One of the drawbacks to AIS systems is that you need an external VHF aerial. You have two options: use your existing VHF aerial and fit a splitter, or fit a second VHF aerial. Fitting a splitter increases the complexity of the fitting - the more upmarket AIS sets may have a built in splitter, but they are not, as yet, common. Fitting a second aerial has a problem: it mustn't be too close to the existing one, which rules out the masthead.

But does it have to be on the masthead? What sort of range due you need? I would suggest that ten miles would be far enough: I'm not that interested in ships twenty five miles away. This means that an aerial on the pushpit might well be the solution.

Next issue is display. Since what might be described as 'leisure AIS' is relatively new to the market, only the high end plotters will be able to display it. I think it's going to be two or three years more before AIS enabled plotters hit the mainstream. But I think there is a more fundamental problem: screen resolution. Most plotters have screen resolutions of 640 by 480 pixels. To me, they seem overcrowded already. Adding AIS data would be a nightmare, unless you start delving into submenus, which gives added complexity.

A few years ago, I bought an end of the range IBM laptop for use on the boat. It does what I want: chartplotter, word processing, web access, and even digital photo editing. It has a standard 1024 by 768 screen: modern laptops will be better than this. I interface it to a very basic GPS: the Garmin 152. The advantage of the laptop: better screen resolution, and you can upgrade the software. Drawback: it's down on the chart table.

So, deciding I wanted a laptop AIS system, next question is which? There is a system which seems to fit the bill exactly, made by Comar Systems. Navigate to 'PRODUCTS' and you will see the AIS-2-USB. This has several advantages from the laptop user point of view: (1) it connects via USB, which saves the usual USB/serial connector, (b) it is USB powered, so no wiring in to the boat electronics, (c) it doesn't need a GPS input. All it needs is a USB port and a VHF aerial (BNC connector). It become available at the end of January. JG Technology's price is £229.

Sadly, I'll need new software too: SeaPro+ from Euronav at £99. Irritatingly, it's one of those programs which needs a dongle!

Prospero is on the bouy far left [actually rafted up against against another boat]. The others were in before me, and the tide was running out quite fast. I slowed down for a recce, and wa just about to move on when I saw a funny patch off water about six foot off the starboard side. It was obviously a rock just below the surface and we were drifting onto it rapidly. I slammed the engine on full throttle and just avoided it. My crew said it was worth it just to see the expression on my face. A little later, safely tied up, we saw the pinnacle break the surface as the tide dropped. It would not have been a good move to have hit it ...

The friends we were with have a small house perched on the rocks [not quite visible in the picture] where we were well fed and dined. We left late afternoon for St Peter Port, a little off the wind in a good F4. A Swan 39 left half an hour after me, and didn't catch me up before Guernsey!

The picture below shows the scene at low water:

Pictures courtesy Jeffrey Matthews

Update!

Jeffrey also sent me another photograph, which not only shows his own boat [foreground left], but gives a perfect view of the rock I so narrowly missed [marked with red arrow].

Fiften minutes earlier, and it would have been lurking deep enough not for me to see it, but shallow enough still to hit it. Fiften minutes later, and its ugly head would have reared above the surface.

I had been nicely on course until then, but I stopped to survey the moorings. A bad idea when the tide is rapidly sweeping you sideways. It doesn't take long to be pushed out of the channel.

This was in Pavilosta, Latvia, where they are building a new marina. (One British firm is still exporting: the posts with the electrical sockets were made in the U.K.!)

Sometimes, however, in crowded harbours, you have to enter a dreaded box.

This is not easy, especially if single handed. First you must pick one wide enough: many of them are too narrow for the likes of me to squeeze in with fenders down. You need a rope with a large bowline to drop over the top of the windward post as you go in. The snag if you're singlehanded is that you can't see how close to the quay you are - a large fender is needed here. When you think you're there, you have to abandon the helm and run forward to take a line ashore. Climbing over the bows is not fun with the conventional pushpit: you need the divided type.

Even then you haven't finished. If you were quick enough, and able to reach, you might have got a line onto the second post. The chances are that you didn't. This means backing out again to be able to reach it. Once on, you have then to maneouvre forward again. Oh, fun.

I've only had to do it once:

Once is enough.

From Portsmouth, anywhere in the Solent is within easy reach, and it's also a good jumping off point for Cherbourg or St Vaast. Even on a day sail, Spithead is nicely shgeltered by the Isle of Wight.

Across in Portsmouth itself, you've the dockyards, HMS Victory, and HMS Warrior - seen below from my berth in Gosport Marina:

Then, up Fareham Creek, is the rather sad sight of ships waiting to be sold off or scrapped. This is the 'elephant's graveyard'. You can see the assault ships Fearless and Intrepid below, the last steam driven ships in the Navy. Now they've been replaced by a new generation of ships, Bulwark and Albion (I went aboard the old Bulwark, then a helicopter carrier, in Mombasa, in about 1960!). In the distance you can see old frigates and destroyers also abandoned there.

But the same day that I took the picture above, I also saw this:

Shipbuilding is modular this days. This looks very much like the bow section of a new Type 45 destoyer, obviousl;y built by Vospers at Portchester. Just as well we're getting some new destroyers: the Type 42s must be twenty or thorty years old.

And of course there are destroyers, frigates and aircraft carriers tied up opposite the marina. Increased security means there's always a MOD plod boat cruising up and down. Must get extremely boring after a month or two!

For a close up:

(You might notice it's slightly crooked. A good example of why I should never be let loose with a drill ...)

I bought it for its simplicity. It's USB powered, and needs just an aerial and a USB lead (you can see those on the left). LEDs on the other side show power and that you're receiving data. I fitted an aerial on the back rail, and it seems to work well enough. I fired up the laptop, and after a bit of fiddling, managed to it to work. Sitting in Gopsort Marina, I picked up something twelve miles away:

This is the detail you can get about vessels in the vicinity. It tells me the vessel's name, MMSI number, call sign, length and width! More usefully, it gives the destination (Southampton), then course, speed over the ground and rate of turn. Most useful of all, it also tells me that the closest point of approach is 2.50NM in 2417 minutes time! The data is 51 seconds old.

Not every ship gives all this detail, but I can imagine it would be invaluable in the shipping lanes.

This box is only of use with a laptop, of course, but Comar also do an NMEA version (I suspect this is just the NMea box with a serial to USB converter inside. Indeed, Windows identified it as just that: serial/USB converter.) I'm using it with seaPro software at the moment: I'm somewhat dubious about it at the moment, but perhaps it will grow on me. More when I've used it in anger, so to speak. And when they say it needs 512Mb of RAM, they mean it. My old IBM was only 256Mb, and ran everything I threw at it without a problem - but not SeaPro. I have some Maptech BSB charts, which are a little - say we say, rough and ready. However, in the Baltic I shall be using the wonderfully named Sportschiffartskarten (try saying that in a hurry), which gives you a CD-ROM with the paper charts - and they're very good too. They also have a website with port guides to all the harbours - free!

The back rail now loooks a bit like a Russian spy trawler, with the AIS aerial, NAVTEX asnd GPS antenna!

Websites:

Comar Systems, seaPro by EuroNav, and NV PortPilot, available in both German and English.

People who have things to be getting on with to be can be extremely irritated by being told they have to attend a two hour course on ‘How to Lift Heavy Objects’, or ‘How To Use a Ladder.’ And yet ... and yet ...

I was in the boatyard in Gosport yesterday antifouling the boat. A tedious but necessary job. I had almost finished when I heard a crash and thump a little way away. I looked down the row of boats, but didn’t see anything, and was about to carry on when I saw people hurrying towards the scene. I joined them.

There was a chap crouched on hands and knees, obviously in great pain. Off to one side, a wooden ladder lay on the ground. Apparently the ladder had slipped, and he had fallen quite some way. He landed on his feet – which was not a good idea, since he twisted both ankles quite severely. After a minute or so, another chap and myself tried hoisting him to his feet, but as soon as he tried taking any weight on his ankles, he crumpled again. We sat him down and rang for an ambulance.

He was obviously in much better shape by the time the ambulance arrived, and the crew put him on a stretcher and carried him away. We retrieved the ladder, and someone else went up to lock the boat up. I stayed at the bottom of the ladder, one foot on the lowest rung!

The ladder was wooden, and the surface was fairly smooth concrete with a thin layer of water over it. When the chap came down again, we tried sliding the ladder. It slipped very easily.

I bought a cheap and rather flimsy ladder from Homebase a few weeks ago – I selected that one mainly since it would fit in the car. It’s tied on at the top, and to the boarding ladder, but as an extra precaution, I went and fetched a very large, heavy block of wood that was lying about, and put it at the foot of the ladder. It won’t slip now. And the block makes a useful extra step.

Once upon a time (twenty years ago?), you would be given a dongle when you bought some software. The dongle would fit into a port on your computer [usually the printer port], and without it, you couldn't use the software - the idea being that you couldn't run a 'pirated' version. No dongle, no program. After a while, software companies began to realise that there were easier and better ways to prevent piracy, and ones which were more consumer friendly. Lose your dongle [or even leave it behind somewhere] and your software was useless. Consumers rebelled. Result - no more dongles. But if you don't care about your users, if you have a captive market, then you can say - use a dongle or else. Who do we know in the software market who still does this? Step forward, the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office!

Okay, I'll live with a dongle if I have to. It does take up a USB port. It does worry me when the boat's heeling over, as it sticks out from the back or the side, and is highly vulnerable. But if they want me use a dongle, then I'll have to live with it.

To economists, this is known as 'producer capture'. We, the consumer, need them, the producers, more than they need us. The Hydrographic Office is not a commercial organisation. It is not even part of the Civil Service as such - it is an 'agency'. It is supposed to recover its costs. Now, Admiralty charts are the 'Rolls Royce' of charts. They ahve a reputation. People buy them because they have a reputation. True, recently they have began to see the possibility of selling to 'leisure users', and their packs of leisure charts are good.

Digital charts are something else. Plotters have really taken off in the last couple of years, and now it's C-Map or whatever. No doubt, UKHO makes money selling data to these firms [although have you looked at the dates of the surveys on some of the charts?]. For those using PCs and laptops, however, there are the ARCS charts.

Which is where the dongles come in. First, buy your plotting program at vast expense. Then you go along to a chart agent and say, can I have these ARCS charts? Yes - they're on this CD. You'll need a licence, and you can unlock the relevant charts. Sounds easy, doesn't it?

To get the licence, he'll say, I need to know your name. Fine. The name of your boat. If you insist. Your PIN number and reference number. Err ....

PIN. You see, as well as the dongle, you are given a PIN. With some programs, not only do you attach the dongle but you also have to type in the PIN. And reference number? Well, that's related to your software.

You see, the licence only allows you to use the charts on a specific program! Change to a new plotting program [as I have done with the advent of AIS], and you're buggered. Almost. The UKHO site gives you this advice:

You will need to contact your Admiralty Distributor to advise them of new User Permit/PIN details. You Admiralty Distributor will then arrange for your original ARCS licence to be cancelled and a new one created. If you have subscribed to the ARCS Navigator service this is carried out free of charge as the same charts and original expiry date are transferred to a new licence. However if you have an ARCS Skipper licence an administration fee of £30 is payable. This is because when a new licence is created all the charts are re-supplied fully updated.

Aha! Nothing easier!

Why do they do all this? Software piracy! No illegal copying and file sharing here, if you will!

But with typical Civil Service disdain for the customers, they arrage it so it's easy for them and difficult for you. You can tell they're not interested in their customers. If they were, they'd get their heads out of their arses and look around at what the rest of the software industry has been doing for the past twenty years. But no - they're the Civil Service, and they know what's best for you. There's only one thing that surprises me - that they can still find a firm which will make dongles for them.

More on dongles.

We did well with the weather window: Thursday and Friday were quite mild, with light winds. Saturday saw strong northerlies, and Sunday - well, Sunday saw the biggest snowfall of the winter in the South!

We cast off at 06:30. We were heading east, and had to make the Looe Channel off Selsey Bill before HW at 10:00. We just managed it, although when we got there, the tide was already against us. The wind was really too light to sail - we could have put the cruising chute up, but even with that, we wouldn't have made the ground. The tide turned in our favour at 17:00 and swept us round Beachy Head. We made the 19:00 lock at Sovereign Harbour in Eastbourne.

Sovereign Harbour might be a good pitstop, but is fairly soulless. It is Port Solent writ large. Good ablutions, and a good Indian restaurant. After that ... not much. And we weren't impressed by the locals.

So, out through the lock again at 07:30 in the morning. Almost no wind. This time we had the tide with us, and kept it after Dungeness, where the tide directions reverse. Very handy.

In Rye Bay we were intercepted by the Lydd Range boat, and steered a little further off to clear the guns [we had heard them earlier]. Past Dungeness, it began to get murky, and I checked the AIS. Boat dead ahead, approaching at 13.4 knots, CPA 0.2NM in 11 minutes time! We scanned the murk, and picked him up about 2 miles away. The great advantage of AIS is that you have prior warning, and you know where to look. In those conditions, we'd have seen him in good time, but it was nice not to be taken unawares.

Dover was the next 'challenge', and again, using the AIS, I had a good idea of what was coming and going. Vis was now poor - sometimes less than two miles. We had some fraught moments as ferry after ferry came in, but we eventually got past.

Past South Foreland, we had another alarm - the AIS had said the Pride of Canterbury was there, hardly moving, and when we saw him, we weren't sure quite what he was doing. Not very much, as it turned out, but it was an anxious few minutes as we went past.

We were still motoring. At the outset, I thought I'd got bags of fuel, but now the gauge was nudging empty. Worse still, we lost the tide. Would we make it? The wind had come up, but was dead astern, and we were on the point of sailing by the lee. The sail wasn't helping as much as we wanted it to. The final stretch to Ramsgate was slow and tedious. We had gone up the Gull Channel, and looking at the chart, would have done better to go through the inshore channel.

Still, we were in and tied up by about 18:30. And then a stiff drink!

We left the boat in Ramsgate, and I'm going down in a week's time. This time, I hope, North Sea and Germany!

The forecast had been for strongish northerly winds, but we motored out into an almost flat calm - well, not flat ... there was the ubiquitous swell rolling in from the north. We were also fighting a strong tide, so progress was slow. The AIS was proving its worth, however - we could see ships up to 25 or 30 miles away, and given that we were close to the Dover Straits, there were a lot of them!

We were still motoring as the sun set, although a little wind had come up to help us. It wasn't until probably around midnight that I could reel out the jib and turn the engine off. Rob was down below at the time, and the wind slowly rose as the night went on. It also became extremely lumpy. I was below trying to doze when it became clear we needed to reef, and doing this in the dark was not fun.

My plan was to run parallel to the main shipping lane that came out of the Channel towards the northwest corner of the Netherlands. We were perhaps five miles off: far enough to be well clear, but close enough to see the lights of the oncoming traffic. The only lane we had to cross was the Deep Water route, which was very quiet. On the AIS I could see the mass of traffic turning off for Europort. Certainly, the AIS proved its worth on this trip. As well as the traffic in the lanes, there were all sorts of ships 'doing their own thing', and the AIS could tell us straightaway whether they would be a problem or not.

After daybreak, the wind eased a little, and we went down to one reef. The wind was just west of north, and since our course was almost exactly northeast, we could sail a little free of the wind. I've taken the single line reefing off the second reef [which meant Rob struggling at the mast to tie the clew down], but the line still doesn't pull the sail back tight enough, and the problem lies with the aluminium strips used for the lazyjacks. It's something I'll need to ponder.

With the rising of the sun, it was now quite pleasant, and we were moving fast. We carried along our course until near the Dutch coast. Here the lanes move apart as they go round an oil installation, and we crossed here, in relatively light traffic. The course alteration meant that we now had the wind on our beam. There were still a lot of oil or gas well heads, but with plenty of room to keep well clear. We came onto the Dutch coast a few miles from Den Helder, but now had to fight a strong ebb tide all the way in, which slowed us considerably. As we came into the harbour, I saw a Dutch 'Kustwaatch' [I hope I've got that right] boat coming in at the same time. We went round into the small marina which is run for the Dutch Navy, and had fun mooring. Our first berth was too far from the electricity point, and we had to try again. The mooring was odd to English eyes: a half length pontoon, with a post to which you attach a stern line. Much fun and games.

We were both exhausted. On the chart, the distance was 160 miles [probably a little more], which we'd done in about 32 hours. That was an average of 5 knots over the ground, and given we'd been fighting quite a tide at the beginning and the end, we had probably averaged 6 knots through the water. Not bad.

So, there I was standing in the cockpit nursing a stiff gin, when I saw a car draw up on the quayside. Three men in black climb out, and I get that feeling. They were heading our way. Dutch Customs. They'd been on the Kustwaatch launch we'd seen earlier - and they'd seen us.

They were quite polite, and reasonably friendly, but they wanted to see our paperwork, and ask us questions. Quite a few questions. I don't think we were obvious drug smugglers, though [I hope not!], but they were with us for some time. And then bed. Given that easterly winds were forecast for later in the week, it was to be the North Frisian coast in the morning.

We took the ebb tide out, and the course to the top of this part of the coast was almost due north, as was the wind. We motorsailed for a while, as we had a long way to go. The wind, as it had been the day before, seemed to vary from a low F3 to a mid F4, but there was always enough to sail quite fast when the wind was free. Up at the corner, we decided to sail it anyway, put in a tack, then cleared the top.

In some ways, it was very uneventful. The sun shone, taking some of the edge off the chill, the breeze meant we could sail sail at 6+ knots. The autohelm coped without complaining, as it had done across the North Sea. Prospero is well balanced, and only once did we have to fiddle with the sails to keep the autohelm happy. It was a question now of ticking off the islands as they went past.

The main question when the sun went down, was where to stop. Borkum was straightforward enough, but we'd have been going in about midnight. Cuxhaven would have been feasible, but we'd have been negotiating the Elbe with too little sleep. Norderney seemed to be the answer. Unfortunately, we were going too fast! Heaving to whilst I cooked a beef stew took up some of the time, but then we had to bear away a little to aim for the island, which meant the boat speed went up to about 7 knots. How often is it that you complain you're going too fast??

There are two channels into Norderney: the Schluster from the west, and the Dovetief. I'd used both before. I had good paper charts, but the charts on the laptop were far too large a scale for this. We found the fairway bouy for the Schluster quite easily, and trickled up to it slowly. The sky was becoming lighter, but not light enough to pick out unlit bouys. At the fairway, we had to find the bouy marking the other end of the channel. Fl G (2+1) 15s. We saw a buoy doing just that. The trouble was that it was in the wrong place. Had they moved the channel? If so, it had been a big move. We sat there and debated, then, by chance, I caught sight of something. Yes! Right place, right characteristics. Not as bright as the other one. Later, I realised that they were both marking points where the channel divides [red band round the middle of the green buoy], but to my mind, it was a highly dangerous combination.

The buoys sorted, we could estimate the course from the chart. There were three unlit red buoys about 500m apart. The sails were down, and I motored fairly gently forwards. The first red popped up less than 50 yards off the bow. Although it was getting lighter, we only saw it when it was about 100 yards away. The second popped up in the same way. 'Ah,' I said to Rob, 'George steers a good course!' 'George' is my occasional nickname for the autohelm [obsolete RAF slang for an automatic pilot], and Rob had been slightly irritated in Den Helder about my insistence on using it right up the the marina entrance. 'Beep!' as I press the +10 degrees button; 'beep, beep!', another 20 degrees, and so on. It's a habit derived from single handing, when I want to give all my attention to my surroundings, and not worry about the tiller. And George probably steers a better course than I do.

But, ah ... hubris! By now, I had become over confident. We ploughed on until suddenly the swells became steeper, almost breaking. The shallow alarm beeped. We were in trouble. 'Reverse,' said Rob, as we bumped. Advice I should have thought of earlier. We bumped again. I could hear the sound of breaking waves around us. We backed out into slightly deeper water, my heart in my mouth.

I looked in front of us, and saw the buoy had drifted from its transit with the street lights. I had taken my eye off the ball - or the buoy. I motored so as to bring it back, and we rounded it with a great sense of relief. We never did see the third red.

Why had we drifted off? There wasn't much wind, and we'd gone from the fairway to the first two reds faultlessly. My guess was tide: if it was flooding, it might well have been at right angle to our course. As any mathematician will tell you, if you're doing 3.4knots through the water, and have a tidal set of 2 knots at right angles, you will be set down by 30 degrees! The track on the GPS would have told me that - if I'd been looking. Even so, with a distance of less than 500m to cover, we couldn't have been more than 100m or so from the red buoy. Later, when I told the harbourmaster about this, he said, 'The Schluchter is not good this year.'

So, lesson learned? Don't try a channel like this in the dark. We could have hove to for half an hour. Wtach your transits. Watch your GPS track. And most important - don't get overconfident. You're not safe until you're round the buoy.

From there on, we trickled in very slowly - probably over cautiously, but apart from anything else, I wanted it to be lighter. We found the harbour very easily, found the sailing club [almost empty at this time of year], found one very long pontoon [a Dutch boat was on the other side], and tied up, tired and relieved.

The sailing club at Norderney. This is a panoramic composite from several shots. The original is 6000 pixels wide, so I thought I'd better shrink it.

On the right is Rob, my long suffering crew, looking very relieved to have arrived. Not only did he put up with me, he was an excellent seaman, and better still, an excellent crew, who would spend his time going round and tidying up after me! Rob is alos a magazine star, with a feature in the latest Yachting Monthly. He has just bought a 41 foot Grand Soleil, Canasta, with the aim of sailing away into the sunset - but with a difference. Influenced by the author Luke Reinhart [The Dice Man], the choice of destination is going to be up to his followers. Where To Next? You have the chance to vote. Go to his website: Where to Next?

And so we had arrived in Norderney. The Plan said Cuxhaven next, then the Kiel Canal. Two snags. Rob wanted to be back to run in yet another marathon, and the wind was forecast as 'O6' at the clubhouse - Ost 6, or Easterly Force Six. Not a good idea for going to Cuxhaven which is ... almost due east!

What to do then? I could have stayed in Norderney by myself until the weather improved. It would have given me time to recuperate [it had been a good crossing in very many ways, and fast, but not what I would call exhilarating]. But it was definitely not summer yet. I had been amused earlier at the sight of elderly couples, all wrapped up, sitting up against the wall of yacht club, which acted as something of a suntrap. Something told me that the population of Norderney included a lot of retired folk ...

I had another problem: I am in the middle of moving house, and being out of touch of estate agents and lawyers wasn't a good move. I spoke to the harbour master at the yacht club, Herr Pauls, and he seemed happy for me to leave the boat for four weeks - which is what we decided to do.

Returning to England was not without interest. In theory, it looked straightforward enough: ferry to the mainland, train to Bremen, RyanAir to Stansted. Just before we left, Herr Pauls asked if I had the mooring receipt from the night before. Locked up on the boat, I said. Ah. Then he wrote me a note for the ferry terminal. 'They will not let you on without it?' Why? Something to do with taxes, I gathered, but exactly what, I had no idea. And sure enough, the ticket collector started objecting, at which point I pulled out the note from Herr Pauls, and he let us through. We were baffled. I think the phrase is 'cultural differences.

A good [double decker!] train got us to Bremen. At the airport I discovered my next mistake. I had looked up the flights the night before, on the yacht club coin operated Internet terminal, but hadn't got as far as actually booking the flight. Big mistake. We walked up to the Ryanair desk and asked for tickets for the evening flight. They laughed and quoted us a preposterous figure. No, we said. Then we were given a number to ring. We tried the public phone box [no joy], Rob tried getting it on his mobile. Still no joy, and much frustration. Internet café next door; preposterous prices again. No, you can't book on line for a flight the next day. Maybe Ryanair want to make money from those desperate to fly, but as it was, they were going to leave two seats empty. Rob started ringing round hotels while I booked a flight for the morning. Finding a hotel wasn't that easy either; I could hear Rob's frustrated voice as I tried navigating the RyanAir website.

We did find somewhere to stay: the Seamen's Mission! We were dubious about this to begin with, but the rooms were clean, with an ensuite bathroom, and cheap enough at 38 euros for a single room. We spent the afternoon walking round Bremen, and I was very pleasantly surprised: there is a fair amount of the Old City left, and well worth seeing.

And in the morning, the taxi was waiting; we flew back, and all that was left was to negotiate the train service back home.

A friend of mine, Jonathan, regularly races an slightly elderly Swan 38 across the Channel, and often further afield. He has done several Fastnets. It is a boat which needs quite a few crew. I've been with him a few times, but that sort of racing is not really for me. However, he rang me in desperation on Thursday. 'Crew dropped out. Can you come?' So I said yes.

There were actually two races: Cowes/Cherbourg, and Cherbourg/Cowes, run by JOG. We left Birdham Pool in Chichester early Friday morning, spent a few hours in Cowes, and headed out for a 1700 start off Egypt Point. There was little wind and a foul tide. We made a poor start, got swept back by the tide, and things didn't improve as the wind faded. At one point, off Newtown, the boat did a complete 360 as we lost steerage. But the tide had turned and was taking out through Hurst, where we picked up some wind. Quite a bit of wind. I was on the helm, trying to find Bridge buoy in the dark whilst everyone else was changing headsails. An interesting fifteen minutes. After that, it was a good sail to Cherbourg with a SE wind. But given our start, we were almost last in the race.

To make matters worse, one of our crew had to return to England by ferry. leaving us with only four crew for the race back. Four, you might say - plenty. Not on this boat. The headsails are enormous. A sail change needs a minimum of two people and preferably three. Then there's the helsman - which means no one off watch.

The return start was at 1100 on Sunday. Again the wind was light and variable - even getting out of Cherbourg involved a couple of tacks. Then very slow progress. The weather was miserable, with spots of rain. Then excitement. Wind! Sail change! Wind drops. Sail change. We were getting a little fed up. Finally the wind settled to a light NNE, but we were now fighting the tide. A lot of thought was needed. We did a couple of rather good tactical tacks, and got past the forts around eight o'clock. I went down to snooze, but was recalled close to the finish line for more sail changes. To my amazement, we were surrounded by all our competitors, all fighting the tide to Gurnard. We got over eventually, and headed back to Chichester.

Just as we were leaving to go home, Jonathan gets a phone call. We had won our class on handicap! Good bit of navigation, says I. After all, I hadn't been that much use as a crew - but I had suggested when to tack. And it was those tacks wot won it!

But the eastern most part of the German Baltic coast now ends at the island of Rügen. The island is about the same size as the Isle of Wight, but to the west and south there is a maze of waterways and lakes, or bodden as they are known in German. I spent some time here in 2006, left the boat ashore for the winter, and cruised the area again at the start of the 2007 season. House sale permitting [!], I hope to be back there later this year.

A perfect day on the Griefswalder Bodden. In the distance is the island of Ruden, which was once used as a V2 tracking station. That was also the function of the odd looking struture on the left.

From the cruising point of view, they have several pros and cons. Much of the area is extremely shallow - 1.5m or less. That certainly gives me a problem, with a draught of 1.8m. Against that, the channels are extraordinarily well buoyed, with up to 100 or so buoys marking long winding channels. There are no tides, which is this area is just as well: the chances of being stranded by an ebbing tide would be fairly high!

from the Sportschiffarhtskarten covering Rugen. The channel running northwest up to der Bock is about 3 miles long and about 100m wide! The depths either side? Less than 1 metre. And if you think there are a lot of buoys - well, this view is too small a scale to show them all!

Told you the channels were narrow!

The boddens are also quite remote and very rural. This part of Germany is, in some ways, very odd. During the days for the former DDR, it seems that almost no 're-development' took place. Thus Stralsund, the biggest city in the area, had cobbled streets in the 1930s. They were left that way in communist days. Now the tourists come along and say, wow! cobbled streets! How wonderful! Indeed, there are derelict areas in Stralsund, mixed in with marvellous archetecture, that look as if they were bomb sites left over from the war - and could well be.

Other drawbacks? One is the klappbrücken, or lifting bridges, such as the ones at Stralsund, Wolgast and Zecherin. They are lifting bridges, which open for a maximum of 10 or 15 minutes, and only a few times each day. They do not open on request! This means some careful passage planning, since, if you miss the opening, you'll have to wait quite a few hours for the next one.

Lifting bridge at Stralsund

And the other hazards? Fishing stakes in shallow water, with nets strung between them. Lobster pots [well, probably not for lobsters, but pots of some sort]. At least they mark them with nice bright red flags.

Not so in German waters! The reason why it goes by default in British waters is that there's no one around to police it, whereas in Germany there is the Wasserschutzpolizei or 'Water Protection Police'.

I motored out of Kroeslin Marina one bright and sunny morning. There was the slightest of breezes. I trickled along on not much more than tick over, autohelm on, and hoisted the mainsail. I put on a few more revs, then heard a loudhailer from behind. A Wasserschutzpolizei boat. He got closer, realised I was British, and switched to English.

'You have sail up! You have motor on! You have no cone!'

All of which was true.

'You have cone?'

'Oh, yes,' I lied.

I rummaged in the locker. I knew I had an anchor ball, but a motoring cone? Didn't think so. Wasn't in the locker, anyway.

'I go and look for it,' I yelled back, and went below.

What now? Give it three minutes, and I'd have to go up and say I'd 'lost' it. Except that ... I looked through the windows, and the launch was disappearing at high speed. Ah. Give it another minute or two.

By the time I came back on deck, the launch was on the horizon. So I carried on - though with a wary eye out in case it decided to come back. Well, the wind got up, and I was able to sail without the motor after that.

Finding a chandlery is not always easy: I ended up buying a cone in Stubbekøbbing. Unfortunately, the lady in the shop didn't speak English, and I couldn't see what I wanted. I drew a sketch of a yacht, cone in rigging, on a piece of paper, which had her baffled. She called her husband, who looked at it, frowned, then the light dawned. 'Ah,' he said, and went off to fetch one.

Denmark doesn't seem to have any police boats, so I didn't worry there. I flew it coming down from Helgoland to Nordeney: apparently the area is well policed to keep you out of the shipping lanes. If you stray into the lanes, it's an immediate fine. No doubt they watch out on radar. There wasn't enough wind to keep up the boat speed, and in an area as busy as this, it was a good idea to have the genoa rolled up.

But be careful in Germany: the police are watching!

Kroeslin Marina

'Where are you going?'

'Sassnitz.'

He pulled a face. 'Not worth visiting.'

I shrugged. 'I'll take a look inside.'

He smiled, nodded, and walked on.

It was bright and sunny, though very hazy when I set out. Not much wind, so motor on, until I was out of the Greifswalder Bodden. A breeze picked up, and I was able to sail down the coast to Sassnitz. Before going into the harbour, I put the motor on and turned head to wind to drop the main: the wind had picked up now, and it was a bit bouncy.

I motored into the harbour for a look round. It was almost empty apart from one visiting yacht. The place didn't look that appealing - perhaps the chap back at Kroeslin had been right. It was nothing specific - more a general feeling. Not a place where I really wanted to spend the weekend. I looked at the quay where I could tie up: it looked quite high, and it would be a bit of a struggle. Then I thought: Kroeslin has all the amenities. I can cross Sassnitz of the list. Been there, done that. It was still quite early - why not head back?

Then as I came out of the harbour, I saw this:

Not all that unusual to see old submarines in a harbour - they're usually defunct Russian ones (there's even one in Zeebrugge). But then I noticed this:

A Union flag? In Germany? Can't be a British submarine, surely. And if it was genuine Royal Navy, it wouldn't be flying a Union Flag but a White Ensign. Well, I found out later what it was: HMS Otus, now a submarine museum. (More on HMS Otus.) Not an everyday sight - a British submarine as a museum boat in a German harbour.

As I cleared the harbour, I realised that the weather had worsened. Now there was quite a strong breeze blowing from the north east - perhaps up to Force 5. It had been a beat up to Sassnitz, but now, on the way back, I'd have the wind on the beam. And probably too much for the full mainsail. Feeling lazy, I unrolled the jib, and left it at that. Prospero has quite a small jib, but even so, I was making more than 6 knots. The wind must have been stronger than I'd thought, and the sky was now grey and overcast.

I had a little trouble picking up the entry buoys to the Greifswalder Bodden (see the chart on the right), but eventually found them and turned in. The wind was almost dead astern now, and the waves had got up, short and steep in the shallow water. The boat was yawing from side to side as the stern was picked up by the crest of a wave, only to wallow in the troughs. This was to bring about my downfall. Well, not quite.

I was watching ahead for the bend in the channel, and also keeping my eye on a tug towing a very odd looking barge, when I saw a green channel marker close to starboard. I would have missed it, except that another wave picked up the stern, and there was a clang as the bouy clipped the quarter.

I was lucky. On the edge of the hull, a stainless steel strip had been fitted to stop the mooring ropes rubbing the fibreglass. I found a smear of green paint on the strip - and, fortunately, not on the boat. But what really saved me was the lifebouy. This was mounted on the stern rail, starboard side, and had cushioned the blow. The frame holding the bouy was a little, well, buckled - shall we say, but the rail itself was fine. It could have been a lot worse.

Now for the home straight. I turned south now, heading towards Peenemunde. As you can see from the chart, there's a lot of shallow water around the island of Ruden (the dark blue bits on the chart are less than 5 metres depth, but north of Ruden it's only 1 or 2 metres), and I could see a lot of breaking water there. At least it gave a bit of shelter from the waves. I rounded the corner in to the Peenestrom, started the negine, wound away the jib, and got ready to put out ropes and fenders. Normally, I leave the engine in gear at little more than tickover, to give enough boatspeed for the autohelm to steer the boat. To my surprise, I seemed to be whizzing down the channel - then I noticed the current past on of the bouys ... almost a couple of knots. The north east wind was presumably piling the water into the Bodden, and some of it was trying to get away down the Peenestrom. A good reminder that there can be quite stong currents round here, and that they're almost entirely wind driven.

So - finally back into the marina. The wind was blowing quite strongly across the pontoons, and, singlehanded, I had no chance of tying up to windward, so it would be lee side to - which I normally try to avoid. I got there and tied on, with the help of some passers by.

Obviously quite a few people had come down to their boats for the weekend, but weren't going anywhere in this wind. Even in the shelter of the marina, the waves were quite considerable, slapping up against the transoms of the boats across the way. The skies had cleared a bit: here is a picture in the marina taken at sunset:

I checked on the weather forecast later: Force 3, it said!

Leaving Yarmouth. Look at that smart mainsail!

We were in for several hours of tedious motoring, and the tide was now pushing us east. Our destination was Alderney, and I was relying on the change of tide to sweep us down there. Didn't work out like that, though. A breeze came up. We could switch off the engine and sail. The only snag was that Alderney was directly upwind. I knew that even with the tide behind us, we wouldn't make it. I hailed Rob and we altered for Cherbourg, which was so full we ended spending the night on the waiting pontoon, before getting berths in the marina in the morning.

Black Prince and Bright Flyer in Cherbourg.

So, off to Alderney next day? Well, not quite. The forecast was for westerly Force 6. No good, I said to Rob. Why not go round to St Vaast instead? It's always worth a visit.

So we set off the next afternoon to take the flood tide with us, aiming to arrive at around high water. The sky was a little ominous, but to begin with, the breeze was F 3 to 4 dead astern, and with the tide under us, we were making good ground speed - which made the apparent wind seem less. It strengthened as we came round Barfleur. I was under full sail, and nearly closehauled. The boat was over on its ear, and once or twice just pulled up to windward, out of control. But we were nearly at Barfleur now, and I could start the engine, turn up into wind, and roll away the jib.

As I started to motor towards the channel to the harbour (St Vaast is tucked away behind various pieces of rock), I saw something in the water - white, and quite large. I couldn't quite make out what it was, so motored over to have a look.

The square white object turned out to be an inverted catamaran dinghy, with two large Frenchmen trying to right it. They were struggling: sometimes they would get it up to about 30º to the horizontal, before the wind took it, either flipping it right over the other way, or sometimes swinging it round as it weathercocked, and tipping it back again. I didn't know how long they'd been there - fortunately they were in what like wetsuits. I was singlehanded, but Rob had picked up someone at Cherbourg who wanted a lift east. Rob eased up, and tried to help them right it, but with no success. We tried radioing the harbour, but no one answered.

Finally, Rob took the Frenchmen on board - they must have been exhausted. I said I'd stand by the inverted dinghy, which was being taken out to sea quite fast by the wind and tide.

It was quite some time before I saw the lifeboat heading out from St Vaast. It ignored me, and made for the dinghy. In which case, thought I, I'll leave them to it. But it was getting late, and the tide was dropping. I put the engine on virtually full revs, despite the overheating alarm sounding (I had a leak from the freshwater cooling side, but at that stage, it wasn't too bad). Rob had told the marina I was still out there, and I was hoping to get in before the tide got too low.

But about a mile from the entrance, Rob came on the VHF: they couldn't wait any longer, and were shutting the lock gates. Okay. Engine off - give it time to cool down. What now? It was blowing quite hard. I had two choices: anchor off the harbour, or sit out here. I knew I wasn't going to get any sleep either way, and, on balance, it's always better to have plenty of sea room. The wind was offshore, so I wasn't going to hit anything if I stayed out there. I hove to: no sails up, tiller down to leeward. The wind tries to move you downward, the keel converts some of this to forward motion, and the rudder tries to keep the bow up into the wind. The end result is that you end up going downwind and a little forward at about a knot.

The tide was taking me out to Barfleur, so after an hour or so, I turned the boat to go the other way, then back again ... then the cold front came through, with gusts of wind and heavy showers. At one time, I had about a metre of genoa rolled out, and no other sails, and was making six knots! By the early hours, my track on the GPS looked like the doodle of some crazed child. At around 4 a.m., the wind had eased a little, and the tide was coming up. I made my way fairly carefully - it was still dark - along the approach channel, narrowly missing some anchored boats, and finally into the marina. Rob was tied up just to the right, and I rafted up against him. He put his head out briefly to say good morning.

I sat in the cockpit for a little longer, and I saw a bloke emerge from a small wooden boat. Hope I didn't wake you, I said. No, no - I'm just about to go. Where to? Chichester. Ah, I said, the wind's NNW and fresh. A bumpy ride back, he replied.

The chart on the right shows the area: there is a light on Pointe de Saire which flashes Oc (2+1) - I saw a lot of it that night. Made a useful reference point though. The red cross is roughly where the dinghy was. The big blue line is were I spent about nine hours going backward and forward. If the chart looks a little odd, it's because it's a very old one ('additions and corrections to 1982'!), with depths marked in fathoms! (One fathom is six feet, or just less than 2 metres).

We never did see the two Frenchmen the next day. A bottle of wine might have been nice.

In my naiveté, I thought these were to spot infiltrators from the Fascist West. Not so, I was told.

During my enforced stay in Rømø, in June and July last year, there was a German boat in the harbour, tied up the other side of the pontoon. He was on his way to Norway in a rather fine wooden boat. He was somewhat gruff in manner (I remember him telling me with a touch of schadenfreude that he'd heard that were 400 boats trapped by the weather in Helgoland). We got talking, and I mentioned the watchtowers.

'Oh, they were not to keep us out', he said, 'but to stop their people escaping.' He'd been off Stralsund at night, the day before the first free elections in the East, and seen the searchlights shining on the water. 'The next day,' he went on, 'I went in and tied up. We were one country now.'

It's difficult now to remember the Berlin Wall, and the IGB (Inner German Border), where soldiers shot people trying to escape, even though it was less than twenty years ago. The world changes, and is sometimes a better place.

The entrance to Pavilosta, in Latvia. Watchtower to the right of the entrance.

Rather than hang around to try to find a new buyer, I've decided to take the place off the market, go away on the boat for a few months, then come back in the winter, when the present chaos in the housing market might have stabilised. The other really annoying thing was that I had found exactly the property I wanted to move to, but I've had to withdraw that offer.

I've now booked a flight out to Germany for Saturday. 50 minutes by train to Waterloo, tube across London to Liverpool Street (1 change), Stansted Express (another 50 minutes), then RyanAir to Bremen. Tram from Bremen Flughafen to the HauptBahnhof, then a direct train to Norddeich Mole (2½ hours). Then, finally, a ferry from Norddeich to Norderney. Shouldn't take more than twelve hours or so!

The forecast for next week isn't brilliant either. Not so much wind, as rain, and lots of it, by the forecast. My next port of call from Norderney will be Helgoland.

Getting in and out from the Frisian islands can be dodgy. Norderney is reckoned to be one of the more straightforward! As you can see from the chart above, there are two channels: the Schluster, or the DoveTief. We came in down the Schluster in the dark, and there were a problem.

The channel leads to a green buoy, with the characteristic Fl(2+1) 15s (I've circled it in green). The snag is that there's another buoy with the same characteristic a mile or two further in (also circled). We could see this quite clearly, but the bearing was about 30-40 degrees off. We stood off by the clear water buoy, scanning the water, and I was tempted to head for it, but something told me that it was unlikely the channel had moved as much as this over the winter! I was still hesitating when I spotted the right one - the reason it was so difficult to see was that there were bright street lights behind it, whereas the other one had darkness behind. This was a time for old fashioned navigation using transits: I lined it up with the street lights and headed in. The S4 buoy popped up dead on the port bow! I became over confident, lost concentration, and the next thing was that we were on the shallow patch I've highlighted between S4 and S6. Not a clever move.

The (2+1) 15s seems to mark where the channel splits - it's not something I've come across before, but I suppose you learn the hard way. Having two buoys with the same characteristic within a mile or so of each other does, however, seem to be asking for trouble.

So to get to Helgoland, I will go out through the Dovetief, which has more water. To take advantage of the tidal streams, the best time to leave Norderney would be just before low water, so I take the ebb out of the harbour, arrive in the channel at low water, and take the flood to Helgoland. Going out at low water gives even less room for manoeuvre.

The route to helgoland is not without adventure either:

The red arrows mark shipping lanes! The blue line is the route to Helgoland. You are not allowed into the main shipping lines - and if you do, the Wasserschutzpolitzei will be after you!

I did this in reverse last year, and it was ... interesting. AIS should make it a good deal easier. Seeing a ship on the horizon, then seeing from the laptop that it's going to pass 2.0 miles away rather than 0.2 miles is rather handy! I was certainly grateful for the AIS crossing the North Sea.

The Germans mark their channels extremely conscientiously, but I think that this time the gentleman concerned might have some cause for complaint.

He was doing exactly whast the buoys were telling him. If you look, you can see a green starboard hand marker about a hundred metres ahead of him.

Here's another view. The sandbar is smack in the middle of the bouyed channel! I was told that this was one of the lowest low tides for quite some time, but even so. When I took this picture, the tide was already coming in, and I think it would have been another couple of hours before it would have been safe to navigate the channel.

I hope he duly complained to the powers that be!

Apart from fishing, the only other economic activity is tourism. Why, I am not quite sure. If you like cycling along flat roads, then the island has a lot to offer. If you like sand, there is a lot of it. In fact, the sand is ubiquitous. There are great beaches. And lots of golf. Unfortunately, unless you like rain and strong winds, it does lack something. The days in summer are long enough – the sun currently sets at 10 pm and rises again at 5 in the morning. What it must be like in winter, though, I have no idea – although I can imagine it. Low scudding clouds, intermittent glimpses of the sun, perpetual gales, and well used waterproofs.

The channel between Rømø and Sylt marks the German/Danish border. I could have gone to the harbour in Sylt – List. Brian Navin, though, in his Cruising Guide to Germany and Denmark, describes List as a ‘tiny harbour with limited facilities’. Rømø has a few advantages – cheap (ten euros a day – most of the visiting yachts will be Dutch or German, and euros are accepted). This includes electricity. You get a key for the facilities in the yacht club – loos and showers, although a shower is two kroner a time.

I came up from Nordeney. The weather has not been kind. I arrived on the Saturday evening, and Sunday was hot and mainly windless. Monday was another story, and it blew 6 and 7s, with accompanying rain, the for the next three days. Very few boats moved from a packed harbour. Thursday winds were forecast lighter, and southerly. Despite the rain – and I don’t like getting wet, I set off, braving the Dovetief channel. The buoys were all there, and I ticked them off one by one, but the wind was stronger than I had thought. As I headed east, it was clear I was overcanvassed, and put in the usual double reef. The sail doesn’t set properly on this reef, and I’ve shifted the line for future use. (it works better now.) Visibility wasn’t that good, either, but I was watching my AIS. I went along the coast, then had to cross the channel into the Jade and Weser. Lots of ships were at anchor, as the AIS told me. I hove to to wait for a container ship, cut behind him, and watched someone else coming up fast. Then the crossing of the main channel to the Elbe – this really is busy, but I was lucky enough to hit a quiet spell, and got across without a problem.

The AIS really is worth its weight in gold: I could pick up ships that I couldn’t even see. I’d look at the screen, and see that the ship I was concerned about would hit its CPA (Closest Point of Approach) in 36 minutes. That’d give me time enough to manoeuvre if there were a problem.

Oddly, although there seemed to be scores of ships going into the Elbe, there was almost nothing coming out, and I headed towards Helgoland without a problem. I passed quite close, and was debating whether to stop there for the night. On the other hand, I had no wish to join a raft of another dozen boats. I pressed on – Romo it would be, even if it meant being up all night.

One snag was that the rain had cleared, and visibility was now very good, but the wind had fallen light and from the SSW. Since my course was just east of north, that put the wind almost dead astern. Not quite – by choosing my course carefully, I could still persuade the jib to fill. But as the sun set – ten o’clock! - I had to start motoring. The main was slatting from side to side in the short swell left from the strong winds of the past few days. Eventually, I got fed up with it, and dropped the main entirely. It wasn’t all that comfortable with the boat rolling around, but there wasn’t a lot of choice.

As I came behind the Arum Bank, the tide turned against me, and progress was slow. I dislike motoring at the best of times, but sitting staring at the GPS, with the ground speed at little over 4 knots, was a dismal experience.

The sky to the north never really got dark, even at true midnight. In the early hours, it began to brighten again, as I made my way past Sylt. It’s a long island, and seemed to go on for a long time.

There are two channels into Rømø: the main channel from the west, and a smaller one, the Lister Landtief, from the south. It’s a little tricky (and NOT to be attempted in the dark). The sun was up, but reflecting from the water. Dark rain clouds were looming around. I picked up the clear water mark at the start of the channel, and the first red was just behind it. The part where it joins the main channel is the tricky bit; there’s a shoal to starboard. As I got closer, I could see the swells breaking over the shallows. There was quite a bit of tide behind me now – I could see it rushing past the buoys – and my ground speed had shot up. In all these channels you have to be careful of side currents taking you off track (as at Norderney!), but here the main channel is wide and deep. I was perhaps a little premature hauling down the German flag to replace it with the Danish, but even though I had a few miles to go, I sorted out lines and fenders ready for tying up. The wind had got up, and I reeled out the jib to help me round the back of the island, dodging a ferry on the way.

Once inside, everything was very familiar – although I was struck by the sight of a large British yacht, one which looked like a training vessel of some sort. I came up to the pontoon with the wind blowing me on, stopped and tied up. Twenty two hours and about 110 miles. Although it was early morning, I climbed into my pyjamas and went to bed. By the time I surfaced again, the British boat had gone, leaving me as the only inhabited boat in the harbour.

And so to explore the fleshpots of Rømø. But more of that later.

I tied in a double reef in the mainsail before leaving, whiich was a good idea (it's still there!). The tide had started to ebb by the time I got close to the clear water mark, and, there being a bar at the entrance, this is where it was shallowest. Yes, the wind was a good F5, and the sea lumpy.

So, northwards. The wind and sea was on the port quarter, and I wallowed and swooped on the waves, which were a combination of a short swell and a long wind driven wave. The boat would surf for a time on a crest, wallow in the trough, and the problem was the next crest would pick up the stern of the boat and swing it round. The autohelm would then fight to bring us back, and sometimes overshoot. To be fair, it coped well in difficult conditions.

Esjberg is one of those armpits of the Universe (apologies to any patriotic Danes who read this), and I was heading further north to Hvide Sand (another armpit). This involved some tricky navigation around Horn's Reef. There are a couple of inshore passages, but they're not marked with buoys. I wouldn't have attempted them without the charts on the laptop, watching the little green icon representing the boat, as I negotiated the various legs of the route. The Ringkobing Dyb is about half a mile wide, with a shoal to seaward with 0.4m depth! I could see the swells breaking over it.

The entrance to Hvide Sand is interesting (interesting is one of those useful words which, in contexts such as this, can mean tricky, difficult, possiibly dangerous, etc), particularly with an onshore wind and swell. It is not as shallow as some books make out - I doubt the depth fell below 4 or 5m - but the entrance is narrow ... perhaps 200m wide. Shelter is good in the basins, though.

I spent an extra day at Hvide, too, the wind howling in the rigging. Probably not more than F6, though I hadn't my wind speed indicator fitted at the time (a long story, but let us say, without details, that the after sales service has not been good).

Eventually I got away, with the German boat tied up behind me leaving first. The entrance was lumpy, but not too bad, and once in a reasonable depth of water, I turned north. The German was about a mile ahead, but I overtook him after about an hour (he didn't have much sail out. In those conditions, the sails help steady the boat, even at the price of a slightly too exhilirating ride.). The wind got up even further at one stage, and the ride got a bit wild. There were the usual rain showers. It was with some relief that I saw the entry buoy into Thyboron, and finally got out of the North Sea swells.

But horror! They'd put more posts in at Thyboron, for the dreaded box moorings, and left less quayside. I hoped 'lystbaden' was Danish for visiting boats (it is) and tied up to the concrete. The only snag was that it was to leeward, so I was being blown on. It would make leaving ... interesting!

But now, thankfully, I was out of the North Sea, with its lumps and swells. Now for the Limfiord, and, hopefully, calmer times.

Well, it wasn't raining. It was, though, blowing moderately strongly. How to get off? The wind was almost at right angles, and too strong for me simply to push the boat off. There is the Official RYA Approved method of springing off, but you usually need a crew for this.

The idea is that you take a line back from the bow to the shore - preferably as far back as you can get. You put a lot of fenders on the bow. You then motor forward. The line holds you back of course, but your stern swings out - encouraged by judicious use of the rudder. You can see the idea in the pretty picture on the right (fenders as grey circles, spring line and bollard in red. Rudder is hard over and engine in forward gear). If you have a crew, the idea is that he is at the bow, holding one end of the line. You then go hard reverse and cry, 'Slip!'. He lets go and pulls the other end to bring the line on board (trying not to let it fall in the water and foul the prop).

But I didn't have a crew. Instead I walked along to a large Bavaria yacht, cleared my throat, and called politely, 'Bellatrix?' (that was the name of the boat). After a couple of attempts a lady appeared. 'Kannst Sie mir hilfen?' (My German is improving. Well, that was about the limit, actually; I had to switch back to English after that.) Her husband came out, and I explained what I intended. Since he wasn't going to be on the boat, we had to do it slightly differently.

The line was secured from the bow in a loop. I motored forward. Then hard reverse, and the German gentleman flicked the suddenly slack line from the bollard back onto the boat. I pulled out into the harbour in a smooth curve, and waved to my helper. 'You are free,' cried some Dutchmen having breakfast in the cockpit of a very large yacht.

'I am free,' I agreed, and was able to motor off.

Being singlehanded has its problems (I have yet to tell you of Logstor), but people will usually lend a hand. I don't like to ask if I can manage by myself; it is a bit of an imposition. Here I had little choice, and for once my plan succeeded.

I've just related how I escaped from Thyboron, and I motored out, the weather still grey, and a brisk breeze still blowing. Not quite as hard as the day before, but brisk enough. The narrow channel leads out in a wide sweeping curve, almost a semicircle. It is well buoyed though, and soon I was in clearer water, the wind almost astern, making 5 knots just on the jib (and it is a small jib). More boats came out from Thyboron, bigger than me, and with more sail, sweeping past me. There is a lifitng bridge at Aggersund, and I could see boats beginning to congregate there, waiting. I switched on the engine for a bit of extra speed so as not to miss the opening. The bridge went up, and boats began going through. A couple of hundred metres ahead of me was a fishing boat - he went through ... and then the bridge began to close. I was not happy. Another minute, and I'd have been through too. I radioed the bridge - another half hour to go.

I milled about aimlessly, in company with a Swedish boat about the same size as me. Eventually, lights begin to flash on the bridge, and it opened, eventually letting us through.

Even though the wind had dropped a little, I kept going just on the jib. I was not in that much of a hurry. Even so, after about an hour, the wind had dropped further, and so up went the mainsail, double reefed. Of course, once you do that, the inevitable happens - the wind began rising little by little.

There is a large bridge in the narrows before Nyboking, and the problem was that the wind wasn't steady - it would come in gusts, causing the boat to head round before the autohelm could drag it back. I also had a decision to take here - whether to go into Nyboking or not. There seemed to be a lot of masts, and it wasn't much past midday. Enjoy the sail, thought I, and go on to Logstor.

Which I did. But the gusts were becoming fiercer, and accompanied by heavy showers. Eventually, one gust was just too much. I turned into the wind - at a guess, now gusting up to 30 knots - and dropped the main. One of the drawbacks of a fully battened main with lazy jacks is that you have to be almost head to wind to take it down, which means rolling in the jib and starting the engine.

Just on the jib, I was making fast progress. The channel into Logstor is about 3 miles long and about 300m wide - often narrower - although it is nice and straight. The depths either side? Less than a metre. Not a place to go aground, with this wind behind me.

Eventually I reached the entrance, and saw it was packed inside. There were boats rafted three and four deep either side. I had to make a fairly swift decision, and aimed for quite a big fellow on the left. I pulled up against him without any problem, and leapt on to his deck, bow line in hand. What followed next was both unexpected and unpleasant.

The wind was blowing from almost dead ahead, and took Prospero backwards very fast - almost as if I had left the motor in reverse (I hadn't! I checked later.). There was no way I was going to reach his bow cleat in time, so I put the line over my shoulder and held tight. I knew that six tonnes of boat was going to be held by just me - and if I let go, the boat would blow strasight down onto the harbour wall some way behind.

People leapt into action around me. I was hanging on for grim death until someone relieved me of the line. Gradually the boat was pulled up alongside and tied on. That wasn't all, though. As Prospero began its downwind journey, I saw and heard the bow roller catch on one of the stanchions of the boat I was tying against. The owner hadn't been there to notice, and it would have easily been overlooked in the confusion, but my conscience was another matter.

'Excuse me, but I think I've just bent one of your stanchions. Entirely my fault.'

We looked at it - nothing too fatal, but it might need a boatyard to fix it properly. I gave him my name and address on a postcard. Often it's not the cost, but the nuisance factor with damage like this. And I felt guilty about having made such a mess of things.

To be honest, it's the first time this has happened to me, and it'll teach me to be more cautious in the future. I also should have gone on further before trying to tie on - after all, if you're jumping off with a bow line, the less distance you have to go the better.

This would also have been a prime example of when to use the midship mooring cleats - except he didn't have any! That's quite rare these days. Tying on midships to midships is a quick and easy way to hold the boat before securing all the other lines.

The other chap still wasn't entirely happy - we were now a raft of four boats in a very strong wind ... even if it was from ahead. And boat number two wanted to depart at 8 o'clock the next morning. Which is a tale for next time.

Well, fortunately, I did, although I hate to guess by what margin I cleared the boats on the other side. I had to go out of the harbour entirely, and thought of the hassle I'd have tying up again if it went back in. Now I was out here, perhaps better to go on.

As it happened, the boat coming out was going my way, and I used that to my advantage. There was a lifting bridge about two miles down, with someone already there waiting, then the two of us came along. The bridge opened. One problem fewer.

From here to Aalborg was about 25 miles. The trouble was that it was all through narrow channels - half a mile at the widest, about 200 yards at the narrowest. It was extremely well buoyed. In the wider parts the buoys might have been half a mile apart, in the narrowest parts, about 500 yards apart. Over 25 miles, that's a lot of buoys. Not only did I have to pick them up visually, I then had to work out which buoy it was on the chart, and this where the next buoy might be. And they are not numbered. I had to concentrate hard.

It also rained. Now there's a surprise. But these were good heavy downpours - fortunately not enough to obscure the buoys, however. The big fellow from the bridge was about half a mile ahead, and a useful marker. I know - it's never a good idea to follow the chap ahead blindly, but along here, there weren't many other places to go. It's odd to be in the middle of a large expanse of water, a mile or two from shore, knowing most of it was about a metre deep.

I had the motor on, and used the jib as well. The wind was too strong to risk the main, particularly with the wind dead astern.

I had thought of stopping at Aalborg, but it was only about half past twelve when I got there, and the boat who had left at the same time was going through the bridge. Why not, thought I? The stretch to Hals was much easier, and only about 15 miles. The strong westerlies had produced a good current behind me, and I might as well take advantage.

We had to hang about for the 1300 opening, then went for it. If my reading of the lights on the bridge were right, we should have waited for the boats on the other side - but no one hung about. I thought I'd better not be left out, and brought up the tail.

And from there, it was easy. A much wider channel, the wind had eased, and a good current. This is quite a busy waterway from the commercial point of view; Aalberg is a big city, with some obviously quite active docks.

And so by late afternoon, I arrived at a crowded Hals. This was a place where I could spend a few days. It has an excellent supermarket very close. The club house had washing machines (well, one), and I needed to do a lot of laundry. I found a good berth, and for the first time in a fortnight, could relax.

I had covered a lot of distance in quite a short time in some nasty weather. I had intended to make a longer cruise in the Limfiord, but time and weather had ruled that out. Maybe another year.

A view of the harbour at Hals

I was looking at the mainsail when I noticed something a little odd. There was something wrong somewhere - and when I looked more closely, I realised what. I had lost the retaining nut for the gooseneck.

For the non nautical, the gooseneck is the part that connects the boom to the mast. At the front of the boom, a pin goes into a fitting on the mast, so that the boom can swing from side to side. The pin is held in place with a nut at the bottom, and this had obviously worked loose.

The gooseneck hadn't pulled out completely. The fitting on the mast has two jaws jutting out, and the gooseneck fits into the gap. The bolt had pulled out of the lower jaw, but was still in the upper jaw.

I knew I'd never be able to waggle the boom back into place on a swaying boat at sea. I had to drop the mainsail before the pin worked its way out completely. So - go back to Hals? I was reluctant to retrace my steps. With no main, my speed would be less. I looked at the charts. Bonnerup was reasonably close. It seemed a reasoanble sort of place.

Under jib alone, it tookn a few hours, but by early afternoon, I was there. Bonnerup is entirely artificial - it projects out from the shore as a apir of long arms which then curve together to form the entrance. Once inside, there are a series of jetties which act as baffles to shelter the inner harbour.

I was glad I'd hung ropes and fenders out before going in; there was little room to maneouvre. As it was, I went down to the end, looking for a berth, and turning the boat was slightly nerve racking. The owner of a raather expensive looking Bavaria came on deck in alarm as my bow roller swung round rather too close to his boat. But one advantage of arriving in early afternoon was that there was a slot free on a hammer head (Imagine the jetty running out from the shore with boats either side. Often this is 'T' shaped, with the hammer head being the crosspiece at the top.).

I was lucky. Boat after boat came in. The yacht harbour was quite cramped, and several large boats provided entertainment as they tried to turn and manoeuvre. I ended up with two boats rafted outside me, and the only reason there weren't any more is that they would have blocked the channel.

The nut had obviously gone overboard, and I had none spare of that size on board. I found a repair shop, and they sold me three nuts for 20 kroner. Always a good idea to have spares.

Getting out of the harbour was something of a slalom - there were boats tied up everywhere. I had to clear the harbour completely before I could think of tidying away lines and fenders. It was still rather grey, with a briskish westerly wind. I ran down to the cardinal mark at the top of headland on jib and motor, then, as I turned south, I raised the main and killed the engine.

Now the day brightened, the bright Baltic weather settling in for the first time. The wind fell light, and I drifted for a while, then it rose again - from the southwest, exactly the direction I was going.

Now for several hours of beating to windward. There was a large German yacht just in front of me, and it gave me some satisfaction to leave him further and further behind as the day went on.

The approach to Ballen from the north is tricky: there is a small island offshore, with a deep channel about half a mile wide either side, then on the far side of the channels, shoals with sandbars which lay about a metre above sea level. Neither channel was marked, except with a buoy at the top. I had paper charts, but not very good electronic charts, so I carefully marked the entrance and exit to the channel and transferred the co-ordinates to the laptop. To complicate matters, it was nearing sunset, and given this wind, I'd have to motor - and fuel was beginning to run low.

Three hours later, 1 a.m., and I was approaching the harbour very cautiously. The Danes put fixed and not flashing red and greens on the entrance, and this is not helpful. The last time I'd been to Ballen, it had been late May, and there had been an abundance of quayside to tie up. Not so now.

As it was now quite dark, I motored in very gingerly. Ballen is a harbour about the size of Lymington, a basin about 500m across. But now boats were stuffed everywhere, stuffed into spaces where boats shouldn't be stuffed. They were rafted out eight or so deep. I could vaguely see a channel into this mass of boats, but knew if I went in, I might be swallowed up, not be be seen again. If I'd tied the bow to one of the boats of one raft, and the stern to the other end of the other raft, people would have been able to walk across the harbour rather than round it. This was not a good idea. It also explained something else - the twenty or so boats anchored off the beach.

Not a lot of choice then. I went back out of the harbour then along the beach very carefully, pulling bits of chain from the bow locker. Fortunately the wind had died almost completely, though there still some residual swell making things slightly uncomfortable. Clear of everyone, about 400 metres from the beach, and in 5 metres of water, I dropped the anchor. I fell asleep at 3a.m., and knew nothing until 8 the next morning.

Later the next morning. A lot of boats had already left - but this might give you some idea of how crowded it was. The white boat has just come out of the harbour entrance.

You do need to make sure that you're not berthing where you shouldn't, and that's where a harbour master comes in. You don't berth in places reserved for ferries, for example. Another big no-no is taking a resident's berth. There is nothing more annoying than coming back to a berth for which you have paid good money to find someone else squatting there.

There is one marina which is an exception to this rule - it has a highly visible and highly audible harbour master. He was also acting as berthing master. Nothing wrong with that - if you're coming into a crowded harbour, it can be very useful to have someone to point out an empty berth you may not have spotted.

However, the harbour master at the marina in Swinoujscie, Poland, had other ideas. First, he has a whistle. When he spots you, he gives a peremptory blast on the whistle and points at where he wants you to go ... which may not be where you want to go.

Another unwritten rule is along the lines of 'first come, first served'. In other words, if you arrive early, and there are plenty of free spaces, you take the one that you think will be the easiest and most comfortable.

There were plenty of free spaces that afternoon. The marina now has four pontoons, although three of them don't have fingers - you just lie alongside. There are also some buoys for when it gets crowded - these are stern bouys. You attach a line to the buoy and lie perpendicular to the pontoon, bow on.

Despite the plethora of empty spaces, he was making it very clear that he wanted me to do that. The snag was that he didn't speak English and I didn't speak Polish. He was also very adamant that I was to do as instructed (he bore a remarkable physical resembalnce to Lech Walesa, of Solidarity fame). When I tried to come alongside, he waved me off, and went back to pointing at the buoys.

A further snag was that I didn't have the lines sorted for a stern buoy. What I should have done was to go back out, sort out a couple of long lines for the stern, and go back. I didn't.

When eventually we were tied up, there was the problem of getting on and off the boat. Prospero has a high bow. Most moorings with stern buoys have some sort of staging to make it easy to step from bow to shore. Not here. We were on a pontoon, and it was a long way down (and a long way up) from the bow to the pontoon.

To rub salt in the wound, a Finnish boat slid in next to us - a husband and wife team, who dealt with the buoy with swift efficiency. Years of practice, I said to myself. This was only my second attempt using a stern buoy. Well, that was my excuse.

And in the morning, those empty places were still empty. What his problem was, I don't know. I had heard he was expecting some racing yachts. Fair enough. If they arrive late, let them take the stern buoy.

And then we left, slipping our lines quickly and efficiently. Trouble is, no one was watching ...

A friend of mine has limited holiday time, and he was flying out to Germany for ten days on the boat. Owen (as I shall call him for the purposes of this blog) enjoys being on the boat, but is prone to motion sicknesses. He has been across the Channel a few times with me, and didn't always enjoy the crossings. No problem, I said. We'd be in nice sheltered inland waters. No swell or anything like that.

He flew in on one of the windiest days yet. Since he arrived in the late afternoon, we could wander round Stralsund. No hurry to leave in the morning, either. I had hoped the wind might have dropped enough for us to get out of the berth for the 12:20 bridge, but no luck. I decided to go for the 17:20 opening, and make good time down to Kroeslin in this wind.

This was a mistake. First, we met a strong current against us in the Strelasund, which I wasn't expecting. Second, we ended up going ten miles down the Greifswalder Bodden with the wind almost dead astern, meaning we were rolling like mad. Thirdly, it was dark when we arrived at the channel into the Peenestrom.

This was bad news, since the channel is less than 100m wide and marked by a succession of unlit buoys. But there is an extremely good set of leading lights on the shore. Owen kept his eye on these whilst I watched our progress on the laptop. Somehow we managed to pass through each set of buoys in turn. Often they were just yards away when we spotted them. Not a good move.

We spent part of the next day at Peenemunde, then set off the next morning to go south. Our timetable was restricted by the two opening bridges at Wolgast and at Zecherin. We ambled down to Wolgast, to be joined by more and more boats coming out of Kroeslin. It was a mad scramble when the bridge opened, as you can see below:

Then into the Achte Wasser, when I tried sailing in a gentle breeze, before realising that Zecherin was a bit further than I'd thought, and we had to get a move on, motoring hard to make it just in time. From there, we were in the Stettiner Haff, though not before passing the ruins of the railway bridge at Karnin. This was blown up in April 1945 to deny it to the advancing Russians, and never rebuilt. The central section, which you can see in the picture below, had a lifting platform for ships to pass underneath. You also have to be wary of the remians of the other bridge columns, lurking just on the surface.

And from there, a satisfying final beat across the Haff before motoring into Ueckermunde and tying up in the Stadthafen. From Ueckermunde, across the Haff (no Polish guard boat!) and up to Swinoujscie (of which enough was said earlier). The intention was then to go up the east coast of Usedom and Rugen to Sassnitz; quite a long haul. Another bad idea.

The wind seemed to be a moderate SW, but at the harbour entrance, there was something of a swell rolling down from the north. That should have given me a hint. Given the wind, I thought we'd go for a comfortable ride, and reefed the sail. One good decision, anyway.

As we went up the coast, the wind freshened, and the swell made it unpleasant. Owen was soon sick. I gave him some Sturgeron, but they didn't stay down very long. The wind went up further - according to the instruments, the apparent wind was now in the mid 20s (knots). It was going to be a long haul. Plan B then - Lauterbach, in the bodden. But mainly box moorings ... in this wind? Plan C then - back to Kroeslin.

I was, in one way, very pleased with the progress we were making in these conditions. There was a lot of water splashing about, but we were making a fair speed. However, the nastiest bit was yet to come. We had to head into the bodden through a fairly narrow channel, dead to windward. It would mean motoring. And in this wind, now about F6, motoring at quite high revs to make progress. The boat was slamming - quite severely at times.

We had a temporary respite behind the island of Ruden, but the last section of the channel was a little nervewracking. We tied up in Kroeslin with a sense of great relief!

To get to Greifswald, you enter the river at Wieck, which is a pleasant enough harbour in itself, although full of box moorings. There is a lifting bridge which opens every hour:

This is operated by two men hauling on chains, with an elaborate system of counterweights to help them lift it!

Griefswald itself is a pleasant town, with the usual enormous market square, though our visit was spoiled a little by the rain which poured down for two hours. I must go back and have a look at the place again.

Next day was some genuine sailing. There was still some breeze, but it was dropping, and we were not beating into it! We had to make the Stralsund bridge by 12:20, and did it with a couple of minutes to spare. We headed north towards Hiddensee, passing a Bavaria 30 as we did so. They began pursuing us, and with a slightly smug expression, overtook us. I wasn't standing for that from a Bavaria! We still had a single reef in from earlier, so I shook that out, and edged past them. They stayed behind all the way to Schaprode, which was our destination.

Schaprode is, in some ways, a slightly odd harbour. It isn't in a bay, or anything like that. Instead, it is sheltered behind a island, and the harbour lies in the channel between this island and Rugen. It sounds as though it ought to be quite exposed, but, on the contrary, is very well protected. The first part of the harbour is given over to ferries, but further on, a new (2003) yachthafen has been constructed - with pontoons! The pontoons look a little home made, and there isn't a great deal of space between the fingers. I thought we had room with a Bavaria 36 on the other side - we didn't really, and ended up wedged together with fenders.

The town is quite small and dominated by a fourteenth century church:

More rain meant we spent another day there, before heading back to Stralsund, where Owen helmed us down the Strelasund in 20+ knots of wind (on jib only). And then a 5 a.m. start to his journey back to England.

Greifswald may be known to those who sail as the home of Hanse yachts, but it is also a medieval Hanseatic league town which is remarkably well preserved. It looks as though it was untouched during the war, and during the Communist era, little or no development was carried out in the town centre. Money is obviously flowing in now, but the renovations are obviously being done in a style that fits in well with the existing framework.

Greifswald is in the southwest corner of the Greifswalder Bodden, about two or three miles up the Ryker river. You enter the river at Wieck, which is a fairly small town, and where a lifitng bridge, which opens every hour on the hour, lets you proceed up the river to Greifswald itself. The river is easy enough to navigate and quite deep. Don't be put off by the view of concrete apartment blocks in the first stretch. One hazard are the sculls and rowing boats (of the racing variety) that are obviously part of the university. Judging by the path along the river, Greifswald must have the highest number of joggers that I have yet seen in Germany.

There is a new marina with pontoons on the starboard side, but there isn't a lot of room to manouevre, and it is some way to walk to the town. The alternative is the quayside on the town side, which is filled with historic boats of one sort or another. You can find a space there and tie up, but the quayside is not yacht friendly. You really need some of the large spherical fenders, or, failing that, tie your fenders horizontally, with ropes either end.

This is the town quay - Prospero is down near the end:

The Havenmeister's office is in a circular brick tower, which dates back to the thirteenth century:

Unfortunately, its appearance is somewhat spoiled by a couple of containers, just out of shot, one of which has been converted into the ablutions. The best that could be said about them is that they are adequate!

Berthing was nine euros, with a ten euro deposit for the key to the ablutions. There is also a one euro daily charge for use of said ablutions. The harbour master connects your electricity cable to a locked box: you have to go and see him to get it back!

The town is dominated by three huge brick churches, and by the University. It is amazingly well preserved. There is nothing in Britain to come anywhere near this. Oxford and Cambridge, which are perhaps rough equivalents, have had their character destroyed by the twentieth century developers. Perhaps the developers were acting with the best possible motives, expecting a phoenix to rise from the ashes. Instead, they got a turkey. Oxford in particular has never recovered from the great demolition behind Pembroke in the 1960s.

A view from the market square:

One nice sunny day in Kroeslin, I decided to take the ferry across to Peenemunde, not to visit the museum again, but to explore the rest of the area on my bike. I went off in the direction of the basin, which was also the road to the airfield. At one point, the road takes a ninety degree turn to the right – but with a smaller branch off to the left. I went down there, and came to ... Yachthafen Peenemunde.

This is not to be confused with the yacht moorings in the main harbour. It is a couple of kilometres by road from the harbour, and in the middle of nowhere. I ventured inside, and started talking to an old bod (well, older than me, anyway). He knew no English, but that didn’t deter him. I was just trying to ask whether the harbour was open to visitors, but instead, he began giving me a history of the harbour.

It wasn’t in any way a natural harbour; it had been dug out in Hitler’s time, as part of the whole Peenemunde complex. It had been designed as a repair and maintenance depot, and indeed the far end was dominated by a large ramp and slipway. After the war, it had been taken over by the DDR, and in those days, Peenemunde was quite an important military base. Now it had become a yacht harbour!

The surrounding buildings were all of crumbling Communist concrete, now completely derelict (it wasn’t just the Eastern Bloc which built in cheap concrete - Cold War buildings in the same style can be found scattered across Britain. I must declare an interest here: I have a friend who works for English Heritage, and whose personal and professional interest is in Cold War concrete. Indeed, he has written a very good book on the subject!). Here and there, the place had been smartened up as part of the yacht harbour project, but it remained very much as a monument to how to build as cheaply as possible.

The quayside which is on your port side on entry.

The boats in the harbour were a similar mix. There were quite large boats which once might have been quite impressive, but now had obviously not been moved for years, and were gradually rotting away. There were boats which looked as though they might be acting as floating homes to people with nowhere else to live. But there were one or two smarter boats, obviously people who had been attracted to this new harbour (and presumably to its cheapness – I couldn’t see the mooring fees as being excessive!).

The moorings themselves were also a mix: there was an expanse of quayside, but which looked distinctly rough and rusty. You would need good fenders! On the other hand, new staging had been built in the middle of the harbour with decent box moorings (not my favourite, as you might know, but still quite useful). I asked him about the depth in the harbour – no problem, he said. At least four metres. What about waves in the harbour? It was open to the south west. Again, no problem, apparently. He said you can get wash in the harbour when something big goes down the Peene Strom, but it’s hardly the world’s busiest waterway. There was also electricity (some of the wiring looked a bit dodgy), water, and loos and showers in one of the buildings. There wasn’t a harbour master around, but you can leave your money in an envelope for him. 0.80 euros per metre per day.

The new staging with box moorings. Far right is the harbour entrance with the Peene Strom in the distance.

Having told me about the harbour, the old bod then began giving me his life history. He had been born in Stettin, but in 1946 Stettin, together with a huge swath of eastern Germany, had been given to Poland, and his family (together with around eight million other Germans) had been forced out and moved to Rostock. He told me a good deal more, but my German wasn’t up to understanding a lot of what he said.

Is it worth a visit? Well, yes, but with caveats. The immediate area might put people off, but I rather like those crumbling buildings. Not to everyone’s taste though. Once out of this, however, the surroundings are completely untouched and rural, and I can imagine the harbour in the evening to be completely still and silent. There is literally nothing within at least a kilometre of the harbour. And that is another problem: the nearest store is the Lebensmittel in Peenemunde, which has a very limited choice of provisions. It is probably two kilometres away – you could walk it, but it’d be a fair hike. No problem on a bike, though!

If you just want to visit the museum, it's not a bad option. You have a very pleasant 1 kilometre walk to get there. The alternatives are to go to Karlshagen, about 7 kilometres away, or Kroeslin, and take the small ferry across.

I haven’t been there by boat yet, but it’s on my itinerary.

When in the CityMarina at Stralsund, I picked up a couple of slips of paper. These listed the opening times for all the bridges in the area. I was heading south, and stopped at Wolgast, intending to go onto Ueckermünde. I had to go through the bridge at Zecherin, and my slip of paper told me the bridge opening time was 12:45. I left at 08:00 in very little wind, and negotiated the narrow channels into the Achterwasser.

There was a large Beneteau going in the same direction. He too was motoring, but a bit of breeze came along, and I hoisted the sails. The breeze built a little, to the extent that I was now overtaking him! I looked at my watch - 3 hours to cover 9 miles - I'd arrive far too early. And I didn't fancy going down those narrow channels with the wind behind me and full sail up. I stopped and dropped the main.

The Beneteau went charging on. Ah, I thought, he'll have a long wait, as I pottered along just on jib. It looked as though my timing was going to be about right - I arrived with about fifteen minutes to spare. But there was no sign of the Beneteau, which had me slightly baffled. There was nowhere for the Beneateau to have gone - no harbours, no side channels. A nasty suspicion began to creep into my mind.

12:45 came. The first sign that the bridge will open soon is when the traffic stops. The traffic carried on without interruption. 12:50 ... nothing happening ... by one o'clock it was obvious that whenever the bridge did open, 12:45 was not one of those times. My piece of paper was wrong. I had a choice. Wait until 4:45, or go back. I went back, and stopped the night in somewhere I'd not been to before: Rankwitz. But that's a story for another time.

The evening rush at the Zecherin bridge one August day.

It's only a small harbour, and being singlehanded, I had been wary of such places in the high season when they were crowded. But it was now near the end of September, and given I'd got the rest of the day, I would always have time to try elsewhere if I didn't like it.

Rankwitz is just off the narrow buoyed stretch of the Peenestrom, the entrance being about 300m from one of the channel markers. The wonderfully named Sportsschiffartskarten has not only paper charts, digital charts, a navigation program for laptops, but a guide to the individual harbours (101 of them in the 'Rund Rugen' pack. Not bad value for less than 60 euros!). I looked up the page for Rankwitz (unfortunately for me, it's in German, but it gives a good harbour plan), hung out ropes and fenders, and made my way in.

As it turned out, the harbour was almost empty. There was one other visitor that night - a large motorboat which tied up on some quayside. There were a couple of boats in some box moorings, but they looked as if they had been there some time. And there were pontoons! All completely empty!

The pontoons might have been a little on the short side for larger boats; I tied up at the very end, which was longer. The only snag with the pontoons is that they'd be very exposed - particularly in a north westerly. The Hafenlotse, or harbour guide, says, 'Bei NWN steht starker Schwell im Hafen' - which I interpret as a strong swell.

The picture above is actually taken looking north west, and you can see how exposed these pontoons would be in a good blow. Inside the harbour wouldn't be much better.

There is not a lot in Rankwitz - two restaurants and what look like four holiday homes. And the Hafenmeisterburo. Which was closed. In fact, I never saw anyone, and left at ten the next morning without paying. There wasn't even a letterbox to put money in. By the look of it, I would reckon that it was once a small harbour for patrol boats, and some pontoons have been put in to make some money in the summer.

I decided to be extravagant and have a meal in one of the fish restaurants, so at about 7:15 I wandered ashore. The restaurants closed at 7pm ...

This is the remains of the railway bridge at Karnin, which once connected the island of Usedom to the mainland, and opened in 1933. The reason it looks so odd is that the railway track ran close to the water, but the central section of line could be lifted up to allow ships to pass underneath. The outer sections of the bridge were dynamited in April 1945 to deny the bridge to the approaching Red Army.

All the debris has been cleared (I hope), but as you can see, the remains of some of the pillars still exist:

These are well marked by buoys, but it strikes me that a better idea would be simply to put a beacon on top to make it more conspicuous - cheaper, simpler, safer, and more obvious!

The remains are visible for miles once into the Stettiner Haff ... coming up here for the first time, two years ago, I mistook this for the Zecherin bridge and slowed down - then, realising my mistake, had to whack on full throttle to make Zecherin in time.

More on the Karnin bridge here and on Wikipedia(German only).