Our destination today was the old town of Wolgast, only a few miles to the south along the river or strait known as Peenestrom, on the banks of which we already were, in Kröslin. There is a bridge with fixed opening times just before the town quay, where we were due to moor up and we were aiming for the 12:45 opening, so we had a lot of time. The fleet collectively decided that we could sail, even though the breeze wasn’t much but as it was only 8 miles and we had the whole morning, why not?

We started the engine to get ourselves out of the harbour at 10:45 but within 5 minutes, we were sailing gently in the light NW breeze and bright sunshine. Also within this 5 minutes we passed a sea eagle perching on a pole, one that had a sign on with a picture of an owl  but  couldn’t remember  why but my friend Horst Safarovic later reminded me that it meant that it was a nature reserve.  It was a lovely, peaceful sail down to the bridge at Wolgast. It made us think that if we do actually swap CW for some sort of power boat, then this is what we would be experiencing. The advantage of travelling on the inland waterways is that there is always something new to look at, rather than acres of sea and here there was much to please the eye, and the ear, as we passed flocks of graylag geese, kites overhead and with a cuckoo stating its presence repeatedly, as they do. Lovely stuff.

There was a slight delay in the bridge opening at Wolgast as there had been an accident somewhere so the bridge was kept down to allow the ambulances to pass. However, it wasn’t that long and pretty soon we were being guided into our allocated berthing spots by Graham & Fay Cattell who had got there ahead of us in their camper van. The alongside berthing area was not long enough to house us all so Nicholas had worked out a sequence for similar sized vessels to be moored alongside each other ‘rafted’, in threes, with the largest boat on the inside and the smallest on the outside. Our trio consisted of us on the inside, followed by the Nauticat 38 Condor (Mike & Jacky Scott) and then the Halberg Rassy ‘Tyra’ (Mike & Delias Turner).

Having settled in and checked out the facilities (only a few toilets and showers but enough) we set off to have a look around the town, which again dates back over a millennium. It’s lovely that there are so many old buildings and streets around here, it makes each and every town a little adventure for us. Of course sightseeing has to be combined with practicalities and we went in search of a supermarket as we wanted something to cook for the planned barbecue tomorrow night. We found a large Netto just  out of town where we bought a spatchcock chicken and some other items and then headed back.

We were invited for tea on board Condor, as was Tyra’s crew and we sat and chatted in the afternoon sun, passing a very pleasant hour or so. Then we were due on Calypso for aperitifs and we were going to cook the mince we had in a spaghetti Bolognese, but again it had turned grey and inedible so as Calypso’s crew were planning to eat out, we invited ourselves along with them. By 20:00 we were hungry and decided that the nearest restaurant was good enough and indeed it was. Julie & Helen had zander (pike-perch) and the rest of us had enormous slices of schnitzel, weighing about 400gm each and far too large a portion for one meal, so at the end doggy bags were requested and provided for us all. It was a nice evening, a good way of ending an excellent day.