TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

We drove east from the mouth of the Rhone through Marseilles and finally encountered the mythical crowded conditions of the Cote D’Azur in Cassis. Beautiful but completely full car and people traffic jammed from highway to beach, and we spent the whole day simply driving eastward looking for a hotel room (finally found one at 5pm off the highway in Toulon). Instead of more touristing we drove the next day for Bridget’s parents place near Antibes and we stayed on their Dufour 32 sailing every day of our five days there.

Sailing with Bridget’s parents on their boat was an interesting contrast for us having just come off cruising our own boat for over two months. We noticed immediately how relaxed we felt sailing someone else’s boat and how much more fun we were having as a result. No surprise really because Bridget’s parents took care of us so we no longer had to think about where we were going to sleep at night or where to eat or what cultural historic sights to go see so our entire life became incredibly easy, well fed and fun. In fact they gave us the five day French Riviera trip of a lifetime and we loved it.

Sailing the warm blue waters of the Med, swimming off the back of the boat, warm sleeping on the boat but not too hot at night, we realized why people vacation and sail here.  Now we are happy to be back in Washington, getting the schooner annual maintenance done and ready for a buyer coming to see it next week. Then sailing up to Wooden Boat Fest in Port Townsend and from there on the San Juans for a week. Final words of wisdom? Nothing new: Never ever become a two boat owner! The stuff we own owns us!

We spent a week in Kiel trying to decide whether to continue sailing south via North Sea and Dutch Canals to England or to leave the boat for sale with the Hallberg Rassy dealer in Germany. After buying the charts for the trip on to England we changed our minds and decided we had to take this opportunity to sell the boat sooner for the best price possible so to leave the boat for sale in Germany. I think I have said already we own two boats and for almost two years we have had our traditional wood schooner for sale in Seattle but it has not sold. Owning two boats is owning two holes in the water into which you pour money so we have to take the steps necessary to make sure one is sold.

It took one more long day of 20kt winds and rainshower motorsailing east then southeast to bring the boat to the dealer in Neustadt, Germany. We were stopped by German Wasserpoliezi two hours short of our destination for motorsailing without the inverted cone day shape (our friend Jim Noval told me to get the cone!). They checked our passports and we were happy that they were stamped by German immigration! Like the Swedish Coast Guard the Germans let us go without punishment but it was another reminder that a US flagged yacht can attract attention and if we stayed in Europe longer than the Schengen Treaty limit of 90 days we could have a problem. So it reinforced our decision to leave Europe and leave the boat with the dealer in Neustadt.

Like everything HR, the dealership in Neustadt is a true first class operation run by helpful, friendly, experienced and entirely professional brokers Horst and Rolf who each have had long solid careers with HR (Rolf has  30 years experience with HR boats). The Ancora Marina is a huge modern marina with every service and amenity including several massive heated winter storage sheds where all the boats spend the winter. We left the boat looking like new with all our extra gear removed and stored in a crate in HR’s winter boat storage building so if no one buys the boat over the winter we will come back next year and sail south. Yes, we’ll be back if DOVE doesn’t sell with another 90 Schengen days in Europe to sail further south. So there you have it, Bert and Bridget’s 800nm Baltic Summer Cruise completed.

We hit the road in a rental car to see some of Europe and have ended up at Port Saint Louis at the mouth of the Rhone where we might have wintered on the boat if we had taken the canals or trucked the boat south if we had the nerve to break the Schengen 90 day rule. For those of you sailors thinking about Port St Louis it is a really nice town, 5 miles of flat bike lane riding to a huge sandy beach, low key laid back but clean and modern yacht harbors and yards, and a big supermarket an easy walk from the downtown marina. A great place for spending some months during the winter. The south of France definitely has the climate and agriculture going for it and the Pont du Gard is tres cool but overall France is dirty and run down with a slightly threatening street atmosphere compared to Germany and Scandinavia and Germany has affordability and incredible bike paths and population all out riding bikes everywhere which is the way we all need to go so Germany is my favorite country of all we visited (if only I could speak German!). See how Germany comapres to US in bicycle use here (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008149178_bicycles31.html).We are back in the US in another week so this is the end of the voyage for now. Thanks for reading and feel free to contact me if you need info I may have.

I think I last posted from Anholt Island in the middle of the Kattegat. Well, our lovely protected Anholt refuge from the NE wind turned into a middle of the night mess with wind shifting East and strengthening sending a big swell through the packed exposed anchorage. Luckily we arrived last and so were anchored well outside the packed boats in only 5m depth with plenty of scope for our rode so we only watched as boats dragged onto one another in the dark wind and waves then weighed anchor and motored for shelter inside the packed haven or re-anchored further out. We did have to lower our roller furled gennaker down to the dark and heaving deck fearing it would catch wind and partially open up on us. Basically it was another night up until 2am on anchor watch worrying and wondering ‘why do people think yachting is fun.’

We were happy to leave early the next day and use the 15kt easterly to sail to Grenaa on the Danish East Coast where we were lucky to find an empty slip in the crowded yacht haven and get some rest. The next day after Bridget bought groceries we sailed 55 miles south all the way into the Grosser Belt leaving the Kattegat behind once and for all(!) having a strong easterly wind all day until it died just inside the Belt. Then in the calm Danish evening with a heavy cow manure farming smell hanging in the air came a biblical plague of flies which we slapped and swatted continuously while we motored south for two more hours.

The next day we sailed in a strong Easterly breeze south to a bay on the southwest side of Langeland Island where we found shelter from the swell if not the 20kt SE wind itself. Anchored securely and slept well.

The forecast the next day was for 20kt East winds again and we had a 30 mile more or less open sea crossing to Germany but we went anyway not wanting to be trapped by southerly winds expected the day or two after that with a low pressure that was moving north from Britain. We sailed three quarters of the way with just the jib up and still made 5-6kts the entire way and the last ten miles into Kieler Forde the wind seemed to die so we added the reefed main only to have the wind kick back up to 20-22kts so we ran in at 7-8kts which was fun except for the occasional ominous thunk from the rudder post! I think the tiller slips a little on the rudder post under heavy load but can’t seem to reproduce the problem at the dock.

We moored at Die Horn, Kiel’s city yacht haven all the way up at the head of the Kieler Forde behind a mysteriously controlled foot traffic drawbridge. The large recently built Die Horn haven is suspiciously under used and the only other yachts were a handful of traditional boats off in their own nook called Germaniahafen. We found there is no fresh water available or bathrooms and showers but also no charge (!) and we were quite alone in a big city with urbanites wandering by at all times of day and night to check us out as we bobbed in waters unnaturally thick with jellyfish. The jellyfish ultimately partially plugged our head pump!

Within an hour of our arrival two wonderful police officers Eve and Stefan, came driving along, stopped and welcomed us to Germany. They helpfully called the immigration officers for us and then talked to us (or maybe kept an eye on us) until they came from the railroad station to stamp our passports. Gerhard and Andre the immigration officers were also exceptionally friendly and setting a new standard for the face of law enforcement for us and Bridget was very happy to receive her first official stamp in her passport from anyone since we arrived in Europe June 3rd! Thank you Eve, Stefan, Gerhard, and Andre, for your wonderful kindness to us. The next day we found the city library and a well stocked chandlery but no pilot guides in English to help us decide whether to go canal boating immediately or sail out the mouth of the Elbe and down the North Sea Coast to Amsterdam via the Standemast Route in the Netherlands.

British Kiel Yacht Club

We moved out of Die Horn, Kiel’s large lonely inner city harbor, yesterday seeking fresh water for the tank and a bath for both the boat and ourselves and we got that and more here at the British Kiel Yacht Club, a bit of British soil in Germany (we were instructed to fly the Union courtesy flag over the German courtesy flag while we are moored here!) serving as an adventure training center for the British Army staffed by active soldiers and Army civilian employees. It is a special pleasure for us to visit BKYC as both English and Hallberg Rassy are spoken here! BKYC has ten HR342s (exact same HR model as our boat) for their charter fleet so I have been able to ask many questions and receive friendly helpful knowledgeable answers and advice from the yacht masters here.

For example, BKYC was able to have their boats ordered and delivered with a third reef in the mainsail which is what we also asked HR for but HR would not give it to us insisting the two deep reefs in the standard mainsail were enough. Well its not enough as we have already found out sailing in 25-30kts of wind with two reefs in the main and the jib rolled all the way up and the boat won’t sail to weather well enough to escape a nearby lee shore and with the jib rolled out even half way the boat is overpowered and feels out of control (we motor sailed out of that situation). One of the professional captains here at BKYC said they sail the boat with the third reef and the 100% jib and it handles well in 30kts of wind. So Monday the sail maker and rigger are back from vacation and we will get to speak to them about the third reef and tuning the rig. We are stuck anyway with a SW wind for the next few days (raining now).

Since Ellos, we have stayed in Marstrand, Goteborg, and a quiet achorage in Ockerosund. We left Ockerosund on the Swedish coast 30 miles south of Goteborg yesterday morning with a 4-12kt Easterly wind forecast but the wind dropped after two hours and we ended up motoring in a 2-5kt NE wind five more hours to Anholt, an island in the middle of the Kattegat. I think this was the first time either of us had ever set off into a land-less sea horizon trusting that our destination would rise up out of the sea if we just maintained course and speed. It was exciting. Lots of shipping along the Swedish-Danish maritime border and a Swedish Coast Guard cutter patrolling the invisible line.

Anholt island is little more than a well-developed sand bar with 2-5m depths all around it for a mile or two offshore. We anchored in the lee of the packed harbor (see photo) with dozens of other boats last night and then the wind shifted 90 degrees so we had one of those rolly, windy, will-our-anchor-hold, up-til-2am watching and worrying, wondering what-am-I-doing-here-anyway, nights.

I gues lots of boats dragged anchor because there was alot of after midnight lights and motors on with boats maneuvering around after the windshifted leaving the anchorage and cramming into the tiny already overfull harbor (glad I missed that scene!) or re-anchoring (one guy right up wind of us) but despite the windshift and more swell than I have ever had at anchor and the boat bucking around our anchor stayed planted in the sandy bottom. Anholt looks nice but it is packed with yachts and the usual drunken loud harbor ‘parteh’ was audible last night featuring the finest American ‘80s vintage music (QUEEN: ‘WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU!’) so we are leaving in the next couple of hours for Grena about 25 miles SE on the mainland in a few hours.  At least there is good wifi here. The weather is summer nice now and the East wind this morning promises a nice sail today.

I’ll write more when we get someplace quiet and after getting a good sleep.

Arrived last night to Ellos (our start point six weeks ago!) after 4 sailing days and 3 gale waiting-in-harbor days from Oslo. No wifi internet to be found easily since Oslo so alot to catch up on.

Our friends Joel and Belen came to Oslo to sail south with us. Joel is a professional ship captain so was a big help with sailing and navigating. We all discovered that two couples on a 34 foot boat for more than a week is challenging mentally and physically, but we had our best day of sailing as a crew yesterday sailing a few miles off the coast from Gluppo to Ellos in a 10-15kt SW wind and moderate to light swell. They left today to return to their normal lives but we are grateful for the effort they made to meet us, sail and share this experience with us. Our love to you always.

Big waves and wind in the Skagerrak, both while sailing and while blowing around on the anchor or slamming against a dock somewhere while waiting for gales to pass have us wondering, ’Is yachting fun?’ Answer: ‘Well, sometimes.’ We agree that light to moderate wind and seas and warm days are our preferred sailing medium and they are simply in short supply here in Sweden and Norway. The Kattegat is the next body of salt water to the south and always seems to be one step below the Skagerrak on the Beaufort Scale when the weather report comes up. We hope weather will moderate as we head south.

Oslo means God’s Field. The sail from Fredrikstad up the Oslofjorden has reminded us of our Puget Sound country. We understand why the Norwegian immigrants in our family settled on the Northwest Coast of North America, it looks like the Norwegian Coast. Evergreen forests, protected inland waterways, rocky islets and cold clear water. We have come to recognize a happy contentment in the Norwegian people too.  They love their boats and their bays and they are out in force this being the peak of the summer holdiday. From Fredrikstad we sailed first to Klokkerbukta where we anchored amidst many happy small boats, families towing their kids on skis and tubes, Then we sailed to Son, a town at the southern entrance to the narrows of the Oslofjorden, and spent a night at the town guest dock with dozens of other transient boats. We enjoyed meeting Irene and Robert sailing their Bavaria 38 and showing each other our boats. Robert was kind and willing to help me raise the furling asymmetric spinnaker on DOVE for the first time (at the dock!) so now we have a sail more or less ready for light downwind sailing.

After Son, we sailed up to Sandspollen where we lost the summer weather and rode out a storm at anchor.  From there we motored in light wind and rain to the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club, Dronningen, in Oslo, where the kind and capable harbor masters, Martin and Peter, independently helped us when our motor failed to start. Martin found us a dealer available to work on the problem and even did some basic electrical diagnosis. Volvo dealer Tim Wang of Sjosenteret Killingen came to us in his boat within an hour of Martin’s call and towed us to his dock in Killingen. His excellent mechanic quickly discovered our engine was in agroup known to have a bad ‘black box’ that Volvo had notified all authorized installation and service centers to replace back in February. So the black box was replaced under warrnaty and we had our required 20-50 hour service and were ready to go by the end of the day. Thanks Tim and Ebber at Sjosenteret Killingen and thanks to Martin and Peter at KNS, Dronningen.

Now we are at anchor at a beautiful anchorage a short sail west of central Oslo, swimming off the back of the boat and soaking up the warm rays of the sun that have returned to God’s Field.

Ahhh Norway, the land of my father’s people. Crossing the invisible watery boundary line between Sweden and Norway felt tangible to me, a fourth generation half Norwegian returning (under sail in a nice SW wind) to the father’s land. We sailed all the way from outside Havstensund Sweden across the border in the Skaggerack swells and up the long narrow 10 mile interisland aproach to the mouth of the Glomma River where we finally dropped sail and motored hard against a 2 knot current to gain the 300 year old efortified town of Fredrikstad. Was it my bias or was the climate warmer, the people friendlier, the boats more numerous, and the town more beautiful in Norway than in Sweden? Of course the Sweden of the Bohuslan Coast we had been travelling in had been Norway for most of its history until 1814 when Swedes had attacked and taken fortified Fredrikstad and the Norwegians ceded Bohuslan to the traditional enemy. Talk about sibling rivalry!

Glad to report that hostilities seem to have decreased (although Norway won’t join the EU). Walking around looking at the old town fortifications and the money and effort spent by a little town so long ago on defense we could only wonder at the collosal idiotic waste of time and money. And the wars of man and the waste of money are beyond all comprehension today. What have we learned since Fredrikstad was fortified three hundred years ago? Nothing if Iraq and world arms sales are an indication. But we can change: pray for peace and be peaceful in all your thoughts and daily interactions with other beings, practice compassion and unconditional forgiveness, bring peace wherever you go and take action for peace. We can all do this.

We learned today we will sail north to Oslo from here to meet our friends Joel and Belen who will help us then sail south south south before winter hits northern europe (in a few days or something).

We have been waiting in the HR marina for both a few minor repairs and for  the wind to come down from gale forces. It looks like the wind will finally be easing…so we are heading North in the morning!

We sailed DOVE around Orust Island last week , about 60nm, heading south from Ellos, Gasthamn winding our way through a twisiting narrow channel in the low rocky off-lying islands called the skaergard that cover the SW Swedish coastline. Navigation was challenging enough to require two of us, one staring into the digital chartplotter, zooming in and out and ahead, checking with the other at the helm who tried to follow position holding the Swedish paper chart while steering. We brought some black and white copies of the current NIMA charts of the area but that was a waste of money for coastal sailing here as you need color and large scale wherever possible to pick your way among the islands, nav markers and rocks.

We emerged into the open Skagerrack south of Karingon Island in light SW winds and finally raised both sails and turned the motor off sailing south and east to the entrance to the Stigfjorden south of Orust. We dropped sail for the tight entrance channel but once trhough rolled out the jib and had a wonderful run in a building SW wind east to the passage between Orust and Mjorn Island before rolling up the jib and motoring to concentrate on navigation. After sailing a gaff-riggegd schooner the past couple of years I am having a love affair with jib roller furling. You can turn on the sail power as fast as a motor and sail as fast as you can motor and turn off the sail power as fast as you can turn off an engine (almost). I can’t go back.

The wind followed us around the entire island and we were able to sail at 4 to 5 knots in the strong following wind with just our jib out all the way to Ljungskile where we found a sheltered anchorage behind Ulvon Island. The rain and Force 6 to 7 winds the next day kept us at anchor all day, me watching the boat for signs of anchor drag and experimenting with scope length and stern anchor placement to minimize sailing back and forth. For you anchoring nuts out there (Jim!) we have ~80’ of 5/16 chain shackled to the 35lb Delta anchor (our primary) and 240’ of 5/8ths 8 strand nylon rope spliced to the chain. Depths are shallow here and tidal range less than a couple feet. Wind stopped by late afternoon so we dinghied to shore and hiked around little Ulvon Island which is a little summer resort that is foot access only via a little bridge. The east side of Orust reminds us of sailing in the San Juans of Washington and the Gulf Islands of BC. So if you have been there then you don’t have to come sail this part of Sweden!

Thursday was more wind and rain so we thought we would just stay put but then the wind shifted 180 degrees making our anchorage uncomfortable so we weighed anchor and were away north again continuing our counterclockwise circumnavigation of Orust sailing under jib alone 5-6 kts in 20 kts of S wind until we turned SW from Havstens fjord and entered another tight channel under our second bridge of the trip (I am now very careful since nearly hitting the Skafto Island bridge!).

We thought we might anchor somewhere but there was nowhere to go since all good anchorages have marinas boat yards or private moorings so we decided to just head back to Ellos to see if we could get a few small repairs made to the boat at HR Friday. In this short stretch of water along the N coast of Orust you pass four of the world’s best boat builders: Vindo, Najad, Malo, and our first choice, Hallberg Rassy.  Why are the best boats in the world all coming from one island?

It rained hard on us our last hour or two but we were happy to dock in the HR Marina again, a friendly familiar place to us now when everything else feels unknown and far from home.

We were happily trapped in the Hallberg Rassy Varv (yard) marina Tueday and Wednesday due to strong winds, up to 35 knots one evening. Finally the wind died down and Thursday we made our move motoring around the point over to the Ellos Gasthamn, the guest moorage in the town harbor. A small step but we are officially out of the HR nest. Ellos is a beautiful town and the bakery is great! Even with this smaller and more maneuverable boat, docking is still our greatest challenge. Lets just say we are very happy for strong cleats and stem fittings and the heavy brass-covered rub rail on the hull of the boat! Once again we challenged the depth meter willing it to hold firm at 2.0m during the first 24 hours we are tied broadside to the dock. Following is a glimpse inside the world of the new boat owner outfitting for a major sail:

We have been worried for months that we had no way to easily receive weather reports. We finally ordered the key Navtex receiver through Vickie at HR Parts but relied on her local contacts to find us an installer. Finally Friday afternoon Henrik and Mikael, a couple of young marine electronics installation viking wiz-kids, came to the boat and within two hours had installed our Furuno Navtex receiver and antenna (key equipment to receive the daily english language weather reports and nav warnings we should have ordered as a factory option) and our Smart Radio 161 AIS receiver and VHF antenna splitter.

Since receiving the Navtex receiver from Vickie we had read the manual and install instructions, the install instructions for the Raymarine chartplotter and NMEA/Seatalk interface box and the Smart Radio and were creeping up on Plan B which was install everything ourselves. I had carefully arranged all the pieces on the saloon table spread out like chicken bones for examination by a witchdoctor trying to understand what connected to what. It didn’t look good. None of our hours of research led to the clear conclusion that we would be successful if we tried this install ourselves. Manufacturer and cruiser websites suggested an insurmountable conflict of baud rates and NMEA ports that would leave us with a choice between AIS or our DSC VHF and Navtex working, one or the other at any time.

Trying to impress Mikael with my knowledge of the subtlties of this electronic puzzle I said I thought we would not be able to get NMEA to the VHF or Navtex if we installed the AIS at the chartplotter. He looked at me sternly, his Billy Idol white blond hair framing an impassive Nordic stare and said  simply "no". And he was right. He and Henrik working briskly and purposefully like two heads on a single body from differnet ends of the multiple installations somehow got it all working. Unbelievably AIS targets creep about on the C70 chartplotter and position data arrives via the NMEA port on the Raymarine Interface box to both the Navtex receiver and the DSC VHF. A flatout miracle for which they charged us $50/hr each. Never had a better value in marine trades work.

The boat itself is an example of great value. The Hallberg Rassy product is really a better value than any other production boat I have looked at by far. You pay a little more but you get a lot more here. But HR boats come with a long list of line item options that don’t offer much explanantion and are difficult to picture unless a dealer has a boat with the option installled to show you. So when you screw up your options order don’t worry: buy the gizmo from Vickie and hire Henrik and Mikael to fix you up!

It has been a week and a half of stowing, outfitting, careful boat familiarizing and cautious test sailing and restowing but we are finally close to going somewhere…Norway. After we get our shore power transformer from Vickie Monday and charge the batteries to 100% we will head slowly north through the Bohuslan SW Coast of Sweden, check out of Sweden in Stromstad and check into Norway in Fredrikstad. From there up the Oslofjorden then west along the south coast to Kristiansand and around the corner north to Stavanger. Somewhere there we expect to take on crew, our friends Joel and Belen, then across the North Sea to Scotland. Stay Tuned.