I'm sitting typing this at seven pm., with one of my last German beers at my side – these have lasted well, having bought them in Burgstaaken before we left for this summer’s trip. Anyway, that was a side issue, as I said I’m sitting here at seven with the wind howling outside in bright sunshine – we have moved to Rønne, 5 miles from Hasle, as we knew that the wind would be coming so we decided the capital was a better place to be stuck rather than a small town. Winding back….

It had rained overnight and it was raining on and off for most of the morning . That gave me the chance to catch up with the blog and for Julie to polish her skills at 'Angry Birds’ – she’s getting very good! At this juncture there was virtually no wind but for once, the various forecasts seemed to agree that there would be more wind coming, from the south west (so what’s new?!) the only difference between them was timing and amount. The most pessimistic said that the wind would begin to increase by 15:00 today but most suggested later. We’d decided that whilst Hasle may be OK, if you’re going to be stuck anywhere it would make more sense to be in the capital so we elected to move in the afternoon.

We decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do some washing whilst it was so grotty outside, which we did and then, washing done the rain more or less stopped, we went for a stroll and in truth, there wasn’t a whole lot to see. At one point, Hasle was an important fishing port and it does have quite substantial quays and docks but now it has a forlorn air about it and we really didn’t want to stay, despite the convenience of the loos and the good wifi . We did find a nice church which had an impressive altar (see photos) but that was pretty much it. So we decided to have lunch and then go, as the wind was now beginning to increase.

The forecast was for winds of no more than 7 metres a second today, which is 14 knots. This is not enough to blow up any significant waves and as we were only going 5 miles, it would be no big deal the fact that it was right on the nose. However, once again they got it wrong and the winds increased to 12 metres / second and we had those horrible Baltic specials, the short sharp waves, such that with full main, stay’sl and engine, our speed could drop to 1.9 knots momentarily when we were hit by 3 in a row. In fairness, mostly we were achieving 4 + knots and as we only had the 5 miles to cover, it wasn’t an issue so I really shouldn’t have got short tempered, I really shouldn’t. Still, #1 crew is very forgiving and as we rounded off and headed in to the harbour, my mood lightened and all was well with the world again. It might have deteriorated again due to the over-zealous helpfulness of n people on shore pulling our lines and making them too short, too long, tying them in the wrong place and so on, but hey ho, they were only trying to help and we got there in the end.

Later on, when the clouds finally left leaving us with lovely sun, we went to the tourist office for details of buses etc so that we could plan the next two windy days’ activities. We also popped into the excellent Kvickly supermarket that we remembered from last year and that was about it for the day. Roast chicken will be coming shortly, so I will now conclude today’s blog.