Annabel and I arrived in late May to paint, varnish and polish. The weather was almost too kind to us - the temperature reached over 40oC which made it almost impossible to get the varnish off the brush before it had hardened!
By the time the first of my crews arrived, the weather had turned wet and windy, with much of the same promised for the rest of that first week. We managed a good sail on Augustenborg fjord to check that everything was working, and then had several false starts, eventually discovering that we needed to replace part of the engine’s water cooling system which had corroded.
We finally got started on 20th June, heading for Faaborg on Fyn, which is one of our favourite places.
We had a limited amount of time for the first part of our trip, as we had to be in Rungsted for the Cruising Association Centenary Rally. Having wasted time with the weather, and sorting out the engine problem, we didn’t have a lot of time to waste.
June 20th - wind WSW force 6 - we decided to motor up to the head of the fjord as the wind was beginning to veer towards the north. Once there we let out about a third of the genoa which was enough to push us along at 5 - 6 knots with the wind on the quarter. By the time we arrived at Faaborg it was blowing up to 30 knots, but it was sheltered enough in the harbour for us to find a box to moor in without too much difficulty.
We actually stayed in Faaborg for a couple of days, as I wasn’t feeling that well Nick and Annie decided we needed a big push the following day, to give us some chance of getting to Rungsted on time. So the idea was to go in to the northern part of the Smålands Farvandet to give us a head start. In the end we went via Svendborg. Then we went north towards the top end of Langeland, round the top, and then through the channel north of Omø¸. From there we headed south-eastwards, going through the bridge at Vordingborg at 20:00, and mooring up at 21:00! We covered 82 miles, which put us on course! The weather was strange - we had torrential rain, and sun, and also thunderstorms going on around us, but not actually on us. We were grateful to find that the bridge still opened at that time of the evening, as otherwise we would have had to backtrack to go under the newer road bridge.
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