28th To Ebeltoft

We awoke to  the boat moving around a bit at anchor, the swell had gone around to the South and was coming into the bay. Not too terribly ‘though just enough to make us know we were at sea. We were not in a rush as having read up on Ebeltoft we knew that there were box berths and alongside berths and being slightly short of crew the alongside ones are easier to achieve, well I think, I’ve not tried a box berth yet. (These are the typical Baltic marina berths where there are posts offshore that you go between on the way into the berth and have to lasso both of them on the way past then put the bow close to the pontoon to get the headlines on then tighten them all up. With practice and a few crew it should be easy enough but with neither it seems daunting.) We had scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast and were going to have toast with it but the bread had all gone blue. I was a bit surprised as I thought it was the long lasting lidl bread which kept for ages and this was barely 10 days old however it was beyond the ‘pick the blue bits off’ stage as there were almost no non blue bits. Having had breakfast and coffee we made preparations and then weighed anchor. - I forgot to say why we weren’t in a rush, it was because we  wanted people to have headed off from Ebeltoft leaving vacant berths and we wanted to arrive around noon so other arrivals hadn’t all arrived and nicked the good spots.

The modification to the anchor shute has helped but the chain still needs to be pulled into the stowage occasionally which is a shame. On the plus side the windlass is now working well with the remote control for it meaning I can, when by myself, if it’s not too windy, be in the forecabin stowing the cable whilst operating the windlass at the same time.

Once under weigh we put up a double reefed main and genoa as the wind was still gusting to 20 knots and set off on the starboard tack against the SWly wind  to get around the point before bearing away and heading for Ebeltoft. We had to tack once and just cleared the headland then had a lovely reach down the bay as the sun came out  before stowing the genoa then the main and motoring towards the entrance which was offset and a little hard to make out from offshore but became clear as we got closer. I had decided to look at the box berths  first and these were at the South end of the harbour so we turned right once inside whilst looking to the North to see what appeared available there. There seemed to be several alongside berths available to the North so we quickly decided not to investigate the box berths and stopped, turned around and made our way to the North end of the harbour. The wind was blowing gently onto our berth so we made an easy approach and the lady from the boat astern came to help take our lines so we were all berthed and tidied up by about noon.

There is berthing for free in this harbour for wooden boats which is a nice touch.  The museum looks after the berths and showers and we wanted to visit the museum in any case so once we’d sorted ourselves out a bit we went to the museum, arranged for mooring fees and paid for entry to the museum. There is a Frigate in the dry dock as the basis for the museum, she was built in 1860 as a 3 masted ship with auxiliary steam engine. The engine and boilers have long gone but she makes a most interesting museum piece and the set up and exhibits are all excellent. We both thoroughly enjoyed the hour or two we spent looking around. I was intrigued by two big lines going down through a vertical shaft down several decks to the propeller which turned out to be a brake for the two bladed prop which had a nick out of the top of one of the blades and  a big steel thingy lowered into this to lock the prop in the vertical position to reduce drag. The framing was colossal with diagonal doublers between the frames, I don’t know if this was normal on a warship or whether they were being extra conservative because of the engine and fears of torsional loads from it.

After an hour or two in the museum we didn’t feel like going to the glass museum at which we would have had a discounted entrance fee and we wandered into town  which appeared to be up a hill. The old town is lovely, all old small colourful houses and tudory timbers. Lots of hollyhocks too. We made our way to the church but there was a wedding going on so we didn’t intrude. Much. We found another beautifully tended grave yard at the top of the hill from the church, it is obvious that there is a tradition here of tending graveyards well, many have seats so they can sit and contemplate the departed.

Wandering back into the town we stopped to buy some bits and pieces from a supermarket and had decided to eat out as it was Katharine’s last night aboard and we’d only had a sandwich out in Denmark so far.

We were actually quite peckish as we’d had no lunch and had hoped to get a nice pastry in the supermarket but nothing looked appealing so we wandered the length of the high street which was longer than we’d expected and ended up in a bar having more good sandwiches and a beer / ginger beer.

Back on the boat we played a couple of hands of bridge with Martin and then at about 2000 went up to the high street again to look for  somewhere nice to eat, hopefully a Danish Restaurant. There was a ceremony at the square where a couple of chaps sang a song and went off with lit lanterns, one looking more comfortable with the situation than the other.

We went to a pub and had  two beers and a smirnoff ice, owing to a misunderstanding with the barmaid (the two beers, I managed to choke down the second one)  we thought it was time to look for somewhere to eat as it was about 2045 and the town seemed remarkably quiet for a Saturday evening, particularly as it is obviously a touristy town. (In fact, in the afternoon we’d noticed that many of the shops had been shut). Having walked past one or two places that looked like their menus hadn’t changed for several years we found a modern trendy eatery / drinkery through an arch but when we went to enquire they said the kitchen was already closed and the waiting staff said that they were new and not from here so didn’t know where to try to send us.  We thought we might have left it too late, We then went to a square behind where we’d had lunch and tried a local restaurant there but they, too were closed. We ended up at an ‘Italian’ restaurant that we’d previously had a laugh about, saying that Italian Restaurants, not in Italy, tended to only have Pizza and Pasta. As they were prepared to stay open for us we had a bowl of pasta each and a glass of wine, (they. only did pizza and pasta) the pasta actually being very good, and then went back to the boat for 3 of games of backgammon which I won 2-1 more by luck than skill as I ended up throwing a couple of doubles right at the end of the third game which allowed me to overtake Katharine. We had quite a late night of it, for us, going to bed at about 2300.