TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

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.