RR3: RENDSBURG TO ÅRHUS (23 April - 2 May 2012)

We are now in Århus, the second largest city in Denmark.  It is halfway up the east coast of the mainland.  We sailed here from Rendsburg at the northern end of the Kiel Canal, from where we posted our last Round Robin (RR2).

We left the Canal through the northern lock at Holtenau where we entered the Kieler Förde, before making our way steadily north up the east coasts of Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein and the Danish province of South Jutland – to our present location.

Progress to date

After a day’s sightseeing in the very attractive 16th-century market town of Rendsburg, we left the next morning. Before doing so, however, we fuelled up at a price per litre lower than the UK’s discounted marine diesel prices.

Exiting Kiel Canal and entering the Baltic

As we approached the Holtenau lock, the keeper kindly delayed closing the gates so that we could catch that lock. Our transit of the 54 miles of the Kiel Canal cost us £16. This compares with the £182 we’d have to pay to transit the 62 miles of the Caledonian Canal.   

The Kieler Förde is the largest yachting centre in the Baltic. There are at least a dozen large yacht havens in the area.  We gave Dürstenbrook, to the south, nicknamed “millionaires’ row”, a miss, even though a meal in the impressive Kieler Yacht Club was described in the pilot book as being “an absolute must”.  

Instead we motored north a mile to the British Kiel Yacht Club, which is situated near a large German naval air station at Friedrichsort.  We berthed there on the head of the T-shaped jetty in a box mooring using very long stern lines to aft posts. At the bow we had to lasso a cleat on the pontoon – before finally sorting the lines out. Fortunately there was negligible wind at the time – since this was our first attempt at box mooring!  

Box Mooring, British Kiel Yacht Club

That evening in the bar, Mike Giles and Chris Wrigley, two ex-servicemen, now civilian sailing instructors, were good enough to spend time with us explaining the theory of alternative Baltic mooring techniques.   We also discussed various other aspects of Baltic sailing, in particular tides, currents and weather.

Before leaving early next morning, we practised mooring on our own, testing out the techniques we had discussed the previous night. At first, this caused everyone present some good-natured amusement. After a while, however, our audience got bored so we had presumably improved.

British Kiel Yacht Club army fleet moored with military precision

We were the only boat on the Centre’s 10-berth visitors’ jetty and indeed appear to have been one of the earliest UK visitors of the season. Only six weeks ago, the jetty was still surrounded by thick ice.  The Centre has excellent facilities, a very pleasant bar and an economic cafeteria (a Full English costs only £2.00). The staff went out of their way to welcome us as UK cruisers. Well worth a stop-over. 

On the way north out of the fjord into the southwest Baltic itself there is a prominent U-boat memorial at Möltenort and an impressive German naval war memorial north of Laboe, both on the eastern shore. 

The coast line of the Kieler Förde is low lying and well populated, unlike the Schleswig-Holstein coast running north to the Flensburger Förde which is agricultural country with scattered farms and hillocks with small valleys and lakes behind.  

Enjoying sailing in the Baltic

Our first sail north in the Baltic was in warm sun on a flat sea with a F4–5 on the beam – perfection.  We had problems, however, with our new Navionics Baltic chart data card, which we’d loaded into the Raymarine chart plotter. Having assiduously read the manual and still not resolved the problem, we phoned Olly, our electronics expert in Ipswich, who suggested that the first thing we should do was to check that the card was fully engaged.  Needless to say it wasn’t!  Problem resolved – but one does end up feeling a bit stupid in such circumstances.

The next place on our itinerary was the Schlei Förde.  It is twenty miles long and is also a very popular yachting location. On the south bank at the end of the fjord is the town of Haddeby – the site of the Viking trading capital of the eighth and ninth centuries. The town has a fascinating museum devoted to the Viking period.

The medieval city of Schleswig at the head of the fjord also has an interesting Viking centre as it was from there that the Vikings used to haul their longships overland to the North Sea. The City’s major attraction, however, is the Schloss Gottorf museum which has a macabre exhibition of 2000-year-old “Moorleichen”, peat-bog corpses with skin tanned and preserved like leather.

Flensburg

Further north, Flensburg is 28 miles up the Flensburger Förde.  The fjord forms the Schleswig-Holstein border between Germany and Denmark. In fact the boundary line runs along the middle of the shipping lane so that the port-hand buoys are in Germany and the starboard are in Denmark. There are numerous small hamlets, harbours and anchorages along each shore.

We wanted to stay in and explore the town, because it was where Helen was born while her father was serving there after the war.    We stayed in a box mooring in the town marina which is managed by Alfred O’Brien, an Irishman who married a local girl and has lived in the town for over 40 years. 

We also met and were helped by Jim Hardy who had kept his boat in the marina over the winter.  His boat, MFV Eabora, a very interesting converted fishing trawler, had once been owned by Alistair Maclean who is reputed to have written at least three of his books while on board.  To the extent that he felt he needed a stable environment in which to write, he’d had Vosper Thorneycroft fit stabilisers.

MFV Eabora - she once belonged to Alistair Maclean

From Flensburg in Germany we sailed north to Sønderborg in Denmark, through its lifting bridge, up the Alsund and the Als Fjord into the Lille Bælt. These are all well-protected waters between the mainland and the islands of Als and Fyn, the latter being the most westerly of the three islands which bridge the water across to Sweden.

Sønderborg, on Als island, was the scene of the principal battle for Schleswig-Holstein in the Prusso–Danish war of 1864.  The oldest castle in Denmark still guards the entrance to the Sund and today houses a museum commemorating this event.  The town was also an objective of Davies and Carruther’s pilgrimage to the Baltic in Erskine Childers’ book “Riddle of the Sands”.

Lifting bridge at Sønderborg

Although the Lille Bælt is well sheltered, we realised after repeatedly tacking against a Force 6 that we could not reach Mittelfart, our target for that day, by nightfall. We therefore dropped anchor in a sandy bay in the lee of the small low-lying island of Barsø.  Its woodlands and softly rolling hills provide a very calm and safe anchorage in winds from the north and east when tucked in close to the shore.

The next day we heard that the UK had been hit by gales and in some places a month’s rain in one day and the weather was atrocious.  Since it had not improved where we were, we decided to stay put and have a major sort-out – the first since leaving Ipswich.  

Having been delayed we now decided to give Mittelfart a miss and capitalised on the dramatic improvement in the weather by pushing on towards Århus.  It was very warm and we even donned shorts. Initially we had to complete our journey north up the Lille Bælt and then through the Snævringen Narrows with their high rail and road bridges to the island of Fyn.  We were helped through the Narrows and into the Kattegat by a 2-knot current.  

Tunø harbour

By sunset we just made it into the harbour of the small (2.5miles long) island of Tunø. With less than a metre of water under the keel on our approach run, we needed to concentrate more than usual on the transit marks on the shore.  Tunø, which we looked around next morning, is a beautiful little holiday spot, with rented cottages scattered about.  It is a car-free zone but in the summer is packed out by visitors who arrive by ferry or local sailing boats. At this time of the year, it was virtually empty and very pleasant. As with other small marinas, we paid our dues, including electricity, at an automatic pay station outside the marina office.

It took three hours from Tunø to reach Egå marina a few miles north of Århus.   We are planning to stay here for a couple of days to meet friends and sightsee, before turning east and crossing the Kattegat towards Helsingør, north of Copenhagen.