No sooner had I posted yesterday’s blog that I heard from our friend Horst Safarovic, currently sailing his Moody 38, Tutunui back to the Baltic in company with his wife Janet, our CA Honorary Local Representative for these parts. Horst tells me that yesterday was ‘Pfingsten’ (Penticost) – a public holiday in Germany and the last one until 3d October – thank you Horst!

Today was another washing day but we were somewhat discomfited to see that it was really quite misty and with little wind – in other words, not a good drying day. Moreover, there was up to a 50% chance of rain during the day, so we would be lucky if we managed to achieve our aim of stowing away clean, dry clothing. It was, however, considerably warmer than of late so we decided to take the chance and got the clothes and towels in the machine once we’d showered.

As our car was blocked in and we wanted to replenish some of our liquid stores (!), I unfolded our little-used bikes (last time was 2016, we reckon), pumped the tyres and oiled wherever I could and they were ready for use. Prior to that we’d renewed our acquaintances with Ingo Smeets (Gordana wasn’t around) and Tina in the chandlery – all were somewhat surprised to see us & Ingo was relieved that we hadn’t had any engineering problems! 

After lunch, we took the route up to the outskirts of Burg auf Fehmarn which is, in fact a pleasant cycle track, a very popular one, it’s almost like a cyclist’s motorway! It’s particularly nice this time of the year as the air is full of the scent of wild roses, it’s quite lovely, provided that is, that you like smell (& who doesn’t?). The first supermarket you get to, just to the left of the end of the cycle path, used to be ‘Sky’ but now it is another branch of the large chain ‘Rewe’ – probably an improvement and it was here that we bought our groceries before going on to Calle to get some more ‘Lab’ red wine boxes – the one I recommended previously and which we’d reckoned on being under-resourced given the numbers of visitors we are having. The bikes have panniers over the back wheels so wine boxes fit on them quite well, fastened down with bungies and in this manner we safely returned to the boat.

Now the primary reason why we had come back to Fehmarn was to meet up with our Belgian sailing buddies, Ed & Roos Vandermeulen. They were due to arrive from home sometime today and it was a nice coincidence and surprise that who we should see by CW, busy trying to do some origami with a piece of paper (origami as neither of them had a pen and Ed’s idea was to tear a piece of paper to an ‘E’ shape to let us know that they had been) but fortunately we arrived in time to spare his efforts. It was lovely sharing a cup of tea / coffee together, it’s nice to catch up after almost a year. We agreed we would meet for dinner tomorrow night, starting with aperitifs here on CW at 18:00 and indeed, I am typing this furiously as it is now 17:35 on the day!

Ed & Roos left at around 16:30 and by now, the mist had cleared completely, leaving us with a calm, warm sunny afternoon. We decided to have another bike ride and rode round the lagoon from Burgstaaken to the touristy harbour and holiday spot called Burgtiefe, about a 2 mile bike ride. The authorities have been investing quite considerable sums hereabouts, there are huge, comfortable seats dotted about and the harbour area in Burgtiefe has been extended and re-paved and it looks very smart, particularly on a warm, sunny afternoon. We didn’t linger too long as we were hoping to meet up with another couple, who had written to us only that morning to see where we were and as they were driving up from southern Germany, they might well be arriving soon, so we headed back to the boat.

Who were they? Last year, on 9^th August, we were in Sweden, in the large harbour called Simrishamn and there we were invited for drinks on board a Bavaria 36 called Teuto by Dietmar and Bettina Hermey. In fact, they became our guests as we had the ice maker (!) but on the following night, we were hosted on board Teuto and it was here that we were first introduced to ‘Lab’ Portugese red wine in a box – our eternal gratitude to the Hermeys, we really like this wine! Anyway, it was Bettina that had written and we were looking forward to seeing them both but something must have gone wrong as we didn’t meet up that night. We’d already had the icemaker out in preparation for guests and it seemed a shame not to use it, so Julie and I decided to try a ‘Gimlet’ – gin with lime cordial and lime juice & lots of ice (OK but once was enough) and followed by a Cuba libre – both went down nicely in the warmth of the cockpit in the evening sun, as did the cheese salad which we ate there as it was still pleasantly warm.