As I suspected last night, our plans for an early getaway were scuppered but not, as it happened, by our Karlskrona friends, rather it was because the marina’s automated check in and check out system was malfunctioning. Very commonly in this part of the world, you register your arrival on an ATM-style machine, you pay for the number of nights and it issues a sticky ticket to fasten to the boat’s guard rails, together with a chip-based card that you use to gain entry to the washrooms and to pay for showers, electricity and in some cases, water. There is a deposit on the card as well as the money you have added for consumables and we had two of the things so we wanted our money back. Some years ago we had the same problem here but our Belgian friends Ed & Roos Vandermeulen were there and they undertook to get our money back for us. This time there was no-one so we had to wait until 07:00 when the staff arrived. Our Swedish friends, as good as their word, had powered up their expensive boats and had departed by 06:30, good on them. Very annoyingly, it transpired that the young man hadn’t put the deposit on our cards, only the consumable bit and there were on 20 SEK left, less than £2.00, so it was hardly worth the wait!

The forecast for the day was for a SE moderate breeze (20 knots) and with showers and that is what we got, mostly when it was Julie’s turn to helm, how good is that! We had 53 miles to go and with the genoa out, we made good progress of some 6 nautical miles / hour. We decided to take the shorter route northwards that takes you through the Falsterbo Canal, which enables one to avoid the shallow waters and reefs off Falsterbo point and saving a good 7 miles. This canal was first suggested in 1884 but it wasn’t until WW2 when shipping in the area off the point was impossible due to German mines that the canal was dug, completed in 1941. There is a bridge over the canal and this opens on the hour. Various people we’d asked assured us that it did so but when we checked on the internet, it seemed to imply that it was every other hour, remaining closed on the odd numbers. We had arrived by the bridge just before 13:00 and were assured by the waiting vessels that it was about to open. It didn’t, we were right and we had to wait until 14:00 but fortunately there was a tie-up pontoon and we rafted alongside a Danish Oyster 37, nice old boat. Once through it was another 3 hours until we arrived, safe & sound, in Kastrup Nord Lystbdåhaven and found a convenient space on the end of a hammerhead.

That’s more or less it for the day, we managed to complete ‘Gentleman Jack’, until the next series, that is - I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know!