The forecast promised a bright day with some breeze, blowing from the SW, so quite a good wind direction for our planned sail, which was to exit the Schlei and head northwards to the next fjord, called Flensburger Frde. This one is almost as deep as the Schlei, so we anticipated not making it all the way to the end to the town of Flensburg, rather we would overnight in one of the many available harbours en route and finalise the journey tomorrow.

We exited the tight box at Kappeln without incident or bad language and within a few minutes, we had the genoa out and were sailing nicely downwind with the current, at around 4 knots and very pleasant it was, gliding silently by, so much so that all the bird song seemed to be amplified somehow. After an hour or so we were out at sea, still with just the genoa as there was enough wind to keep us moving at a respectable rate. We passed quite a few yachts going the other way, so many at one time that we reckoned that they must be racing and as we got closer, seeing the poor cold crew sitting on the upwind side to try to keep the boat level, we knew that we were right.

Flensburger Förde largely lies in a WNW direction, until the last few miles when it heads towards the SW. The wind was now blowing from the WSW so we could still sail even after we turned into the wide entrance to it, albeit with long tacks to the west followed by shorter tacks to the south to give us some sea room. We now had well over 20 knots of wind so we were flying in the flat conditions and as we were making such good time and as we had NO desire to try to enter a box in this sort of wind unless we had to, we opted to press on to Flensburg, in the hope that it would be more sheltered at the head of the fjord. Once we’d turned the corner towards Flensburg, the wind was right on the nose so we fired up the engine and furled the genoa – fighting to wind is something we no longer do. One or two other boats insisted on doing so, but with the wind gusting 27 knots (F7) they were working hard and not making anything like the progress we were, nice and flat and dry, sheltered from the incoming spray by our cockpit canopy.  We passed, or were passed by flying wind and kite-surfers and even a couple of hardy souls struggling on laser dinghies – these must have been close to their physical limits, especially during the gusts.

Luckily, we were correct about the conditions at the head of the fjord, the wind was down to about 10 knots and quite manageable. However, better still, there was a space for us to lie alongside the outer pontoon, so mooring up was a breeze – result!

By the time we’d squared everything away, chatted to the very pleasant new harbor master who spoke excellent  English (the old harbor master here was a character called Alf, an Irishman who married a German lady and who’s lived here for years) it was definitely time for a drink, we felt that we’d deserved one. We were pleased to be here, it is a nice harbor and again there are old boats to look at. One of them, a floating restaurant, was being a little antisocial for an hour or so as she was building up steam, as this process necessitated belching out tons of black smoke, smoke which fortunately more or less was blown away from us. Later, she was much more acceptable and it was nice to see her head out and return after some hours had elapsed.  That evening we watched another episode of ‘The Looming Towers ‘ – a gripping story based on the CIA and FBI’s efforts to catch the leaders of Al Qaeda prior to the events of 9/11.