Well, we managed to extricate ourselves without incident, largely thanks to the fact that it was completely windless. The whole harbour was busy with people departing and preparing to depart by the time we were on our way at 05:45. The primary reason for all this activity was that from here, the obvious places to make for, either on the Swedish mainland or as in our case, Bornholm, are all reasonable distances away ie > 45 miles, so an early start is a sound strategy.

I'd checked the various forecasts and none of them agreed in terms of detail for the day but they all suggested that bigger winds were coming within 72 hours . As we had no wind, we thought we might as well head for Bornholm and if the wind came and it was favourable, so much the better but if we couldn’t make Bornholm, then we would turn right for Simrishamn, and then make for Bornholm tomorrow, or the Danish mainland, whatever.

The weather was bright and sunny and it was pleasant out at sea, at least for the first few hours but what we thought might be mist was in fact cloud and the day gradually got greyer, with rain towards the end of our passage. On the positive side, by 10:15 we were sailing at around 5 knots, towards Bornholm. Our normal routine when passage – making is to take turn and turn about, changing on the hour. It’s surprising how quickly the time passes this way, the hour on duty is short enough to prevent boredom and the hour off is plenty long enough to relax in, so it works for us.

The route to Bornholm takes you past the exit / entrance to a shipping lane, where shipping from all over the Baltic become concentrated as they organise themselves to adhere to the shipping lanes . If we wanted to cross the actual shipping lane, the rules state that you MUST do so at right angles and as quickly as you can and that oncoming traffic in the lanes have absolute priority. However, as I said, we weren’t in the lanes proper, just fairly close to them so normal rules applied ie we had rights of way, as a sailing vessel, over motorised craft, ie ships. Now they are big things and take some stopping and turning, so common sense tells you to avoid them if you can. Also, they are working and we are playing, so again politeness says that if possible, don’t inconvenience them. However, having said that when you have as many as nine bearing down on you, it gets confusing, at least it would have done so until we acquired our AIS system (Automatic Identification System) which I have referred to previously. Now, ships can see us and we can tell, by clicking on the icons on the screen, their speed, direction and the time that they will be at their closest to us, if we maintained our mutual courses . It is so useful, it really is. An example from yesterday was that the 10,000 tonne ’Baltic Wind’ called us to ask whether we were tacking any time soon and when I replied in the negative, he told me he would alter course and pass us to port, which he duly did. Now bear in mind that he was over 5 miles away when he contacted us and it gives you an idea of the sorts of distances involved when making course altering decisions. I have included a photo of the display, in which you can see 9 ships (the triangles, pointing in the direction of travel), a circle (our position) and a line (the track we were following, to another circle (a waypoint) just off the tip of Bornholm.

By 15:30 we were off Bornholm and as the nice breeze had been blowing from the ESE, by 16:00 we were sheltered from it so we motored the rest of the way. As we progressed down the coast, we were astonished by the blue-green algal bloom, we’d seen little evidence of the horrible things so far this year but now they were making up for it. We are told that the bloom appears when the water temperature reaches a certain level and it lasts a couple of weeks, before disappearing. Whilst it’s around, swimming is out of the question, apart from being totally uninviting, it can be toxic.

We’d decided not to make for Rønne but a small harbour called Hasle, about 5 miles north, arriving at the almost deserted, industrial looking guest harbour by 17:45, having covered 58 miles. The advantages of this harbour was that we were very close to the showers and toilets and they had wifi, which was a bonus, enabling me to download Wallander, which we watched later that evening, as it rained outside.