We had rather a lot of dirty clothes, towels and bedding to wash in the near future and as the forecast for today was for hot weather (26°C) and Thursday’s prediction was for thundery showers, it was a bit of a no-brainer to opt to do the laundry today. Now most marinas only have one or maybe two washing machines and at times they are in great demand, so we reckoned on getting across to Fåborg as soon as possible in order to maximize our chances. There was very little, almost no wind as we bade our farewells to our German neighbours and by 10:00 we were safely tied up in the large marina, adjacent to the town harbour. We’d initially looked into the harbour but we didn’t spot any boxes wide enough ( there were plenty, as it happened, just further in than where we looked) and also it looked a bit ‘tired’ (wrong again, there were new facilities but deeper in than where we were looking), so we opted for the marina, reckoning that it was of more recent construction. We found a nice wide berth and Julie successfully dropped the windward warp over the pole and passed the end to me (imagine the boat going forward towards the pontoon between the poles, the first warp that is attached is the windward one (right hand side in this case) and as the boat advances the warp eventually becomes the rear one, once  the boat is inside the poles). She then repeated the exercise with the leeward (downwind) warp and then went forward to nip off the boat and fasten the two bow lines to the pontoon, starting with the windward one. All proceeded like clockwork until the downwind rear line fell into the water – it hadn’t been fastened to the cleat! No real harm done, I still had the windward warp and Julie was on shore, she could ease off the bow lines as I pulled CW back towards the poles so that I could drop the line over again. This I successfully did but as Julie was pulling us back the other, upwind line then fell into the water!! Much red faced profanities later, all was squared up and we could relax. It’s amazing that after all this time, occasionally we revert to acting like complete novices!

The day was now considerably older than it should have been had matters proceeded according to plan and I was anxious that we might have missed our washing machine opportunity but I needn’t have worried, there was hardly a soul about and we were able to do 3 machine loads over the remainder of the morning and into the early afternoon. By now it was really warm and there was a gentle breeze blowing – ideal drying weather and poor CW was festooned with drying items of clothing etc, but not for too long as indeed, it was a brilliant drying day.

We’ve been to Fåborg before, on 16^th May 2015 (see blog entry) and we had seen most of the sights, the main cultural one being the museum with its’ collection of Fynen artists’ work (we didn’t like them very much) so apart from going for a walk and to do a little shopping, we didn’t intend to do much. However, we were able to do even less, as it transpired that it was Constituton Day, the day that honours the Danish Constitution(s), signed on 5^th June 1849 and 5^th June 1953. We were wondering why the town was so quiet and that was because it is a national holiday, everywhere was closed! Having ascertained that, we decided that some time spent sunbathing and reading on the boat would be pleasant and the rest of the afternoon was passed in peaceful languor.

That evening I felt the barbecue urge resurrect itself – barbecuing when it’s cold is no fun but when it’s beautifully warm and the beer is deliciously cold, it takes some beating. Rather than christen our new Cobb barbecue, as there were no fewer than 5 constructed barbecue areas available for use, I selected one of those and cooked the lamb culotte (rump cap in the UK) and it was extremely tasty and tender, very nice indeed. It was so mild that evening that we simply sat in the cockpit and chatted whilst sipping a brandy and drinking coffee – or was it the other way around?