Lady Hamilton 2019

STOCKHOLM TO SODERTALJE (in the Sodertalje Canal) (31`miles)

Day 73  Monday, 12^th August 2019

We set off from Stockholm at 8.50 am and search for the entrance to the ‘canal’ that lies below the island of Sodermalm.  It’s right behind the cruise liner who’s just tying up! (It’s also where ‘Cinderella’ and the Viking line ferries tie up, which  I referred to on Friday.)

Heading westwards, first we have to wait for a bridge to open.  We read the instructions in English and it’s opening at 9.30 am – we anticipated that it would open at 9.15 am, according to the Pilot Book. Lots of traffic going over the bridge so it’s not opening any time soon!  It shut pretty quickly after we’d gone through.

Then there’s a lock and we have to hang on to blue ropes.  It’s not like Scotland, where we’ve been in the Caledonian Canal, the Crinan Canal and the Forth and Clyde Canal, with loads and loads of water piling in – these locks are only filled by a metre up or down!  Which is why we don’t have to attach any lines.

We then have to go under a bridge which says it has a height of 14,7m and we have 14,6m air draft – we hold our breaths!

 

There are many modern blocks of apartments and offices on this side of Stockholm.  I love this little shark on the front of a yacht and see some men diving from a platform.  The water must be so clean in the city of Stockholm. 

We take a deviation to look at Drottningholm Palace, home to the Swedish royal family since 1981, on an island in Lake Malaren.  It was built from 1662 onwards to designs by Nikodemus Tessin the Elder (him again!).  The entire estate is part of Unesco’s World Heritage programme.  We thought we could grab a stern buoy and spend a couple of hours looking round the Palace, including the Court Theatre and the Chinese Pavilion, but the stern buoys are the other side of a very low bridge which doesn’t open!  We haven’t taken the right route – but Hedvig Eleanora’s State Bedchamber (in a brochure on the Royal Palaces) looks very baroque and golden and I don’t like this style at all.  The same at the Royal Palace in Gamla Stan – completely over the top!  There’s a restricted area on the water in front of the Palace, which we don’t cross, but I can take photos.  

It rains and we have to put our kagouls on and oily trousers before entering the Sodertalje Canal, turning south.   There’s plenty of holiday cottages, motor boats and yachts along the ‘Canal’ – I love these rocks and stairs going down to the boats and plenty of swimming ladders too.   

It’s not canalised at all at both ends, but a narrow part has these large ‘dolphins’ for guiding ships.

Once in Sodertalje city, it turns very industrial.  We see chemical works, factories, power station, a cement works.  They’re also renewing the canal and a lot of work is going on – Malcolm’s very interested as a civil engineer!

Once again we have to encounter a lifting bridge, the Malarbron Bridge, and another lock.  We have to moor before the bridge but could enter the lock shortly afterwards – apparently they don’t always coincide with their opening times.  There’s another bridge at the end of the lock – we have to hang onto the blue ropes for quite a while.  A girl comes and takes my credit card and charges 400 Swedish krona for leaving Lake Malaren.  Apparently you don’t have to pay going northwards!

We’re moored in Sodertalje Guest Marina and a couple of big ships go past late in the evening, straight into the lock – and I bet Malarbron Bridge lifts straight away for them!

STOCKHOLM

Day 72  Sunday, 11^th August 2019

We go on the ferry to Gamla Stan, the Old Town, and walk northwards up Osterlangsgatan and come out at the Official Residence of H M the King.  Designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, the Royal Palace is in the style of the Italian Baroque.  Completed in 1754, it is partly built on the remains of the former Tre Kroner Castle (Three Crowns Castle) which was destroyed by fire in 1697. 

 

 

The Vikings came to Stockholm from Lake Malaren (west of Stockholm) to improve their access to the sea for trade – they were the capital city’s founder members!  Around 1250 Stockholm’s leaders wrote a town charter and signed up to the Hanseatic League.  The Tre Kroner castle was commissioned in 1252, but a 100 years later the Black Death wiped out a third of the population.   

We walk through the Courtyard of the Royal Palace, and find Sweden’s Parliament on another island to the north of Gamla Stan. 

Love these ladies dressed in traditional costume, walking past from the Square (Stortorget).  We see them later being photographed with Japanese tourists outside the Royal Palace! 

After the Palace we go to the Nobel-museet, which presents the history of the Nobel prizes and their recipients, with a focus on the intellectual and cultural aspects of invention.  We have a coffee in the café and take a guided tour in English.  Did you know that there were 5 categories of prizes: Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Literature, Peace?  And Economics came later.  Nobel put the original categories in his Will. 

 

There are different certificates for each category and gold medals for each recipient, and prize money too.  So far 902 Nobel Prizes have been awarded – sometimes as many as three people get the prize for one category, or organisations such as Unicef and Amnesty.   

We graduate towards the Martin Luther King exhibit and it has many facts about his life and work, and many photographs too, which we spend ages perusing.

My favourite authors (who received the Nobel prize for Literature) ever since I was at Crossley and Porter’s in Halifax – John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.

Two of the Peace prize winners – Al Gore and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Storkyrkan Cathedral is next on the list!  It’s Stockholm’s oldest building, consecrated in 1306, and one-time venue for royal weddings and coronations.  The Gothic-baroque interior includes very extravagant royal-box pews designed by Tessin the Younger, as well as George and the Dragon, a dramatic sculpture to commemorate the victory over the Danes in 1471.

After all that we go to Restaurant Kaffeegillet for some lunch.  It rains on and off – so we put our kagouls on and off – but the umbrellas are a real menace, catching you in the eye when you’re not expecting it!

We can hear the band playing and have to take photos back at the Royal Palace.  Aren’t the soldiers’ uniforms wonderful and colourful?  The shiny gold helmets must weigh a ton!

We discover on Google maps that there’s a Lady Hamilton Hotel just round the corner.   They’ve got many pictures of Emma Hamilton when she was doing her ‘poses’, which I’ll send to my brother because he gave us two of her portraits.  I show the receptionist our card which has Lady Hamilton, our boat, on it and she waxes lyrical about going sailing! She tells us that there’s a Lord Nelson Hotel just round the corner – and we find it too.

We wend our way back to the ferry, going down a very busy tourist street on a mission to find the narrowest street in Gamla Stan (below).  The other photo is me in the Stortorget.

Nearby is the only grocery store in Gamla Stan.  We have to buy what we couldn’t carry last night – it’s the Coop but not like the big one in Whitby.  It’s very tiny and only has tiny trolleys to get down the very narrow aisles.

Get the ferry back to Djurgarden, our island where the marina is situated.  We eat on board again, Bean and Bacon casserole, and the red sky promises good weather tomorrow.

 

STOCKHOLM
Day 71 Saturday, 10th August 2019

Stockholm is built on 14 islands and the city’s charms are irresistible! Neutral Sweden left it and its capital city in good shape through both world wars, so what you see is original, unlike Tallinn, Riga and Gdansk where most of the buildings have been reconstructed.

Malcolm has to phone Johan Hanson at the Volvo dealer at 11 am to try to order some gaskets for the fuel pump. He doesn’t have any in stock but might be able to find some.

We set off before lunch to the System Bolaget (the liquor stores in Sweden are controlled by the Government), as it closes at 3pm and doesn’t open on Sundays. We desperately need more wine boxes! Unfortunately you can’t have a delivery from Laithwaite’s at home when you’re on the boat, and we have to go grocery shopping with our rucksacks too. It all takes time – and doing the washing with many different machines and dryers takes time too!

Anyway,  after picking up our wine boxes at the very clinical and clean System Bolaget,  with lots of choice for wine boxes, we walk with our heavy rucksacks to the nearby Historika Museet, which spans over 10,000 years of Swedish history and culture. We put our rucksacks in a locker and we do a Viking tour with a red-headed archeologist.

The Viking Exhibition is opening 2020 so we can’t see what that has to offer. The Vikings were rich because they sold slaves, the archaeologist tells us, not just trading goods like furs. They were paid in gold and silver coins, which they melted down and made these extravagant necklaces.

We’ve seen lots of these decorated stones in Visby, on the island of Gotland. Do you remember? Most of them in the Historika Museum are from Gotland – a local Viking speciality! And they have runes, a special language made of symbols. And these are miniature Viking boats. The soil isn’t good in Sweden for preserving boats, unlike Norway and Denmark, where they have some beautiful preserved Viking boats.

There’s a massive display about the Battle of Gotland 1361 when the mercenary troops of Danish King Aldemar Atterdag killed 1800 Gotland farmers. They all die outside Visby, as they can’t penetrate the defence wall and locked out by the gates, and their corpses are thrown into mass graves. Lots of gruesome skulls and bones!

I think this helmet looks like the one from Sutton Hoo.  Do you agree?

A stunning whole room of altarpieces from the Middle Ages, but I can’t linger as I’ve lost Malcolm!

This is Christina, Queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus who fell in battle in 1632. He made Sweden one of the leading powers in Europe. She was his sole surviving heir, and so she was schooled for the throne, which in many ways meant being brought up like a young man. In 1644 she turned 18 and took over the reigns of government and in 1650 she was crowned King of Sweden, not Queen! Four years after her coronation, she abdicated making her cousin Karl Gustav her successor.

And then she went to Italy and became a Catholic – ruining any chance of coming back as Queen (or King!) in Lutheran Sweden. I’m reading her biography at the moment so I’m interested in her.

Afterwards we call at the ICA small supermarket to buy food for tonight – I’m making Thai Green Chicken Curry. We can’t carry any more as we’re weighed down with our wine boxes!

We can hear the screams from Grona Lund Tivoli on the boat!

FURUSUND TO STOCKHOLM (Wasahamnen Marina)  36 miles

Day 70  Friday, 9^th August 2019

Cast off at 8.15 am, having woken at 6 am (we’re in a new time zone) and had showers and breakfast.  Paavo, the Finn on the next boat, tells us to beware the white ferries which cross the channel.  Good advice!   We’ve had good weather on the whole.  We were delayed in Riga, Latvia, for a day because of high winds but we’ve haven’t used our ‘bad weather days’ after that.  

The ‘Baltic Princess’ goes past us – she’s going to Turku, in Finland.  And the Viking Line ‘Grace’ goes past us too, towards Mariehamn, and we have to slow down as it’s a very narrow channel.

We’re taking a short cut, away from the Baltic ferry route (at last!), past Vaxholm Castle on an island in the middle of the channel.  We have to pass on the east side of the island. 

They’re obviously having a re-enactment day at the castle with lots of men in red tights!

I love these homes on the water.  One is having a bonfire and we can smell the smoke. 

Approaching Stockholm, we rejoin the ferry route. 

The ‘Cinderella’ is coming in and overtakes us as we’re nearing Djurgarden – an island in Stockholm City where the Wasahamnen Marina is situated.  Cinderella turns on a sixpence in front of us and docks on the island of Sodermalm,  with cruise liners and ferries, to the south of us. 

I take a photo of the Stockholm skyline – so excited to be here!  

The marina is very near the Vasa Museum where we went last year – and we had lunch at the Viking Museum with all our family, just opposite the marina.   There were loads of Brits last year on yachts in the marina. It was very, very hot –  that’s why we didn’t come into Stockholm again.  (The ‘Vasa’ was a big ship, owned by the King, which sank on its maiden voyage on 10^th August 1628, a bit like the ‘Mary Rose’.)

In the evening we go out to eat at Wardshuset Ulla Winbladh, recommended by the Harbour Office, which was a steam bakery at the time of 1897 Stockholm World’s Fair, and was turned into a restaurant in the ‘50s.  It survived beyond the exhibition– like the Eiffel Tower, a waiter told us!   We both have green salad as a starter, and I have meatballs in a cream sauce and potato puree, with lingonberry sauce and sliced gherkins, and Malcolm has roasted herring and new potatoes – both traditional Swedish fayre.  The bread in a basket has filled us up before the main courses so we don’t have desserts!   The service was impeccable and very friendly.   

 

 

MARIEHAMN (ALAND, FINLAND) TO FURUSUND (SWEDEN) 43 miles
Day 69 Thursday, 8th August 2019
We’ve been bitten by mosquitoes in Mariehamn, in spite of the net cover over the hatch in the forecabin. Malcolm made a full flyscreen for our washboard as well – and we still got bitten! We sprayed Deet over ourselves before retiring to bed too – and we still got bitten! It’s the first time this year that we’ve had bites. They’re very itchy!
We leave at 8 am and find there’s cruise liner in and the ferry Viking Grace.

We wonder what the pyramid is on the rock at the entrance to the Mariehamn channel ? Looks like a traditional house and it’s on the front of the chart pack (a photograph on the front cover) but no large pyramid.

Motorsailed, with both sails up with little wind, across the shipping lanes, north to south, going to the Gulf of Bothnia in the north and ships going to many places in the south, including Gdansk, Poland, and Ahus, Sweden, which we went to last year.

But when we get to the Stockholm Archipelago we can sail! We enter at the first green buoy, into the shipping lane leading to Stockholm, which takes all the ferries and cruise ships. We’ve got 9 knots of wind and are doing 5.25 knots over the ground – the skipper’s trimming the sails as we go along!
I decide what I’d like to do in Stockholm and What’s app Morag who has been three times to Stockholm. She tells me to go to Alhand’s Department Store (the equivalent of John Lewis) which her Dad will hate!

Galaxy (the big ferry) overtakes us at 20 knots but has to slow down in the Furusund – only 8 knots allowed here. Yellow ferries, Frida and Gulli, are crossing the Furusund too.

The marina in Furusund charges an exorbitant price for a one-night stay, £35, which included £7 for the electricity ! But there’s good music from the terrace of the café where you have to pay, a sole guitarist playing ‘ Hotel California’ by the Eagles. We have torrential rain and thunder and lightening in the evening.

I cook Aland pork chops, green beans and potatoes and watch another episode of ‘Mad Men’.

We’ve forgotten that Sweden is an hour behind Finland until I set the alarm at bedtime – it’s going to wake us in 9 hours! Need to change the clock in the saloon and our wristwatches, the Kindle and the I pad….

The Finn on the next door boat takes photos of Lady Hamilton with Aida, the cruise ship, which glided past about 22:00 and sends me the photo to my email.

MARIEHAMN

Day 68  Wednesday, 7^th August 2019

I blog and did one load of washing in the laundry this morning.  I needed another token for the sheets and towels but the lady in the laundry told me that the Harbour Master’s office is shut until 2 pm – so I’ll do it this evening.  Malcolm fuelled up and then plotted the route for the centre of Stockholm.

After lunch we go to look round the sailing ship, ‘Pommern’, at the Aland Maritime Museum (Sfofarts Museum) which is near to the marina.  We get headphones from a friendly Australian lady who lives in Mariehamn. 

Pommern was built in Glasgow in 1903 and is practically unchanged since then.  She was built as a cargo ship and has shipped timber from Scandinavia, saltpetre from Chile and grain from Australia.  Pommern was bought by the Aland shipowner, Gustaf Erikson in 1923 and made her last voyage in 1939.  Since the 1950’s she’s served as a museum ship in the Western Harbour of Mariehamn and she is Aland’s best-loved visitor attraction.

Pommern is 94m long and 13m wide, her main mast is 46m high.  She has 28 sails and a crew of 26 – they had to work very hard!

The audio-guide only works on the Weather Deck which tells you all about ‘100 days under sail’ from Port Victoria in Australia to London, so we go down to the Tween Deck where there’s several  activities and large photos, with information.  I like this one which is about crossing the Equator – an initiation rite for the sailors who’ve never crossed the line!

In the Cargo Hold there’s a weather and wind show. They took ballast on the way to Australia and the crew had to empty the hold by hand as they were bringing back grain.

In the museum, there’s lots of information and large photographs.  I love this one of the Captain on Pommern and the sails, crashing through the waves.

 One of Gustaf Erikson’s (he was an Aland ship owner who bought Pommern) ships sank off Salcombe.

There was a female sailor who served under Gustaf Erikson.  Can’t believe she rounded Cape Horn 8 times!

 

And here is Eric Newby, who photographed the sailing ships as he knew they were dying out.

After we’ve finished in the Museum we find a Midsummer pole outside – with more yachts on the top.

 We stroll down the road to the supermarket and find lovely pastel-coloured wooden houses.  We think the one on the right looks like the Psycho house.

And we have to taste an Aland Pancake before we leave, a fluffy square pudding made with semolina and served with applesauce and cream.  There’s a café just opposite the supermarket and they do Alandspannkaka!

 

 

 

 

 

 

DEGERBY TO MARIEHAMN, Capital of Aland

Day 67  Tuesday, 6^th August 2019

Talk to the Germans on the next boat to us in Degerby, we’ve seen them in Kokar.  They have an old ketch with a petrol engine, which they keep on German fjord close to the Danish border.  They live in Hamburg and have 5 weeks left of sailing and are going to Sweden (the Stockholm Archipelago) today. 

Pink granite rocks on the way to Mariehamn and a small lighthouse as we’re leaving Degerby.

We see them three hours later setting off for the archipelago.

We sail, under main and genoa,

from 11 am until 1.30 pm when the wind dies completely and we clock 0.06 knots of wind speed.   We’re going down a narrow channel (no ferries fortunately!) and a Swedish charter boat passes us with 4 guys on board.  Apparently they’ve been doing this for 5 years, they tell us when they overtake us at a snail’s pace.

The ferries are coming!  We see on AIS that 2 are in the dock in Mariehamn and 2 more are coming.  The ferries depart and the two ferries arriving have to turn round just in front of us. 

And we can see the West harbour marina quite near.  There’s an East harbour but you have go round the Mariehamn peninsula – they’re 15 miles apart by sea! – but you can walk across in 20 minutes.

I meet our Finnish friends from Uto who gave us the courtesy flag for Aland in the Harbour Master’s office!  The husband, Tobi, buys a Magnum Classic for 3 euros in the office.  He’s says it’s much cheaper in the supermarket.  His wife is going on the ferry tonight back to Helsinki and he’ll be a single-handed sailor for a week.  So lovely to see them!  I give them a card with the Blog address on.    

I meet my friend in the showers and she persuades me to have a sauna with her – she’s even got two disposable mats with her to sit on.  We’re completely naked and she puts water on the sauna to make it steam more.  We find out that both our husbands are civil engineers, Tobi set up his own business in 1994, two years later than Malcolm.  Another lady comes in and puts more water on the sauna – it’s getting quite hot in here and I have to leave before I keel over!  They’re both very amused that I’ve never been in a sauna before – but I did go in one at Dunsley Hall, near Sandsend, with Keith Hopkins, many years ago!!

Tobi and Malcolm are in the men’s showers too – and he’s been reading my Blog and says it’s very interesting with all the history I put in and photographs.  I’ve gained a reader!

We’re dining out tonight – the first time in over a week – in the restaurant in the amazing club house. 

We find our Finnish friends are eating there too but we don’t join them as they may be bidding their fond farewells to each other! 

Malcolm’s got a spicy herring starter and I have a salad, then he has mussels!  And I have perch with new potatoes with grilled lettuce.

I try to take photos of our boat out of the window, but the sun is sinking fast and it’s right behind the boat. 

We love this restaurant – so quaint inside and out.

 

 

KOKAR TO DEGERBY (Degora Island) – 26 miles

Day 66  Monday, 5^th August 2019

The Finnish families are going home now as school starts next week – only retired couples like us are staying on. 

We leave at 9 am and wend our way through many islets – we have to blow up the chart on the chart plotter and we have an enlargement on the actual chart too!  So pleased again that Malcolm’s put in so many waypoints.  We’re so glad that it’s great weather and calm water – superb visibility to see the many rocks.  We motored all day with the main up as the wind is only 2 – 3 knots.

See a spinnaker coming towards us – well done Finnish sailor on ‘Zelda’, the wind is only 3 knots.

It’s a day of avoiding the ferries.  This is the Galaxy ferry (Silja Line), 212 metres long , going down the same route as us at a speed of 20 knots.

The Viking ferry (red one) – 171 metres long – doing 17 knots.  Another ferry coming the other way. Two more ferries pass us.

And the ferry docks in Degerby, just outside our berth!

Arrive at 2 pm but we’re feeling quite tired.  Think it must be all the concentrating on the chart, the chart plotter and the waypoints on the GPS in the cockpit.  You can’t relax for a minute when you’re going through so many rocks – and the ferries, which have priority over us mere mortals!  Malcolm puts in the next waypoints to Mariehamn, the capital of Aland, and I have a quick snooze in the cockpit.  After that I go to the supermarket and pay 25 Euros for the night, and get the ingredients for Broccoli Lemon Chicken.  The girl in the supermarket is very chatty and asks me which country we’re coming from – she recognises my English accent!

KOKAR

Day 65  Sunday, 4^th August 2019

Have showers and a leisurely breakfast with home-baked rolls from the shop and real coffee.  It is Sunday after all!

We walk to the church over the boulders with lots of heather out on the rocks, and pass a meadow full of wild flowers. 

The way is guided by ivory bows tied to bushes and trees and small cairns.

St. Anne’s is a 17^th century church built on the site of an old Franciscan monastery, founded in Hamno (another island in the Kokar group of islands) in the 15^th century. 

 

We fail to find the bronze age settlement as we can’t decipher the signs.

In the afternoon we have a car for 2 hours – from 2 until 4 pm – although the Harbour Master tells me that there’s non-one coming after us so we can keep it for a little longer.  We’ve never had a cabriolet in our lives before – even one with 217,000 kms on the clock! 

We drive to the museum in Helso (another island in the Kokar group!) and a lady greets us very warmly and we have to part with 3 euros each. 

She tells us about the stone – they used to hit it with a small rock when there was fog.  The sound penetrated the fog and the fishermen could steer towards it for safety.  It’s certainly got a fantastic ring to it!

We think this looks like tartan and Harris tweed!

There are lots of old photos in the museum of fishermen.  They caught herring and had it salted in barrels which were sent to Stockholm, Helsinki and Tallinn.  We walked to a fisherman’s hut down a leafy lane.  And this is the first tractor in Kokar!

Magnus Jansson was a sheep shearer and fisherman.  This is a picture of his boat and him on a rocky shore with a half-sheared sheep.  This is for my cousin Helen in Australia, whose husband was a part-time sheep shearer.

 After that we drive to a marina on the same island but the fuel isn’t open here (we’d like to put 10 euros of fuel in the car).  This is a beautiful marina, one of three on the island.  We now drive to Karlby, the main village, where there’s another beautiful marina.  We go to the small supermarket and buy groceries – including a can of Heinz baked beans, which costs 2.75 euros (more than £2)!  I need them for tea as I’m cooking what is basically an English Breakfast.  We put fuel in the car, assisted by another helpful Finn.

We drive back to Sandvig, where our boat is, and admire the scenery on the way.  I spot a group of white cows and many hay bales wrapped in plastic.  It’s a lovely island and we’re so pleased to have driven all over it!

UTO TO KOKAR (Sandvig) in the Aland Archipelago

Day 64  Saturday, 3^rd August 2019

The stern anchor, nicely stowed away, after we left Uto.  We used it last on the Swedish island of Uto, a year ago!

Our very friendly Finnish neighbours give us an Aland courtesy flag which we’ll need in Kokar, a part of the Aland islands between Finland and Sweden.  (We’re sailing west from one island to another, towards Stockholm.)  They’re going to Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland islands, on Tuesday and so are we.  We’ve found the Finns to be much more chatty since we left Helsinki and had good conversations with people in Hanko, Vano, Uto and Kokar. 

There are 257 larger islands (each over 1 sq. km.) within the Archipelago Sea and about 17,700 smaller islets.  A good estimate of the smallest uninhabitable rocks and skerries is about 50,000! 

The Aland Islands, the largest islands in the region, form an autonomous area within Finland.  They are within the EU but remain outside its tax area.  It has its own parliament, police, flag and prints its own stamps, and because it’s a demilitarised area, citizens are exempt from military service.  The number of permanent residents on the archipelago islands is approx. 60,000 with 27,000 of them living in Aland. 

During cold winters official ice roads are established between some islands.  It’s sometimes possible to drive across the ice from the mainland.  However, during spring and autumn, the ice is too thin for walking and too thick for boating.  This can leave some islands isolated for days or weeks!  It’s quite cold today – hope the ice isn’t coming soon! 

The depth is more than 100 metres but there are still rocks all around us.  We motored for an hour into the wind (we are confined by the channels) but as the channel turned to the west we able to sail on a fetch all the way to our destination, in northerly winds up to 17 knots

We meet a ferry coming from Kokar in the narrow passage.  They run all summer between the islands, ferrying passengers, cars and campervans – and supplies for the islands.  You can’t stop a ferry going about its business – it’s doing 11 knots this one – and we have to stay out of its way.

We dock alongside in Kokar (Sandvig) as I clipped onto the stern buoy but the knot wasn’t tight enough on the line from the stern buoy to our stern and it undid itself, so that’s why we’re alongside.  Two chaps came and helped us and the Harbour Master retrieved the hook from the stern bouy – he’s got a jet ski.  Sandvig is a fine place with modern toilets and showers, a kitchen for the campers, a café and a shop.  The harbour master runs the shop (and probably the café too) and we hired a car for two hours tomorrow.  That’s how long it takes to get round the island!  I don’t do bikes – had a very wobbly experience in Croatia with water on either side – so that’s why we had to hire a car to go the museum.  And we bought smoked white fish in the shop and had it for tea with new potatoes and French beans.  And as it was a Saturday night, we watched two episodes of Mad Men and ate chocolate!