HappyWanderer.org

Dear Friends,

Thanks for the e-mail.  It was fun reading it. 

We are in Copenhagen.  There is a museum with two floors with amber rocks.  There were magnifying glasses over amber with insects.  The signs were in English, Danish and German.  Long long ago when trees got cut resin came out.  Insects got stuck in it.  Then the trees got covered by water.  The resin turned into amber.

In a park we saw spinny things like there are at school behind Heritage House.  There were three in a row and Karla Sophie and I didn’t have to take turns.In Denmark there is a queen and there are three guards in front of her palace.  We didn’t see the queen but we  saw the changing of the guard.  The guards did a little parade and we heard their shoes clomp clomp clomp on the cobblestones.  Then they said something and they changed.  The ones on the sidewalk went to where the ones on the street were and those went to the sidewalk.  Then some left. 

We went to a museum and there is a place where children can play with dress-ups and a pretend Viking ship with shields on the sides of it and pretend swords.  Karla, Sophie and I dressed up like Vikings.  The Vikings used their boats and sailed many places. They even sailed to North America and met Indians.  In one place in the museum they have other dress-ups and shoes you can put on.  There is a grocery store with a balance scale for weighing food too. 

Today we are going to Humlebaek.  Soon we will be in Sweden. 

I hope you are having a great time.

Love, Maria

Hello Friends, 

I hope you have been having fun, I have.   We are in Copenhagen, Denmark.  We got to see the changing of the guard at the Queen’s palace.  The palace is not as big as you think it is.  It is like a regular building.  The guards wear big furry hats, blue pants and black shirts.  We also went to see the statue of the Little Mermaid, Denmark’s most famous landmark.  I even got to touch it! There are many fountains in Copenhagen, most of them very big with a statue in the middle. 

We also went up the Rundetorm, a tower with a cobblestone street spiraling up around a column.  From the top we could see the whole city.  When Mzria, Karla and I went down, we ran and ran and ran all the way to the bottom.  Most of the streets in Copenhagen are cobblestone and the buildings don’t have as many stories and are older. 

In a few days we will be in Sweden! Please write to me.  I would like to hear from you. 

Your friend, Sophie

Godday (Hi) Friends, 

We are in Copenhagen.  We have seen the changing of the guard at the Queen’s Palace, the Botanical Gardens, and the statue of the Little Mermaid.  One different thing about Copenhagen is that it has canals along many roads.  We went to a museum that showed amber from over a million years ago.  Amber is made by trees when they got a cut and resin poured out.  Then water covered the forest and the amber hardened.  The weather has been warm and sunny.  Many of the streets are cobblestone.  Everybody rides bicycles instead of using cars.  In another few days we will be in Sweden! 

We have not been fishing yet and there are no man eating sharks in the Baltic because it is not salty enough.  The only wild animals we have seen are birds but we have seen lots of them.  There are ducks and seagulls in the canals and there are a lot of pigeons in the street.  When you live on a boat it is very hard you have to go up stairs to get outside.  The floor space in cabins with berths is about five square feet.  I am sharing a berth with my sister Maria right now.  Since there are three cabins on the boat, my sisters and I will take turns having our own cabins.  We have school at the same table at which we eat.  I have been learning a lot of German in school.  I am also doing a typing program called KAZ.  One scary thing is when there are huge waves and the boat tips over 20 degrees.  I have not touched anything slimy. Figure out the message written in runes.  They were the type of writing the Vikings used. 

Fra (from) Karla 

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.