FEHMARN TO WARNEMUNDE (Rostock)
Day 2 Tuesday, 21st May 2019
We’ve been seeing and hearing loads of birds in Fehmarn: Red breasted Mergansers (like mallards but with more pointed beaks), oystercatchers, moorhen, swans, herring gulls, cormorants and herons.
We ate at the Lotzenhus Restaurant last night and took this photo on the way back to the boat – sunset over the silos.
Rang our grandson Ralph early this morning – it’s his 6th Birthday today. And his mum, Susannah’s, tomorrow.
We set off from Fehmarn at 9.15 am, waved off by Pauline Smith from ‘Odile’. (Andy Smith took lots of photos of our new propeller in Dragor, near Copenhagen, last year whilst we were back for a week in Whitby.) This year they’re hoping to get to Berlin down the river.
The wind picked up to 12 – 15 knots in a westerly direction and we sailed for half an hour with the main and genoa, but then the fog came down, the wind died and we had to put the engine on. We got out our fog horns – including one called ‘Trump’ (very ecological as you only have to blow it) and the other called ‘Frog horn’ and tried to blow them every two minutes for one long blast. In Germany you also have to display an inverted cone when you’re motor-sailing.
The ‘Arklow Marsh’ radioed us up and said we were on a collision course! She was at anchor and we’d just changed course to avoid her, but couldn’t see her through the fog.
The marina was across the shipping channel. Thank Heavens for AIS – it helped us so much in the fog, identifying the ferries, ships and yachts going in and out of Warnemunde and Rostock! One ferry from Gedser to Rostock was doing 21 knots!
The Hohe Duene 5 star marina and hotel complex only cost 22 euros per night – cheaper than Whitby. Queued up at the Harbour Master’s office with lots of Germans who’d been racing in the fog and spent the rest of the evening toing and froing to the washing machine and drier.
I forgot to mention that we met a sailor who had his boat in Whitby about 20 years ago: Scheherazade and then Warboy (or might have been Warhorse?). He recognised the WYC on the transom. Does anybody know his name?
Lady Hamilton 2019 