Today we were heading for the final harbour for this 2019 Rally, the Polish port of Świnoujście, 19 miles away. Nicholas was keen that we approach the town in a convoy in ascending order of boat size, with his Prospero in the lead. Celtic Warrior was behind Condor and ahead of Paddington V, Sea Wolf and finally Pipistrelle. The trouble with a convoy is that one is limited by the slowest vessel and of course, any constraining factor on speed on any vessel affects the whole convoy. The consequence of this was that it took an inordinately long time to get there – 19 miles would take us 3 hours normally but today we had the engine on for 5! The route to Świnoujście is basically straight across the lagoon and then into the canal Piastowski which leads into the canal Mieleński and thence to Świnoujście and the Baltic beyond.

The canal Piastowski was first conceived of and built during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm, the 12km canal was completed in 1880 after 6 years’ effort. The idea behind it was to connect the industrial city of Szczecin to the sea and it was extremely successful, resulting in the relative decline in importance of Świnoujście. The canal was originally named the ‘Kaiser’s Way’ or more unfortunately for those of us with schoolboy/girl humour, Kaiserfahrt. However at the end of WW2 the whole area became part of Poland after the agreement of the Potsdam conference and it was renamed to commemorate the first Polish Royal dynasty, the Piat dynasty.

By the time the fleet had arrived in Świnoujście, there was a decent breeze blowing so that getting the boats safely into their allotted berths took some considerable time, not helped by certain individuals totally ignoring the organizational efforts of Graham and Fay and rather selfishly, in my opinion, opting for the berth that suited them, which meant that the whole order and sequence was thrown into disarray. Hrrumph. We, of course, waited patiently and were rewarded with a nice easy upwind berth and were  safely tied up by 14:45.

It was a boiling hot day and there had been some talk of us all going for a meal that night but as there was no restaurant organized, some of us felt that the chances of success were negligible so we suggested a barbecue and Fay & Graham were keen on that idea as they believed that Maciej Wojciechowski, our Honourary Local Representative for this area would prefer that. I volunteered to take a poll of boats to ascertain preferences and there seemed to be a slim majority that would prefer a barbecue, so that was decided. However, just like Brexit, some people were not happy as they’d had enough of barbecues so they decided to find a restaurant, which they did, at the head of the marina and consequently the democratic vote was overturned and we all decided to go there – ring any bells, this situation?!

As it happened the meal was quite good, at least it would have been had it been warm. For whatever reason the kitchen dished out the food well before we arrived and by the time we’d queued for a drink (long queue) our halibut (me) and zander (Julie & Helen) with chips was beyond luke warm , it was cold. Never mind, the company was good and it was a nice way of ending up the rally.