18-20 June Brough to Thyboron

18th - 20th North Sea to Thyboron

The sea was a little rummelly overnight in Fraserburgh Bay, I managed to stay in bed until about 0600 and then got up, put the kettle on, weighed anchor and headed off  putting full sail up as we motored out of the bay. We were making only about 4 knots but moving along ok however as we moved from the land we rolled around a bit more and the sails were backing and filling too much so I put the motor on and we motored for a couple of hours until more of a breeze filled in. I got the forecast, probably my last one ‘til Denmark, and sent my blog whilst we still had a phone signal.

The forecast seemed similar to previous ones with me staying behind an area of pressure that turns into a windy band off Denmark, however the upshot of this is that the wind I actually get is quite light and in my mind I’m happy with this, I’ll just motor if we’re too slow.

The day was overcast but dry and with the wind astern, alternating from NW to SW I had to change the goosewinging arrangements several times which, because I also have a preventer on the boom, means a fair amount of dancing around on the foredeck and shifting of lines hither  and yon, it’s often tempting to alter course 10 degrees to squeeze the last minutes out of a shitfting wind before doing the sail changes. Once clear of the land we passed a platform and a fishing boat, trawling but not much else. There were some windmills on the horizon not on my chart, away to the South but, as I have up to date charts I  think that they should be on them. It is marked as an experimental area and it is possible that they are floating, experimental turbines. I don’t really understand Navionics, I have an up to date subscription but on my ipad the buoy at Ardlamont is still marked as a red whereas on my telephone it’s a Cardinal which is what the actual buoy actually is now and has been for a couple of years, when I start navionics it says checking for updates but I’m not convinced that it actually bothers it’s arse to do them, a bit like a recalcitrant second mate who maybe jots the correction number on the corner of the chart but doesn’t actually do the correction. Who knows?

Lunch was soup and bread, I’d made some mince the day before splitting it into two at the end and keeping one third as mince and mushrooms which I’d had at anchor, tonight I had another third which I’d turned into Bolognese sauce with some pasta and salad. Followed on both occasions, probably every occasion until they run out, by a Lidl’s version of a white chocolate magnum. Good  but not surprising.

  I motored for a few hours during the day with the sails up but at dusk with little wind I brought the sails in and motored without them for a bit. By 2300 the wind was back up above 10 knots, still from astern and I brought out the Genoa and stopped the engine. We now had the Forties field to the North of us and a platform fine to port, I altered course 10 degrees to starboard  and turned in to bed again, this time I’m sleeping in the bottom bunk in the walk through cabin, only to be awoken, just before my alarm, by the sexy voice of the second mate on the Vos Endeavour, the standby boat for the Neptune platform. I’d thought that once one had been to sea for a week or so any female voice appeared sexy. Either her’s was  or the time period is 18 hours, possibly less. Anyway we changed to channel 6 and agreed that I wouldn’t enter the 500 metre exclusion zone around the platform and, when I looked at my chart plotter I saw that I would have ended up about 400 metres from it, so altered course 20 degrees to increase distance and then decided that I really ought to have the main up as well as the genoa. To achieve this meant gybing the spinnaker pole furling the genoa and releasing the  tethered boom and re capturing it on the opposite side with the preventer, turning into the wind and hoisting the main, then re deploying the genoa. Furling the genoa is hard work and my soft hands have yet to get back into the swing of it again but we’re not racing so it was done at a leisurely pace, the pole gybed, the main hoisted, we came back onto course and then redeployed the genoa out on the port side with the main out to starboard and the wind astern. We’ve been like that since. We’re doing about 6 knots,  with about 11 knots of wind, still banging about a bit and rolling quite heavily but on schedule and about to enter my new chart area of Denmark and Germany.

Back in bed, semi awake I had a stretch which, upon relaxing from, I didn’t half bang my toe - on the bunk beds one’s feet are in a box which protrudes into the aft cabin below a locker, I’d managed to curl my tootsies out of the box whilst stretching  and when straightening out  again, not thinking about the box, partially missed the hole and now have a sore toe. Ahhhhh! Poor dear I hear you say. Thanks.

I’ve just finished a book about the SBS which has a fair bit about COPP - Combined Operations Pilotage Parties, the unit Daddy ended up in at the end of the war and  where he met Blondie. Unfortunately there’s no mention of  his bit when he swam the Rhine, to survey the beaches opposite, the night before the allies crossed, (for which he was awarded his DSC) but there is, I’m pretty sure, a picture of him, floating beside a canoe out in Ceylon.

Night watches for the previous two nights have been relaxed, I’ve gone to bed for 90 minutes at a time and just got up for a look around when the alarm has gone off, mostly I’ve had to do nothing before getting back into bed.

Yesterday - 19th was cold but beautifully sunny, interestingly the sea temperature is 14 degrees here when it was only 12 degrees on the West Coast, had I been asked, I’d have said that the North Sea was colder. We spent all day yesterday broad reaching in 10-14 knots sometimes goosewinged with the pole out to Starboard sometimes with both sails out to port. We’ve been making 5 and half -7 knots all the time mostly about 6 and are on schedule to make this evening’s tide at Thyberon as planned.  We passed a jack up rig and a small tanker, well she passed us, but nothing much else. Sea life has been sparse, plenty of Fulmars which I like, they fly so gracefully and have kept me company on all of my offshore trips and I’ve heard Cetaceans blowing but not actually seen one yet.  Annoyingly, the port solar panels are mostly in the shade and the starboard one doesn’t work by itself - I’m 24 volts so need a minimum of two panels per side to get the appropriate voltage, the port panel gets to about 23 volts but, of course, this isn’t enough to do anything. It’s not a big issue but just means I have to run the engine more often than I would otherwise need to.

I’ve been wondering about clearing in at Denmark, presumably there’s somewhere in or around Thyberon I can do it but I’ve no internet at the moment and can’t google it, in the UK it’s all done on line which may be the case here too but it’s also likely that they’ll want to see my passport, I’m also advised by my pilot books that they might want to see my radio certificate of competence which I’ve failed to bring with me although I have found a photograph of it so am hoping that’ll do.

I’m just finishing an autobiography of Nigel Farage written or at least updated to 2010 which is quite interesting, it’s amazing how much has changed since 2010, it seems like the old days now!

20th

Another fine day, I had forgotten to check the battery voltage overnight and it was quite low this morning so I started the engine at about 0500, we were trundling along at about 6 knots so I didn’t engage the propeller. I had a delicious scrambled egg, bacon, sausage and toast breakfast with coffee. The wind was still W’ly and all was going fine. I wrote some blog, finished Nigel Farage’s book stopped the engine and had a snooze. Lunch was some left over quiche and I spent the afternoon seeing if I could raise a radion station or telephone signal yet. I started the 4th book in the ‘Thursday Murder Club’ series, - Thanks Ailsa. The day was still beautiful with bright sun and a 12 knot breeze from astern.  I never did manage to raise a radio station, in fact, now alongside at Thyberon I still can’t, but about 12 miles out started to get messages from vodafone saying how much it would cost me to use my ‘phone etc. Then about half an hour later started to get wattsapp messages etc.

  As we closed the low lying coast I tried to make out the entrance but couldn’t. A ship emerged from the sound which was a good clue but I could still see no gap. There were two bright red markers but I only had one on my chart. The wind had now got up to about 17 knots and we were romping along at about 8 knots, a lee shore with the waves building in the shallow water. About 2 miles out I turned down wind and rolled up most of the genoa and then all of it at about a mile. The harbour entrance was just inside the channel into the Limfjord so once inside I almost immediately needed to enter harbour so I now turned into the wind, dropped the sail and motored whilst deploying fenders on my port side along with mooring lines. I have a remote control for the autopilot and it’s tremendous at times like these, one can work away and alter course whilst grubbing mooring lines out of the anchor locker etc. Another ship had come out and the channel was now showing itself quite well, we passed a red then green buoy and the waves were now longer and less steep. We turned in towards the harbour entrance and were soon in the peace of the harbour pottering up the East side to the Leisure section at the North. Arriving it looked like it was going to be favourite to go starboard side to rather than port so I stopped the boat and moved a couple of fenders and lines over and let her blow gently onto an available space on the harbour wall. We had arrived!

I tidied up a a bit, it was now about 2100 and thought I’d take the ship’s papers and see if I could find somewhere to clear in. There was a door marked info and looking in there I found a machine where I could pay harbour dues and buy a card etc. I wasn’t used to Kroner but they appear to be about 10 to 1 with sterling. I bought a card and an overnight stay and got the card and a sticky label to put on the boat to show I’d paid. I wandered along the street, a clean, bright, new street with new buildings on either side, typical beach side businesses selling ice creams, swimming costumes, shells, etc but mostly, nay, all closed. There was a corner shop and a pub open but I didn’t really need anything so pottered back to the boat to have a beer and mushroom sauce on toast with sausages for tea (thanks Graham - I had forgotten about the sausages you’d brought last week, actually, now I think about it, the week before, luckily I didn’t check the dates!).

I telephoned the harbour master having found his number on the internet and he said that there was a number I needed to call which was displayed at the ‘info’ office so I went back there, called it and got a recorded message in Danish.

Now it’s today - Saturday 21st, I’ve spoken to the person on the other end of the telephone who spoke good English and the Police should contact me shortly. I’ve had a shower and porridge and will shortly go to do some laundry whilst awaiting further developments, I’ll probably plug into shore power too as it seems to be 20 pence or so and working from my card like the showers do.