From Stenungsund to Grenaa

On the 7th August 2007 at 12.00 O´clock we left Stenungsund behind us. It was a glistening sunny day – with no wind, so we put our engine on. Left on the pier were family and friends waving their good byes. Very emotional as usual…

One hour later we reached our first stop! It was time to fix lunch and while this was being prepared Mike dived under the boat to scrape off the sea urchins that had attached themselves to the propeller during the time in harbour. As we carried on later it added 2 knots to the speed!  Before we carried on we had to go to Skärhamn for our annual visit to the “Nordiska Akvarellmuseet” (The Nordic Watercolour museum). We stayed the night in Skärhamn and carried on the following day.

The 8^th August twenty years ago we left England to move to Sweden – a strange coincident…

We headed out from Skärhamn early in the morning – yet again without any wind and set our course towards Anholt/Denmark. We expected this leg of the trip to take about 14 hours. We spent a lovely day at sea, during which time we hade the opportunity to give the engine a real test (it worked! – touch wood), the sails went up during the afternoon breeze and we took the sextant out of its´ box and practiced “taking the sun down”.  We saw porpoises jumping around the boat. A less pleasant experience was when we were attacked by a swarm of “bananaflies” ( I do not know what they are really called). I cannot understand where they came from!  The trip to Anholt took 16 hours (less speed forward when sailing) and we arrived in the pitch dark.

Anholt is very small, only 22km² (160 inhabitants) and you could quite easily miss it in the dark and mist if you are not careful. We had good use of the new equipment we acquired and passed the reefs and arrived at Anholt at 23.00 in one piece. We slept well that night.  We stayed one day at Anholt and carried on to Grenaa the next day.

We stayed in Grenaa for a week to have a bit of a holiday and a rest.  Apart from that it has been blowing gale force winds for several days, so it was just as well to take a break. It has been really nice! We have walked, biked and used public transport.  Who needs a car!  We thought long before we decided to buy fold up bikes, but in the end we did and stowed them in the boat.  I am glad that we did! They came in very handy!

Boats from many different countries have berthed here and a lot of languages have been heard.  One beautiful evening at sunset we heard a harmonica playing and soon a deep voice was singing “La Paloma”.  You could feel the goose bumps as you were thinking: This is the life….

Tomorrow (18/8) we are carrying on with our journey – weather permitting.  

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