Harborday Öckerö/Sweden - 07/13/2014

Today we spend a very relaxed rainy day in Öckerö. Whenever the rain stops, we go out for a walk. The best place is up on a rocky hill, where we have a good view over the skerry and this part of the north Gothenburg archipelago.
The other part of the day we spend with doing the laundry, shopping and cooking some delicious fish and waiting for the soccer match this evening ;-)

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Öckerö/Sweden - 07/12/2014

From Laesø/Denmark to Öckerö/Sweden, distance 31.4 NM, weather: sunny, wind 3-4 NE turning NW, temperatur 22°C

The new plan is now to go for the westswedish skerries north of Goteborg and travel in short  trips up to the north as far as we get until we have to turn and go back to be home in time. I am a little sad, that by doing so we most likely will not reach Oslo, but this is a vacation journey not an expedition ;-)
Today we reach Sweden! It is a great feeling to be back in this amazing landscape and the kids are very excited when the first skerries appear at the horizon.
We stop in Öckerö for two reasons: First it is not that much of a tourist spot and we hope to find a less crowded harbor today. And second, we have been here last year :-) We liked this typical swedish town and the harbor a lot. And moreover we had pizza at a restaurant, which showed last time the women's soccer championship on TV...the forecast predicts heavy rain for tomorrow so we are going to stay in Öckerö and already know where we can watch the final Argentina-Germany ;-)

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Laesø/Denmark via Skagen - 07/11/2014

From Hals/Denmark to Laesø/Denmark via Skagen, distance 83 NM, weather:sunny, wind 3-4 NE, temperature 25°C

Todays story is kind of strange...
We leave Hals/Denmark early in the morning still convinced, that the best plan for our journey is to go for long distances in the beginning, then go back slowly with shorter trips. Magdalena is not quiet feeling well today with a little low fever, but she lays down in the salon with books and iPad games and is as happy as she could be.
The wind changes every now and then and we have to start the engine once in a while.
At 5pm we reach our destination Skagen at the very north of Denmark, which would be the perfect spot to jump over the Skagerak the other day. But when entering the harbor, we have to realize that it is completely over crowded. And to tell the truth, with this large dog, you can not just get along side another boat "Oh, you don't mind that our large, black, furry, hair losing, sympathetic dog is running over your boat back and forth, do you?!".
At the end we stop shortly at the gas station and filled our tank and emptied Hugo's "tank" and then decided to make it the first night trip this journey...The new destination would be the westswedish skerries as far north as we could get this night.
The sunset is very beautiful and since it is full moon, the moonlight is glimmering very romantically on the water.
But we have to admit, we underestimated that the wind strengthened quite a bit and the waves became even higher. The success of the course we take is, that the children although already in bed feel severely seasick again....seeing that this journey starts to stress them out, is the point to skip our plans and take a new direction.
We bear away and run for the island Laesø although that takes us back South a good bit. Madita runs now much calmer and the children are able to sleep, while we are sitting in the cockpit discussing what this day teaches us.....
We reach Laesø at 3 in the morning and guess what?!....it is even more crowed.......Anyway we moor alongside any ship in this whole crowd, where we are not even able to determine where the pontoons might be and fall fast a sleep.

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Hals/Jutland Denmark - 07/10/2014

From Grenaa/Denmark to Hals/Denmark, distance 43 NM, weather: sunny, 25°C, wind Baufort 3-4 NE, watertemperatur 20°C

Our summer vacation starts and we are leaving Grenaa/Denmark under good conditions: Madita is packed as if we plan to do 3-4 circumnavigations and the sun is shining.. Since we want to reach Oslo, the plan is to travel far and quickly north within the first 3-5 days and then slowly take the way back. Also that would allow us to enter Norway directly without seeing another vet for Hugo, who needs to arrive in Norway five days after being treated against Echinococcus multilocularis, which he was just before we left Germany.
So far so good....although the wind is not too heavy, we find short and irregular waves and all five of us are getting more or less seasick.... It disappears after the children and me emptied our stomachs and filled them with fresh food and the second half of the journey becomes much easier.
Anyway, the sun is burning down on us and at the end of the day we all feel, that we had enough waves and enough sun and stop for the night at Hals/Denmark at the north side of the east entrance into the Limfjord.
Hals is a lively summer village and the atmosphere in the harbor is cheerful and friendly. The view of the Limfjord let new ideas for future travels arise in us..
Since we feel quite tiered we only take a short walk through the harbor area and then call it a day.

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Spot of the Week - Wismar/Germany

We visited the town Wismar/Germany by boat in spring 2013.

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Bridges

Traveling the Baltic Sea once in a while you have to pass under bridges. Some impressions:

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Neglect

There are essentially three types of ships in the harbors: Loved and well maintained one, regularly used ones and ships, which are abandoned...

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Nature-Art

Yet another version of art made by nature ;-)

At the beach of the island Anholt/Denmark.

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Evening Orth/Fehrmarn Germany

On our way from winter depot in Lübeck/Germany to Madita's place for the summer in Sønderborg/Denmark we stopped for one night in Orth/Fehrmarn Germany and had a wonderful late spring evening:

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Walking-tour to Høruphav/Als Denmark

Some impressions of our Easter Sunday walking-tour from Sønderborg to Høruphav through the woods along the cliff line.

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Shipbuilder Museum - Bassholmen/Sweden

Last year we visited Bassholmen/Sweden. This little place is located within a natural reserve at the inner westswedish skerries close to Orust.
In older times ships were built at a small dockyard. Nowadays a museum tells about this excellent craft. We had a good time there, discovering a lot and enjoying the smell of old wood and the impression of former times at sea.

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Spot of the week - Nysted/Lolland Denmark

There are places which I simply like a lot, without knowing why I like them so very much. There is a special atmosphere. Proof that a place is indeed of this kind is, when returning after a while and you still feel the same.
Nysted definitely is one of these places to me. Located in a bay at the south side of the danish island Lolland, the nature around is rather calm. We have been there in fall and spring, off seasons and we enjoyed strolling the park of Nysted Castel being on our own very much.
We like harbors which are not only used by boats tourists but by the locals and fisher alike.

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Ernst Barlach Museum/Hamburg Germany

One of my favorite artists, who influence my thinking about art from early age on is the German sculptor Ernst Barlach (1870-1938).
Located within the Jänisch-Park in Hamburg's west is the Barlach Museum, where these pictures were taken.

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Ships

One good thing about going sailing is all the beautiful other ships around at sea or in the harbors:

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Churches

Exploring a new place we are always happy when finding the churches open for a visit. Especially the small fisher's churches at the coast of the Baltic Sea are of a certain earnest beauty.

Søby/Aerø Denmark

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Lieschen Müller

One day in October a few years ago, we found a little kitten in the gras, probably 3-4 weeks old and no mother to see around....What could we do? we took her in the house fed her by hand and called her Lieschen Müller. She grew to be a beautiful, independent, intelligent, wild thing. Unfortunately she died in an accident one and a half years later....

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Roundtrip Southern Sweden September 2004

In 2004, long before we started sailing, Wolfgang and I traveled through southern Sweden by car for about 10 days. That was when we first fell in love with Scandinavia generally and Sweden especially....

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Giraffes at Serengeti-Park Hodenhagen/Germany

There was a giraffe's head in our car!
At the Serengeti-Park Hodenhagen/Germany giraffes are not very shy and they love to have a good look at what is inside your car.
There are many other exciting animals, but we love the giraffes best, so please have a look the attached video of them :-)

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Lübeck/Germany

In autumn 2011,  we made some use of having lost Madita's mast. We went to Lübeck, a small town in northern Germany with about 200.000 inhabitants.
Lübeck has a very beautiful historic center located on an island between the rivers Trave and Wankenitz. That is where being without mast came into play: We were able to pass all the very low bridges, although we still had some doubts whether we would fit underneath them, especially with a skipper of 2m body height ;-)
It was a brilliant later summer weekend, with very sunny weather and we enjoyed very much to see this town, we liked a lot already before, from water side.

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Hamburg/Germany - cargo-harbor

In spring we made a harbor-roundtour in Hamburg's cargo-harbor.

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Berlin-Mitte/Germany

One probably would need a whole blog on it's own to come up to give a complete picture of Germanys capital city Berlin.
Here, only a few impressions from our weekend trip earlier this year. All pictures are taken at the district Berlin-Mitte, the old and new center of the city.

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Visitors in the garden

What I liked most about the place where we lived before we moved to Hamburg, that is was very much within the nature; a fact that brought uninvited transient visitors....

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Grenaa/Denmark - Kattegat Center

This weekend we visited Madita in Grenaa/Denmark. But since the weather was bad and the wind direction was of no real use, we stayed there and made a visit at the Kattegat Center.

We were very much impressed and the children were very excited, running ahead and calling our attention to the next imposing animals they discovered.

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Spot of the Week - Endelave/Denmark

Endelave is a small danish island southwest of Samsø. It has a size of about 13 km² and currently about 160 inhabitants.
We have been there in summer 2011 on our first longer sailing trip.

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Pontoon Life......

The only possible way to stay reasonably on a pontoon for more than... say 2 minutes is like this ;-))

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From Sønderborg to Grenaa - 06/19-06/21/2014

During our summer vacation our plan is to reach Oslo/Norway; this time by sailing ;-)
But since it is not that much time for this rather long distance (and back), we thought about bringing Madita northwards before our journey starts. The best time for doing so would be the weekend after Corpus Christi with a few days off around that.
Wolfgang wanted to do a sailing weekend with his cousin anyway and he offered to help bringing Madita to the north.
I am more than grateful, that it were not the children and me doing this trip, since it was rather windy with up to 37 knots of wind (Beaufort 7-8) at the first day, a little less the following days with even higher waves.
Although it was wet and salty, the guys were in high spirits when returning home four days later.
And Madita is now in Grenaa waiting for the highlight of the year: Oslo we are about to come! :-)

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Porpoise

It is not getting less, it does not wear off: The exciting feeling of meeting porpoise while traveling across the Baltic Sea.
Most of the times we only see the dorsal fin appearing suddenly out of the water. But sometimes we are lucky and these amazing animals start to play with Madita, an event which causes permanent smiling.

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Clematis

I love the Clematis, being in flower at the house walls in the small towns of southern Denmark in early summer. 

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Sunday morning thoughts

Sunday mornings, when I take the dog for a walk around the neighborhood, we pass all those neat nice houses. Flowers are blooming manifoldly in the front gardens, balconies are planted in equal elaborately. Windows are opened to let in the fresh summer morning air and allow one to get a glimpse here and there of the nicely and modernly decorated living rooms. More or less our house may give the same impression.

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Spot of the week - København/Sjaelland-Denmark

In 2012 we visited the capital of Denmark, København by boat.

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