Wednesday 18 April
It seems the weather gods must have trainees on the job – after the first hour’s glorious sailing yesterday morning, the rest of the day was a long slog with Trevver maintaining his record of diesel consumption, and then there was enough wind overnight to keep the windgen whining and disturb Mate’s beauty sleep.
Today’s big question is: to bridge, or not to bridge? The bridge in question spans Fehmarnsund, and has a recorded air draught of 22-23 metres, depending on which source you’re referring to. All include caveats about strong currents of up to four knots, direction dependent on which way strong winds have been blowing recently (if at all), and varying height of water according to any number of factors. All very complicated, and as my mast soars to somewhere around 21 metres, and Skipper tends to pass under bridges of 40 metres’ clearance with his eyes shut, Mate took the prudent decision to go around Fehmarn Island instead. During the resultant 35 miles’ passage, Skipper then explained several reasons why he’d thought we’d be fine to take the shortcut…ah well, peace, harmony and concord…?
So we completed another circumnavigation, clockwise around Fehmarn Island. The first two legs were pretty perfect on comfortable reaches, then the wind dropped and backed as we eased right for the third time, punctuated briefly by an amazing 7.5 knots under full main and gennaker, until the wind disappeared suddenly and completely. Once again, we completed the passage under the iron sail, and found our way into a lovely anchorage from an entrance channel reminiscent of Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. The day ended on a beautiful sunset, and we were about three miles from where we’d begun the morning.