Leg 4 – Karlskrona to Kiel via Bornholm

We stayed in Karlskrona from Sunday (June 22) to Wednesday (June 25). Karlskrona is a town where Maria has been living for over 7 years before moving to Norway. For Maria it was the opportunity to come back to the past and see what has changed. For someone else, it was the opportunity to discover a new town in Sweden.

We got the visit of Maria’s mother with her husband who brought Fika with them. We met some friends of Maria with whom we had a nice dinner and we also met Ann Christin and Anders who owned Lovisa some years ago and sailed her around the world for 8 years. It is wonderful to get to know them more, know about their experience around the world and get to know more about the history of Lovisa. For their trip, they did so much work to make Lovisa a comfortable and safe boat for long sailing trips. For our trip now, they made special pot holders that obviously fit Lovisa’s own colors. This is kind of the final touch after all preparations we have made of our trip.

We obviously didn’t miss the opportunity in Karlskrona to go to a boat shop and throw some more money in boat stuff. We took time to do some troubleshooting about some faults that we had like the gas remote shut-off valve was still not working. It is a valve that should allow us to close the gas line right after the gas bottle from the inside. Without it functioning, we have to go at the front of the deck to open and close the gas, which is not funny when there are big waves.

The winds blowing most of the time from west were making our progress to west quite challenging. After hard westerly winds blowing on Tuesday (June 24), we took the opportunity of a small window of winds blowing from west north-west to sail towards Bornholm. We sailed with kutter jib at the front, full mainsail and we left the windvane steering the boat. We had 8 m/s steady winds with waves of about 1 to 2 m for most of the crossing with short moments with winds increasing to 12-13 m/s that were also creating bigger waves. On the way, we crossed the route of Akademik Tryoshnikov, a Russian research vessel who nicely changed their course for us as we were in collision route. We were a bit undecided about which harbor to choose on Bornholm. We were thinking first about Hammerhavn on the west coast but it doesn’t seem very protected from waves coming from the west so we were thinking about Hasle. But since the windvane kept steering right towards Allinge and we were happy about the idea to stop earlier (Allinge was closer for us), we ended the day in Allinge. Allinge is a small and lovely harbor well protected. Good that we left the windvane decide for us. And yes, Lovisa was probably the most beautiful sailboat in the harbor!

The first guest flag to pull up was therefore the Danish flag. Actually Bornholm have their own flag. It is a Danish flag with a green cross instead of white, but we don’t have it.

While waiting for betters winds to progress towards Kiel Canal in Germany, we just enjoyed Bornholm, and practiced our Danish.

And of course, we didn’t miss the opportunity to do some boat fix; we repaired the Swedish flag for the second time (it’s getting a little bit smaller for every time) and continued to troubleshoot the issue with the remote gas shut off valve. We finally got it to work by replacing the control panel. And we also took the opportunity to finish our guest flag container! Now every country guest flag has its own pocket to be stored. And as usual, a visit to the nearest boat shop was mandatory, this required a bike ride to the nearby village Tejn. The owner was trying to retire and close the shop and gave us a good discount, plus a job offer for Emilien to come back after the sail to the Carribbean and take over the shop.

After 5 days waiting for favorable winds, we finally saw a small window of 8-9 m/s north-westerly winds on Monday (June 30) to sail towards Lohme or Sassnitz on the island of Rügen in Germany. The idea was from there to catch the lighter southerly winds forecasted on Wednesday and Thursday to try to reach Kiel. This was our chance!

The sail to Germany was quite hectic although it is always good to be out sailing on a sunny day: Because of the direction of the wind, we were not able to have both good boat speed considering also the waves (every time the boat is smashing into a wave, we loose speed) and right trajectory to avoid an offshore windfarm that was in the way. The crew ended up frustrated. The last 4 hours by night, after we passed the offshore windfarm, were much nicer. We could take a better angle against the wind and hold 4.5 knots in boat speed in just 4.5 m/s of wind with nearly no waves. We couldn’t hold that speed earlier with 9 m/s to 10 m/s of wind. We were anyway happy to arrive in Sassnitz on the island of Rügen and enjoyed a glass of Rum to celebrate the arrival in Germany in the dark.

We left Sassnitz the following day (July 1) after a late breakfast and an ice cream in the heat (the icream was also an excuse to put a feet off the pontoon so we could say that we have been in Sassnitz). After the tricky sailing from Bornholm to Sassnitz, here we got instead a fantastic sail from Sassnitz to Laboe / Kiel with good wind speeds in a good direction for most of the way. We started the trip on engine and after a couple of hours, the winds from south east picked up and we could hoist the Gennaker and sail our way along the coast of Rügen and its sharp sandstone (limestone?) cliffs. This is for sure a place to visit one day! We felt so lucky to have such nice weather conditions.

We pulled the gennaker down before sunset and sailed through the night with just the mainsail and the genoa hoisted. The gennaker is really fun to sail but we feel that it requires a constant eye and trimming right when required. Since we wanted to have a good nights sleep for the one not in charge (we took turns), we took the gennaker down. We both feel that being up alone on watch in good weather is a beautiful experience even though it can be tiring to not get a full nights sleep. Checking the lights of ships and lighthouses, contemplating the waves and how the boat behaves is peaceful. We were also in the company of conversations overheard on the VHF, almost all of them very polite including “good evening” and then “good morning” after midnight. There was one exception which we heard in day time “White lady, white lady, white lady, du bist ein idiot”. This reminded us also about an earlier conversation overheard on the way to Karlskrona – someone repeatedly calling for Karlskrona radio, until another person got tired of it and replied “There IS no Karlskrona radio!”.

For you readers, we share an amazing sunrise moment from our way to Kiel !