thing about harbors in a place without much tidal range is that the seawalls aren’t that high. We were able to sneak up to the entrance and peek inside.  Not good.  What little quay there was had fishing boats tied up to it, and the boxes were way too small.  There was almost no space to turn around: if we went in, we had to stay in.  To top it off, the wind was quartering across the entrance, trying to blow us back out and sideways into the seawall at the same time.  This meant that we would have to motor in at a brisk clip to avoid fetching up against the seawall.  The only logical spot was just inside the entrance, practically hanging outside.  We wouldn’t have to risk turning around in the harbor, and we’d be sheltered there.Plan in place, we motored back out into the bay, set up all of our lines and fenders (big rubber beach balls that we hang over the side to protect the boat from damage), and took a deep breath.  Then in we went at 3/4 throttle, full reverse once inside to slow us down, and let the wind surge us up against the quay.  We bounced harmlessly on the five fenders, and the wind clamped Happy Wanderer against the rough concrete of the quay while we trussed her in place with doubled dock lines.Deep breath all around.

Not a soul in sight, just the wind to keep us company.  

Dear Friends, 
Here are the answers to your questions: 

1. We are in Denmark.  Today we visited an old Viking castle. 
2. I am on the boat.  We began sailing April 18^th.
3. I am having fun sailing.
4. The shipping container came on April 15^th.  It took us three days to unpack it and stow everything.
5. In Germany and Denmark you see soccer balls everywhere. They also have a lot of bakeries with very yummy breads and cakes.
6. My favorite food is dumplings.
7. The bridges were very interesting because it looked like we couldn’t go under them but we always could (the mast is 18 meters high with two sets of spreaders).
8. The Rickmer Rickmers is a famous ship in the Hamburg Harbor.  We visited it.
9. We have climbed to the top of the tower of Michaelskirche in Hamburg.

I really miss you. 

From, Karla

We were making fairy houses on Sunday.  To build a fairy house, you need things that you find nearby, not like garbage or plastic.  You can use driftwood, rocks, shells, sticks, seaweed, but not garbage.  We sailed to Nakskov Fjord yesterday, but it was bumpy because the waves got high and the wind was blowing hard.  I miss you.  Sometimes I think about you at math time during boat school. 
Love, Maria

Dear Friends, We have been having some great adventures.  We sailed 25 miles at a ten-degree angle.  We thought we were going to anchor at a bird sanctuary, but it was too shallow and too windy so we anchored behind Enehoje Island in Nakskov Fjord.  I found lots of sea glass on the beach and built a fairy house.  To build the fairy house, I dug a hole in the sand and put sticks on top as a roof.  I hope you are having fun.  Your friend, Sophie

Dear Friends, 
I hope you are having fun. We had a very bumpy sail today.  We sailed 25 miles at a ten-degree angle. Today I’m going to climb up the mast.  I can’t wait to see you! 
From Karla

We arrived in Laboe (near Kiel, Germany) on April 8th.  Laboe is a holiday town at the mouth of the Kieler Bucht (bay).  The season hasn’t really started, but it was still fun to walk along the strand and imagine the place full of holidaymakers.

Happy Wanderer had been shipped to Laboe from France a few weeks earlier.  The container with most of our gear was scheduled for delivered the day after we got to Laboe.  Cruising requires a lot of gear: tools, spare parts, safety equipment, a dinghy and motor, not to mention books, bedding, and cooking things.  After looking at the prices in Europe (and getting our breath back—the Euro is over $1.50 now), we decided to simply take everything off of Avocet and ship it to Germany in a container.

But… the container was a week late—it had gotten bumped to the next ship.  We’d planned on staying in a hotel for two nights while we got Happy Wanderer in order.   Rather than hole up in the hotel waiting for our stuff, Donya and the girls took the train to Wedel (on the Elbe, near Hamburg) to visit her cousin Christian, and to show the girls where her grandparents had lived.  Walking along the Elbe River they saw all sorts of ships and boats, including a container ship.  Could our container be on that ship on its way to the Hamburg Harbor from where it would be trucked to Laboe Harbor?

Michael stayed on Happy Wanderer to get her ready for the trip: the mast was stepped on a rainy morning, with a 1/2 Euro coin on the mast step for good luck.  We had a few changes to make: the stove has been converted from butane to propane (less expensive and easier to find).  Michael aligned the propeller shaft, tuned the rig, updated the plotter and radar, oiled and cleaned everything in sight, and generally got the boat in order.  He also installed our new friend: a 175 ampere alternator that will allow us to charge the batteries with a minimum of engine running time.

The sails were rigged and the pantry well stocked when the container finally arrived on the 15th.  Then what an unpacking, stowing of goods and flurry of projects that followed.  And it all fit!

Finally on April 18th we made for the fuel dock before our departure from Laboe.  As is often the case in Germany, Visa was not accepted and Donya was off to the ATM to pick up more Euros (we’d spent most of our Euros in Germany, as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway each use their own currencies).  But wait – the friendly, well-seasoned gentlemen manning the dock lent Donya his bicycle.  She felt truly German as she rode the somewhat rickety upright bicycle with the handy basket up front through the quaint streets of town.  With that done, we motored three hours north to our first anchorage in Schleimunde.

April 19th,  after Michael had gone up the mast to tighten the spreader bolts and make all ready, we finally raised the sails and took off for Denmark.  The weather was sunny but on this chilly spring day the crew were all wrapped up in sleeping bags in the cockpit, listening to books, singing sailing songs, doing mad-libs and solving crossword puzzles.  Six and a half hours later we reached our destination of Bagenkop, at the southern tip of Langeland. 

April 20th was a day of exploration, walking through the quiet town on a Sunday morning, listening to the church bells, noticing all the small, neat houses, many with rock gardens instead of grass, following the road through the countryside, past pastures with shaggy ponies and back to the beach.  And clusters of spinning wind generators everywhere—Denmark has over 5000 wind turbines and gets 20% of its electricity from wind.