5/18/03 – To Varberg.
We had the best ever bow springline exit from Marstrand! The entire Marstrand sailing club was on the dock next to us watching. We spent the day motoring & sailing down the coast towards Copenhagen. It’s really ugly and rainy with the wind directly on our nose and waves splashing up over the bow and into the cockpit. We finally decided to put up the spray hood extension that completely encloses the cockpit. Then after turning on the heater down below we were kept nice and toasty in the cockpit. The motoring was a bit ugly as we crashed through the large waves. It was late when we got to Varberg and they had “airline landing lights” directing us into the Varberg harbor. We were very thankful – and very tired. We saw Old Squaw in the harbor. Later in the evening a big cruise ship pulled in next to us – the Stena Atlantica.
5/19/03 – To Helisingbor, DK.
We motored all day down the coast towards Copenhagen as the wind continued on our nose and it rained on and off all day. We stayed the night in Helsingbor – the first Danish town across the bay from Sweden and at the narrowest part of the Kattegat. The Kattegat is the name of the body of water which separates Denmark from Sweden and is the outlet of the Baltic Sea. It is generally shallow and the seas can be quite boisterous. The wind is typically from the south and since we were heading south and we wanted to get to Copenhagen by the 20th, it required us to motor most of the way.
5/20/03 – To Copenhagen.
Brian had called to say he had found us a different marina to make our rendezvous. We originally planned on staying at the marina in the heart of Copenhagen, but Brian found one out by the airport, south of town about 20 miles. Kastrup Marina is just past a line of 20 or so power generating windmills. The wind had backed to the west a little and we had a great reach past the windmills all the way to the marina. We have to admit that the skyline of Copenhagen is not all that impressive as we passed. Brian was waiting for us at the dock. He had 2 more bags of stuff for us that we couldn’t carry with us – including the USA flag for the boat. All this time, we had been sailing without a country flag because it was packed in our household goods shipment, which still hadn’t arrived. And for some reason, you just can’t go to a store in Sweden and buy a US flag for a boat.
Since he had already toured Copenhagen with his girlfriend, we took the bus into Copenhagen and walked around town, while he explored the boat. In Copenhagen we walked the Stroget and saw some of the really fashionable shops. When we returned to the boat we found that Brian had had great fun organizing everything in every locker, including the tool drawer.
5/21/03 – To Bornholm.
Bornholm is a small island in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Germany. It belongs to Denmark and most of the residents speak Danish. It is a popular tourist destination for Swedes, Danes and Germans, with fast ferry service from all three countries. It is about 80 nm. from the Kastrup marina and we figured it would take us about 15 hours of sailing to get there. Since we didn’t want to arrive in the dark, and we wanted to leave some margin in our time estimate, we decided a 3:00 am departure was in order. We didn’t quite make 3:00 am but we were on the way by 4:00 am. We had decided to take a short cut through a canal which cuts through the Southern part of Sweden. Unfortunately, we missed the opening of the canal bridge by 15 minutes at 7:00am so had to wait for 2 hours for it to open again. With the missed opening, the “short cut canal” didn’t make it any shorter from a time standpoint, but we did catch up on our sleep a little.
During our short stay waiting for the bridge to open, we had the opportunity to try a new docking maneuver. A common style of docking in Europe is known as the “Box.” Marinas configured in this way have a row of pilings 50 ft. or so away from the quay. Your job is to enter between any two pilings, attach stern lines to each one as you pass and then stop your bow just in front of the quay, where one person jumps off with the bow lines and ties you up to the dock. We did this without too much problem. When the bridge opened, however, and we needed to back out, we suddenly realized that the boat was too wide to exit the pilings. How could we get in so easily and be so stuck trying to get out? Lots of power applied from the engine with pushing and shoving from the crew and we were finally on our way.
Bornhom is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. On the island there are five medieval round churches which doubled as fortresses during times of danger. They are apparently quite unique in the world. We sailed most of the day until late afternoon when the wind finally died. For the last 10 miles we were forced to motor. In the marina, we docked next to an English boat (Moody 39) and met a couple who were planning on traversing the Göta Canal as well. Malcolm was a retired airline pilot and he and his wife Sally planned to start the Canal around June 12th. We thought that was too bad, because we planned on starting around the 2nd and would miss them for sure. They were quite helpful to us and showed us maps of the Dutch canals and gave us tips on how to get there. We were beginning to realize that making it all the way to Paris, would probably not be possible and we began to set our sites on Amsterdam.
Our main cooking fuel is a type of butane which is sold under the trade name of Camping Gaz. Sally had been reading that Camping Gaz was unavailable along the Swedish East coast and would not be available in the Göta Canal, so we needed to plan ahead for it. We had already used about ½ of our cylinder and only had one spare. She said they were planning on buying a small electric stove to get by.