8th July, Copenhagen

Ski slope on a power station.

I was under way for about 0750 and at 0800 tried telephoning the marina at Margretehavn, initially with little success owing to settings on my phone but later I managed to get through to an answering machine although couldn’t understand what it was saying but guessing that they weren’t open yet.

There is a lifting bridge one goes under prior to arrival at the marina which opens at 0900. We motored the 7 miles upwind to the bridge arriving just before 9 and it duly opened at 0900. There were 3 fixed lights which I thought meant I should go in but as I was unsure the 3 boats exiting decided to just go for it and I went in once they had cleared the channel as it is not wide enough for two boats at a time. Once in the marina, which was pretty sheltered, I nosed into the first line of boats, there was one spare berth but it had a red tag meaning not available. There was a quay to my right and box berths at right angles on my left. I needed to exit and decided to turn around as there was a beneteau 40 parked on the quay making the exit fairly narrow and going astern on Yemaya doesn’t always go according to plan. Turning around turned out to be trickier than imagined as there was only about 51 feet between the berths and the quay but, using some of the space inside posts we made it. We left and went to look at the next line of boats but these appeared to be too narrow for me, I was just backing out of the second  line when a chap whistled at me telling me to go back to the first line. I went but wondered where he meant as I’d seen nothing. It turned out that the red tagged berth should have been a green tagged berth. It was just after the beneteau, restricting space to turn so we went past again, turned around again and came back meaning the berth was now on my starboard side and turning to starboard is Yemaya’s favourite. The whistling chap was waiting for me, we went in gently and I dropped the sternlines over the posts as we passed them, he held onto the bow for me and we were moored.

Martin had told me about a ski slope on a power station in Copenhagen and it appears to be opposite although I’ve yet to see anyone actually skiing. I had some washing to be getting on with and once I’d tidied up took it to the washing machines but both were mid cycle with bags waiting. I noted the time on the machines and went back to the boat. There is a brilliant chandlery store here and I went in there and  should now be picking up a new solar panel today.

Back at the washing machines a Dutch lady was also looking to put clotheses in the machine and we started chatting, it turned out that she’s been here for a week as her husband is taking part in a hockey tournament in England, I wonder if this is the one that Sally was to be playing at. It was for mature players. No one appeared to put the clothes in bags into the machines and when the first machine stopped my Dutch friend emptied this into well provided plastic bins on trolleys and put hers in. The next machine then stopped and I thought it was a bit mean to skip the queue without waiting so waited for 10 minutes and then emptied it and put mine in. By the time mine finished  the bags were still waiting with no owners around to take care of them ending any guilt I might have felt for pushing in. Once washing etc was done I was going to go to the super market on my bicycle which I’d assembled by now but it started raining. I had sandwiches for lunch then walked to the river and to the local food market which is a busy area, quite extensive with every food imaginable available from stalls mostly from condemned, converted shipping containers. It’s a lively and busy area. There was also a contemporary art museum so I thought I’d go and look around there whilst waiting for the roads to dry enough to make cycling, (the rain had been showers, the sun was now out again).

The museum was extremely well presented, in my opinion it contained no art. It was full of extraordinarily well presented ‘installations’ each in large rooms, some blacked out. There were several to see but, to me, it’s all King’s new clothes stuff, self indulgent ‘Artists’ writing up there work in as complicated, philosophical, self congratulatory a way as they can imagine, I’m sure that they mostly admire each others work but can’t see who else could take it seriously. I can’t  see how they could possibly sell them, in their eyes probably priceless but in value terms worthless unless some museum wants to buy one.

I can’t stress enough ‘though, how well it was all put together and what a good exhibition space it is, (an old dock warehouse).

I then cycled to Lidl’s a couple of times for shopping, about 5 miles away and cooked some lasagne for  a,  sometime over the weekend, dinner. I had the third iteration of the Paprika chicken for dinner and it’s now finished. I managed to buy some puff pastry for my chicken pie but as it’s only enough for 2-3 have frozen it for now as we’re 6 til Sunday.

I had a ‘phone call from the insurance, having phoned them as they’d not responded to my email, and the underwriters were wanting to know of any experience that I had single handing. As I suspect my single handing experience is more than most, hopefully they’ll be less concerned about covering me for some extra consideration, presumably.