In direct contrast to yesterday’s warm weather, today felt like an average April day, with lowering grey skies and a stiff easterly wind, which increased the wind chill factor to unpleasant levels. Early this morning I’d seen a message from Bettina saying that they’d had a few problems with accommodation and things, which meant that it was too late to see us yesterday but she was popping over at nine to make arrangements and soon after 9, we were pleased to see her as she knocked on the hull to make her presence known. She looked well and it was nice to see her. Dietmar was with their friend Berndt, who it transpired was the original owner of Teuto, their Bavaria 36 and her suggestion was that we meet at 3:30 in the local tea/coffee shop, just opposite Weilandt’s chandlery, to which we agreed.

Once arrangements were in place and she was on her way, we decided to use our bikes to do a bit more shopping. They were well-washed bikes as overnight, we’d had torrential rain, accompanied by strong winds and thunder & lightning. I understand that the UK is pretty much awash, so we are getting away with it fairly lightly. We were on tenterhooks as we had washing drying and we were having to take it in and out and gamble on leaving  it out when we went shopping. That was our plan but within two minutes the plan was in pieces, as I discovered a flat front tyre on my bike, a definite puncture as no amount of pumping would inflate it. Fortunately, in Burg auf Fehmarn, Burg from now on, there is a pretty comprehensive cycle shop and it was the work of a few minutes’ for me to remove the offending wheel and strap it to Julie’s pannier and off I set in search of a repair.

The shop’s principal was very helpful and asked for 15 minutes and €15 to replace the inner tube. I love German shops, they always seem to go the extra mile to help their customers. Whilst I was waiting I got to chatting to a Brit that had settled in Osnabrück, a city in NW Germany, Bremen is the nearest large city and he was looking for a mounting for his phone so that he could use it’s navigation features on his electric bike. I asked him about his bike and he was delighted with it. It had fat tyres as he liked to go on rough roads and beaches and with care, the battery lasts over 100km – a huge distance for most people but of course you do have to pedal too, it isn’t all for free!. The technology is everywhere here in Germany, every other bike is electric. Considering his bike, which is a middle of the road one, cost €2,800 it tells me that Germans are doing quite nicely if they can afford these expensive toys. I of course, had to pedal and as he was heading the same way as me, I was determined that he wouldn’t get too far ahead of me – bad decision, with little effort on his part, he soon left me for dust, with my legs pedaling furiously to try to keep up!

By the time I was back on the boat and had replaced the repaired wheel, it was lunchtime so I was able to recover from my exertions before we popped up to the supermarkets to get the rest of our groceries and some beer. At 15:40 or so, there was another knock on the boat and there was Bettina, Dietmar & Berndt and we headed off for the café. It transpired that they had left their sandwiches in their apartment in Burgtiefe and were famished but the ginormous pieces of cake they ordered most definitely recharged their batteries! It was lovely meeting up again and swapping news. Berndt is with them for 9 days and then they intend to ‘follow the wind’ and not do too much. They will over-winter their boat in one of the Rügen  harbours  and will be leaving her there in early August as they are planning a reunion. In last year’s posting I said that they had paddled 2000km down from Germany to the Black Sea in inflatable kayaks some decades ago and many of those participants (it was a sort of rally) wanted to meet again and for August they were planning another paddling trip, on the river Oder, I can’t remember where to but they were doing 50km + a day, hardy souls! Good luck to them.

We parted company just before 5 and we headed back to the boat. Ed & Roos were due over at 6 for aperitifs and we planned a revisit to Lostenhaus, the restaurant we were at a few days ago. It was an extremely pleasant evening, we thoroughly enjoyed it, including the food ( 2 matjes, 1 schnitzel and 1 ribs) and in the pouring rain at 21:30, we parted company and wished each other fair winds etc etc. Tomorrow we planned to be on our way around 07:00, to either make Rügen if the wind was strong enough or to stop half way, sort of, on the tip of the Danish island of Falster in the marina called Gedser.