To Thisted 22nd

Whilst I was doing my blog Katharine went for a shower and to pay for her unused night in the hostel. She came back decidedly pleased she hadn’t had to stay there as  it had been full of bikers and was the kind of place where one had to rent sheets and so on. We had a leisurely breakfast and, once tidied up a little prepared to set off.

By about 0930 we were out into the sound and as the wind was from the East motored initially. I was trying to put a route into the chartplotter and, annoyingly, if one puts a waypoint close to a buoy, it presumes you want to enquire about the buoy and often the waypoint jumps to the buoy. Not entirely ideal. To start with we were in open, grey water under a grey sky passing a windmill factory which Katharine had previously passed on the train on the way to Thyboron.

There is a fairly narrow dredged channel and we motored along that for an hour or so before coming out into a broad expanse of water all deep enough for us where some more boats were congregating from other parts of it. We latched on behind a Dutch blue 40 footer for the approach to our first bridge. I saw a big digital clock on it and wondered if that was the time for opening but it appeared to be the current time. We have to display flag ‘N’ to show that we want to go through and both of us were doing so and, lo and behold, as we approached, the traffic stopped and, after a little, the bridge started to lift so we followed our dutch friend through whilst a Moody came the other way. There was another stretch of water now and we were heading North rather than East so, along with Duchy, we headed up into the wind and hoisted our main sail. I put a reef in because it had been blowing up to about 14 knots and wanted an easily managed sail plan and once heading back up the Loch pulled out the genoa. Duchy went for full sail and, being Cutter rigged, also set his staysail however we had the legs on him and pulled ahead as we made our way up to Mors Island where we hung a left and he went straight on. From here it was more interesting as we were closer to land, all green fields and red roofed farm buildings. The channel is marked with pretty sun faded but perfectly visible buoys and we gybed our way in and around various islands before hitting another stretch of open water after lunch on the way up towards the next bridge at Vilsund. We had thought about stopping and anchoring but it didn’t look that interesting so decided to press on the Thisted a town about 5 miles after the bridge. I’d put a second reef in by now as we had winds gusting to 20 knots and prior to approaching the bridge I thought we should stow the Genoa so that the bridge keeper, if looking, could see our signal flag. Katharine winched it in as I turned downwind to relieve the pressure on it and we carried on up to the bridge fairly slowly. Katharine asked if I intended to sail through and initially I had thought, why not, but as we approached then started to worry that it may not be the ‘done thing’ so we rounded up and dropped the main before continuing under motor. As we approached the bridge there were no signs of cars stopping so I called up on channel 12, the approved channel, but had no reply. There was also a telephone number in the pilot book so Katharine rang it and had a jolly conversation with the bridge keeper who said it’s fine, the next bridge opening is at 1715. We then noticed that the big digital clock on the bridge also said 1715 so felt a bit foolish. At the first bridge it had read the current time because it was about to open and was, indeed, displaying the time of opening.  We had a cup of tea and pottered into one of the harbours straddling the waterway to the South whilst hanging about, we also tested the efficacy of Lidls chocolate oaties which appeared to work fine.

At 1713 the lights on the bridge started flashing red, meaning, bridge about to open, and the traffic stopped and, after a bit, the bridge started to open. Once it was nearly up I started  heading towards the opening but then ran out of courage because the traffic lights, for us, still were showing red. I took a turn out waiting for them to turn green but again ran out of courage because we were the only ones going through, all the traffic was waiting, some cycles and pedestrians gazing at us and the bridge was, obviously, just waiting for us to get on with it before operations could resume so we went through with the three red lights blazing fully and have not yet been arrested. On the other side the wind had died to a whisper so we carried on under power with the sun now blazing merrily and soon were in the approaches to Thisted. I had wondered how much space there would be in the harbour - here one berths in the commercial harbour, but there was oodles of space so we pottered around looking for an easy option and went  for a berth in the corner. The bollard spacing was huge but once alongside managed to get lines to rings on the sheet piling behind the wooden fendering.

There is a ‘Monster Truck’ show due to start on Monday and the monster trucks were lined up on the Harbour wall along with piles of scrap cars which they probably drive over.

We pottered around the town, which was pretty much closed apart from take aways, walked through a park which was lovely and went into a small supermarket which was open buying bits and pieces. After grubby Scotland, everywhere here is remarkably clean.

I wanted to look at the price of alcohol and now wish I hadn’t topped up in Inverness under Nicola’s anti joy regime because a box of wine here was about 10 quid as opposed to 23 in Lidl in Inverness with Beer at about 60 pence a tin and Gin at about 12 quid a bottle. As we’re down by the head with booze at the moment we bought none but picked up some emergency crisps and some bits and pieces and went back to the boat to try out the crips with wine whilst the cauliflower cheese cooked.

A job that I’ve been putting off because I was worried it may not work and wouldn’t know until committed was to cut off some zip  thingies that keep the tubes in my spray hood. The zip thingies had become seized with all the Atlantic Salt and I had found some new ones but wasn’t sure that they would fit but couldn’t know without trying them Katharine cut the old ones off, threaded the new thingy on and, most exciting, it worked fine. We now have three fully functioning zips on the sprayhood again with beautifully sewn in stops at the ends to stop us pulling them all the way off.

After dinner we were both quite tired and had an early night again intending to go to the Supermarket in the morning before setting off for Aalborg.

our first bridge