We were all awoken during the night by the sound of torrential rain and once awake, we saw that there was some significant lightning but with no thunder, curiously. By the morning however, all was past and it looked like being a good day, albeit a little sad as Helen would be leaving us, catching a train at around 12:30 to get her to Hamburg via Lübeck.

Julie and I were up early to get the first load of washing in the machine . We planned on 3 loads, including Helen's sleeping bag but we had the decency to let her continue to use it until absolutely necessary! We hoped to get the washing dry on the line so that we could stow it away after Helen’s departure, enabling us to move on to our next harbour, Neustadt. It was breezy and sunny so the plan should have worked.

After breakfast and with a couple of hours to go, we thought that we might as well cross the river and have a coffee then mooch about a bit pending Helen’s train departure. It was during coffee that we became concerned, as clouds were gathering quickly and our now almost dry washing was in danger of reverting to its wet state. We therefore concluded that the best course of action would be for me to return to the boat, leaving Julie & Helen to look in shops (my idea of hell in the first place). Sadly I just missed the ferry and by the time the next one was ready to go, it started spitting and despite my very best Olympian efforts at long(ish) distance running, we (the washing and me) got rather wet . Fortunately, the tumble drier was available so all was not lost and the washing was dry by the time Julie returned having seen Helen safely on her way. She’d been good company and fitted in and enjoyed the rally and we look forward to hosting her on board CW again next year.

We were keen to sail and the forecast on YR was for maximum wind speeds of 8m/s (18mph) from the SW. I didn’t bother checking the other sites as we were only travelling about 9 miles. As it happened, it was a very exciting 9 miles, as the wind when we were out in the Bucht was not 18mph but a far more feisty 30mph ie a Force 7. Moreover, rather than it being an exhilarating downwind sail, it was a very close reach into short, sharp, choppy seas which slowed us down – yet we still clocked 7.4 knots using the genoa alone. There was a lot of water coming on deck and we were heeled over quite dramatically – it was good to be out there!! All good things come to an end and when you’re flying along and doing a short distance, by definition they come to an end quite quickly and we were soon motoring up the river or whatever it is that constitutes the harbour in Neustadt . It is quite an impressive harbour, with room for 340 boats in boxes all the way up. As it is so stretched out, the council had kindly laid on toilets, showers and washing machines at regular intervals, 8 in all. Very accommodating. Equally accommodating, not that they had any choice, were Andy and Pauline and Odile. I say they had no choice as they weren’t there when we rafted outside them – to be fair there were no available alongside berths and the free boxes we saw were too narrow for us. Fortunately, when they returned they were not too put out and in fact, invited us for dinner, and we reciprocated with aperitifs on our boat.

And so the evening passed, with good food (roast chicken) , good company and lots of conversation. A very nice way indeed to pass the evening and thank you both.