5/22/03 – Touring Bornholm

We walked and WALKED around Bornholm. We had purchased a 24 hour tourist bus pass the day before so we spent the time looking at the 11^th Century fortified churches, crumbling castles and quaint villages. We were so tired from walking that making dinner on the boat didn’t seem like a good idea, but a pizza dinner in town seemed like a great one.

It turns out that Bornholm is not on the American tourist horizon and we were quite the oddity for the residents. They apparently only get a couple of Americans a year on the island. In the grocery story we met a girl in the checkout line who spoke impeccable English with an American accent. We were curious how she had learned such perfect English and she told us it was by watching US TV shows! God know what else she “learned” about America. She was so excited to meet “real” Americans and as we were leaving the store, she was on her cell phone calling her friends and telling them in an excited way that she had met “real” Americans, right there in Bornholm. What an education!

The high school kids were graduating at this time from school. Several of them were wearing funny hats and costumes, drinking and playing in the fountains and generally having a great time. It really seemed to us to be an innocent age long ago passed in America.

5/25/03 – To Karlskrona.

We left Bornholm for Karlskrona along the southern Swedish coast this morning. We were not more than an hour out of the marina when we began to hear a knocking sound coming from the stern of the boat. It seemed like the propeller might have picked up some fishing line or something. We pulled into a small cove and dropped the hook.[1] Steve put on a dry suit, snorkel and mask and dove under the boat to inspect. Everything appeared to be absolutely clean. So, why were we hearing this knocking sound and where was it coming from? A quick call was placed to Stefan at HR. He convinced us that it was a normal sound, had always been there, and we had never noticed it before. Maybe, but we though we would have it checked out by a mechanic anyway.

The voyage from Bornholm to Karlskrona is another long passage of about 70 nm. It is heavily traveled by large commercial freighters, high speed ferries and other large vessels. It pays to keep a careful watch both visually and with the radar. We had begun to experiment with our radar unit more and more. We were now beginning to recognize what the various blips on the screen meant and it was actually becoming useful. We could now begin to identify ships which were over the visual horizon and make changes in our course if necessary.

The day after we made this passage, a freighter collided with an oil tanker, in broad daylight almost directly on our route. It caused a huge oil spill, although we didn’t see it.

Karlskrona is another of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It has some old naval fortresses from the 1600’s and 1700’s. These walled forts are on the islands guarding the entrance to the main harbor and city. In addition, there are sunken fortifications and traps in the entrance channel, making precise navigation critical. Needless to say, we were watching our navigational marks closely.

Although we arrived on a Sunday, the town seemed more deserted than usual. It also appeared very dirty to us. We later learned that a garbage workers strike was underway which explained all of the litter. Because still the city seemed to lack vibrancy, we decided to leave the next day.

5/26/03 – To Kristianople.

Leaving Karlskrona, we turned the corner of southern part of Sweden and headed north. About 40 nm. up the coast is the small village and harbor of Kristianople. There is an ancient wall, mostly still intact, which surrounds the church and part of the village. Unfortunately the church was not open, but we did walk all the way around on the top of the wall. It wasn’t a very high wall, maybe 5 to 10 feet typically, but I guess in those ancient times, it was enough. Inside of the wall, is a large grassy area which is now used for campers. There were only a couple of them there at the time, but we understand that it is a quite popular area and later in the summer, it will be quite full.

While we were exploring, we met an American who was now living in Denmark. He worked for one of the companies who owned several of the ubiquitous windmills that we pass. The Scandinavian countries have embraced wind generated electric power in a big way. Many of the windmills have been built over the water, but many more are built on land. Many people consider these monstrosities to be environmentally friendly, but they sure produce a considerable amount of visual pollution. He was there to inspect some of the offshore windmills to see that they were still operating correctly. Even he admitted however, that without governmental subsidies, they were not cost effective.

The town didn’t have any store for provisions and only one restaurant, which currently was only open on Thursday. But is was quite picturesque and we noticed a couple of tour busses coming through and stopping long enough for the tourists to take a couple of pictures through the windows of the bus. Many of the houses had lilacs in bloom and the sun treated us to a spectacular sunset over the bay from where we were moored along the dock.