Friday 11 May
An early start to begin a longish day passage, smoothly out of our borrowed box berth and into a lumpy sea left over from yesterday’s wind. Once the lines and fenders were tidily stowed by Mate, she took over on the helm while Skipper hoisted the mainsail and set the genoa, in a very cooperative wind of NW 3-4, giving us a lovely reach due South. By 0900 the sky was lifting and brightening, and huge flocks of barnacle geese flew overhead on their migration to the Northeast and their Summer breeding grounds. Mate changed the courtesy flag from Sweden back to Denmark as we crossed through Danish waters on our way to Germany.
With Jeanny happily keeping us in the right direction, the crew soon settled into a two-hourly watch. Around lunchtime the wind backed to the West and died away, so even with both foresails flying and the cone up, indicating we were motorsailing, Trevver had to be put into service to push us safely across the shipping lane between large vessels.
During the afternoon the wind filled in again, still from the West, all the sails were back in action and the courtesy flag was changed once again, this time back to the black-red-yellow of Germany. As we approached the Northern beaches of the island of Rügen, we passed through a fleet of yachts and picked up the red and green buoys of the approach channel through the Hiddensee towards Barhöft. On the way in, Mate spotted several vessels at anchor and we opted to join them rather than squeeze into a tight berth in this small and busy harbour. Just 12 hours from departure, we had another 65M under my keel, and I was lying peacefully in a beautiful spot just South of Böck Island in the Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park.