The date of 27^th or 28^th is when I plan to post this but right now it’s the evening of 26^th and as Julie has volunteered to wash up after dinner, I thought I’d write a few sentences. We have left CW in the yard at Weilandt’s, we craned out without incident soon after 08:00 this morning and we have spent the day working on putting her into hibernation mode. Here are some, not all as the list would be long & boring, of today’s jobs. Get the mast ready for lifting off the boat and then remove the masthead fittings, wash the undersheets and mattress covers so that they are ready for next year, wash all the under –mattress anti- condensation devices that we have (ask me if you want to know!), pressure wash the boat, chrome clean the metalwork, sort out food and clothing, oil the cockpit table (2 coats), clean cupboards etc in the boat, clean the oven – that’ll do. Note that there is precious little engineering type activities here, activities such as change filters, oil and so on and that’s because we have the luxury of the utterly dependable and efficient Ingo Smeets who will, hopefully be doing that sort of thing whilst Gordana, his wife, polishes the hull. Incidentally, on numerous ie more than several, occasions this year, perfect strangers have come and complimented us on the quality of our polished hull, I must remember to tell her!

On the day after we got back ie 22^nd August, it was a lovely day and we achieved far more than we do normally, in that we were able to wash the sails and once they were dry, take them down and put them into bags for the winter, or at least 2 of them. Normally, we anxiously look at the forecast and pray for light winds (necessary to get the sails down) and no rain (otherwise they wouldn’t dry) but this year we achieved both in one hit. We also got the car started, did some boat cleaning, one load of washing and had the Turners (Mike & Dileas) for tea and had an early night. On the 23d we got the mainsail washed and put away and did some more shopping and later that afternoon, Janet, Horst & Polly Safarovic came into harbour, having sailed from Laboe and were here for the weekend as they wanted to meet with some of the other CA members who were here – in fact we’d booked tables at a restaurant called Lostenhus and it was for 21 people, but that was for the Saturday night. We had a barbecue that night and drank more than we ought and Mike and Helen ??? ( Trailer sailer, called Samba) joined us after the barbecue and helped us consume a little more..

Saturday was another glorious day and we spent the morning tidying the boat and for a bit of light relief, I decided to inflate our ancient and very tatty inflatable dinghy. It seemed to still be holding air so I decided to give it a wash and leave it overnight to see if it still did so. Sadly it didn’t so now it is sailing the great ocean in the sky.. In the early afternoon we went into Burg auf Fehmarn to do a little shopping and parked the car as usual, in the small Edeka car park ( ie the supermarket). When we got back to the car we found a note under the windscreen wiper and this told us that we had parked illegally in a spot that requires you to display a little card-clock that tells them when you’ve parked, as you’re only allowed an hour. We were not aware of this (no excuse) and we’d not been there an hour (no real excuse) and we’ve parked there on many occasions in the past without a problem (irrelevant, I suppose!) – anyway, the fine was €30 but they’ll have to wait a long time before I’m prepared to stump up that  much for a trivial ‘offence’.

Ed & Roos Vandermeulen on Spiriwit arrived during the afternoon and they rafted outside us, the theory being that they can take our space when we leave on Monday. It was good to see them again, they are a lovely couple. That evening 21 of us went for dinner in the Lotsenhus restaurant. That was the plan but very annoyingly, they refused entry to Janet & Horst as they had Polly with them. Now this is so unusual in Germany as to be almost unique, we certainly never thought to check. It seems that there is a law that says if you have carpet, you can’t have dogs but Janet believes that to be rubbish, so who knows. Anyway, they had to leave us to find somewhere else to eat, which was a shame as we had organised everyone specifically because Janet, as the HLR for the CA, was here. What a nuisance. Despite that, we had a nice meal and evening and as soon as decently possible, Julie and I left the Lostenhus to join J&H in the restaurant very close to Apartments Westphal, a hotel and restaurant called Schützenhof. They’d had an excellent meal and were quite happy. A little later the Churchwards and Vandermeulens joined us and it was a nice way to round off the day.

Sunday was another chore day and we ended the day with a barbecue, the hard core being represented by Spiriwit, CW, Hoppetosse (Andy Hobden) and Tutunui but later in the evening, after they’d eaten, we were joined by Lapwing (the Churchwards), Tyra ( the Turners) and Samba (Mike?).

Momday we were up and about early and CW was out of the water and in the yard by 09:30. The next 2 days were all about emptying the boat of anything that we wanted to take home and of course cleaning and tidying. We are lucky in that we have such capable people as the Smeets to do the work that others seem to want to / are prepared to do themselves, this work would mean our staying here for several more days and frankly, I prefer to pay someone else to winterise the engine, clean the hull and so on.

On the last hour of the last day ie Tues afternoon, we had tea on board Spiriwit and said our goodbyes, just as the clouds gathered and the wind increased, with thunder in the far distance. This could be the end of the warm spell and as far as we are concerned, definitely time to go home. It’s been a good season, a varied and an intensely sociable one. Let’s keep everything crossed, that post October 31^st we won’t be having to plan to bring Celtic Warrior home next year, as if the worst happens and we are stuck with the 90 day rule, our lovely summers here in the Baltic will be over. Sad thought.

Right, here is the analysis from this season. It is a little foreshortened due to our Polish adventures and incidentally, the total cost of that amounted to £2050, which I think is extremely good value for such an interesting 2 weeks ++. From a boating point of view, we covered a total of 1050 miles, a lot less than usual and used the engine for 100 hours, crudely speaking that’s about 50% of the time. We were in 45 harbours and anchorages and had a better than usual summer weather-wise. All in all a great success and thank you everyone who helped make it such a special summer. Tomorrow we leave for the Rotterdam – Hull  ferry and barring accidents, we should be home by 11:30 UK time on Thursday, the idyll will be well and truly over!

2010               2011         2012         2013            2014         2015         2016

2018               2019