July 1st Box berth.

It was a fine morning with little wind. I weighed anchor and commenced motoring South to the East side of Oro, which appears to be a holiday island. The wind, or what of it there was, was from the South. The Eastern channel is not well marked but with Navionics to help navigation was straightforward. Passing the chain ferry I was slightly worried that the chains would rise from the bottom thus reducing available depth but I had no problem. Once South of the Island I hoisted sail and headed NW towards the inlet on which Holbaek is located, there was still little wind but enough to move us along. The channel into Holbaek is narrow and well marked, it used to be a busy commercial port that has fallen out of use and the main harbour is now surrounded by new flats and small businesses. Leaving the channel were 5 sailing work boats, I’m not sure whether they would have been cargo or fishing boats when new but were now taking out holiday makers and made a good spectacle. Incidentally, whilst faffing about getting my new sim card to work I tried to clean the clear panels on my waterproof iphone case, using some glasses cleaning spray and it seems to have damaged the plastic so photographs from my camera now feature a blurring soft focus effect for which I apologise.

I stowed the main prior to entering the channel so as not to have issues with it and rolled the genoa just prior to arriving at the harbour.

I took a turn around the harbour but wasn’t going to stop only scout it out as a potential stop for next week. There is a beach on the opposite side of the harbour to the boats and plenty of room for boats with both box and alongside berths available.

On the way out I left the channel as the chart said there was enough depth, which there was, but had to re enter it near the end because of a shallow patch. Turning North once clear  I spotted a potential barbecue beach and watched as a first 31 tried to set his spinnaker with the pole to leeward which was not altogether successful, I did admire his perseverence though. Once clear of Oro I set full sail and sailed North again towards the Roskilde Fjord. It was, baking hot, with clear skies. I put on sunscreen and tried rigging a towel to give me some shade. Approaching the entrance a little 25 ft motor boat whizzed up to me and pointed out to me that they were military guards and that I was intruding on a military practice area. I had been vaguely aware of it but hadn’t realised it was an exclusion zone. In any event they seemed friendly enough and escorted me out of the zone, 200m to the West and shadowed me to ensure I didn’t re intrude, in all honesty I probably made their day, their job would, without intruders, be incredibly boring. At the top  of the Roskilde Fjord is a steel works  there is a channel which goes a couple of miles to the North, then East then South. There is a shallow patch, partially surveyed showing 2-4 m which cuts out the extra miles to the North.  I thought I would try slowly going over this bit and it worked fine the minimum under keel clearance I saw was 0.5m. Brilliant.  From here it was a narrow channel to a bridge that I arrived at just before 1700 - it, purportedly, opened on the hour and half hour but it had a digital signal saying 1730 so I used the time getting out lines and  fenders as I was going to go into the harbour at Frederikssund, just after the bridge. There was a lay by station just North of the bridge with boats alongside but by the time I’d got fenders and lines out it wasn’t worth tying up so I continued drifting up and down until the bridge commenced opening at which point there was a mad rush for the opening into which I slotted. After the bridge I was wanting to head over to port to the harbour but a Swedish motor sailor was overtaking me to port so I slowed to let her past before heading over to the harbour. Two other boats were ahead of me. On the way in kids were jumping off of the quay walls to cool off. I had scoped out what I could see whilst hanging about and there appeared to be a couple of free berths alongside which would have been perfect.  The two boats ahead of me took these, although after a couple of minutes one moved on again.  I hopefully headed for this berth but then saw what he had seen which was a red tag on it. (In Denmark marina berths have green or red tags, green being available and red not - eminently sensible). At this point I was still seeing more of the harbour opening up as I moved further in but there appeared to be no other alongside berths.  There was a gentle breeze from the South. All the box berths (berths with posts offshore onto which  sternlines were put with the bow being secured to the quay) were oriented East West. I had the boat set up for going alongside either side so already had stern lines leading from aft to the cockpit. I chose a box berth a couple North of one into which the other boat was lining up for.  The approach was good. I slowed as the posts were amidships  and managed to get my stern lines onto both of them. I hoped that there was not enough slack for propeller and rope intermingling. Things were looking too good. The wind was from Starboard, the starboard rope didn’t pay out nicely but caught on a guard rail, came taut and pulled the stern to starboard and, therefore the bow to port. I leapt aft to free it and to quickly pull in the slack before going ahead. Luckily there was no boat in the next berth to port, into which the bow was now making investigations. With the port line tight and made fast it was possible to bring the bow back to port against the wind by going ahead and applying rudder. Once back under control we were still several feet from the dock so some judicious adjustments to the aft lines whilst going ahead had me close to the dock. A passing tourist looked helpful and when I asked her if she could take my line she completely had no idea what I was talking about. As things seemed under control I took it myself, clambered over the bow, onto the anchor then onto the quay and made it fast myself before reclambering aboard. We’d done it.

After tidying up a bit and having a restorative beer I went and paid at the machine (most berthing is paid for at automats here) and then got out my micro scooter for a quick look around the area.

It seems to be a moderate sized town with various supermarkets and  much modern housing built around the old town. I walked back through the old town and stopped for dinner at a hotel where I had some Tapas before retiring to the boat for the night. I’d set up the hatches (most of my hatches are pushmepullyou types, you can open them either from aft or forward to maximise breeze entrapment) to scoop any wind so as to keep it coolish down below, which it was.

Anyone recognise the wee sailing boat?