Stage 12: The southern Danish islands

Wednesday 18 July
The wind stopped whistling during the night, but it was still quite strong when we started out at 7 am. We could just make a close-hauled course to Klintholm on Moens, the largest Danish island that we have never visited. It is about 40 miles away, so having to heal over at 20 or 30 degrees for 8 hours was not a very attractive prospect. Added to that, the waves were big - at least 1.5 m. We made good progress, though, while the wind was strong, but as we found yesterday, when it fell, Alshira was knocked back by the waves, and we had to motor sail. Despite that we sailed properly about three quarters of the distance. At one point a large cargo ship appeared to be on a collision course, and I radioed him to ask his intentions (the polite way of pointing out that he should be keeping a proper lookout, and it is his responsibility to avoid us, in this case a) because we were sailing and b) because we were on his starboard). He changed course for us! Moens has some impressive chalk cliffs at its eastern end, which we could see from 30 miles away.

When we got close, we had to tack close to them to get on the right course, and boy, if we thought the waves before were big, you should have seen them close in! I guess that they were not much higher, maybe 2 m, but much shorter wavelength, so very steep indeed. Alshira coped beautifully, Gordon helmed and I hung on and worked out when we should tack. Shortly afterwards we arrived at Klintholm, which is a harbour built around holiday flats, but quite nice for all that. The island is supposed to be interesting, so we'll stay a few days to explore. Now we need a day to recover from that exhausting trip!

The Swedish courtesy flag curled up in terror!

Thursday 19 July
It rained on and off all morning, so we had a large breakfast, read and rested. However, in the afternoon, it cleared, so out came the bikes. We wanted to see the cliffs at Moens Klint, which are about 6 km away. Predictably, the bike ride was up hill, but not too exhausting, and we arrived at a big car park and a visitor centre, with lots of families. The cliffs from the sea looked as if they were covered with trees, and sure enough the whole area is a vast beech wood, with ravines and gullies and plenty of places where the cliffs have eroded taking trees down with them - 128 m down! There were paths along the top, steps and fences, but a lot more freedom to leave the paths or climb over fences and cliffs than there would have been in England.

The cliffs are spectacular from above, and the views of white chalk cliffs, blue sea and green beech trees were superb. There were a few ways down to the beach and people were walking along it at the base of the cliffs, looking tiny from the top. We could certainly see Sweden, and we imagined that we could see as far as Bornholm. The next band of rain squalls was due in the late afternoon, so we cycled back quickly as it began to threaten, pausing briefly to find some standing stones - Moen, apparently, has loads of them. Away from the beech woods and chalk cliffs, normal Danish countryside resumed with isolated farms, huge fields of cereal or beet, gently sloping contours and the blue sea - calm and benign today.

Friday 20 July
It was dry, but with a strong west wind. We decided to cycle to the major town on Moen, Stege, stopping on the way to see two churches which have interesting frescoes. The bike ride, into the wind, was ok while we could keep to the lanes, but a bit unpleasant on the main road, although there wasn't that much traffic. The churches were stunning. The same artist in the 15th century painted frescoes in both, and you could easily recognise his style. There were lively scenes from the bible - creation, birth of Jesus and judgement were most obvious. The vaulted ceilings were completely covered and some of the walls, with a few flowers, birds and beasts to fill in the blank bits.

Stege is a lovely old Danish town with a super gatehouse,

remains of a moat,













an open busy main street and square and a bridge over a fjord, so that most of the town is on a peninsula between the sea and the fjord. It was made prosperous by the herring fishing. It has a good marina with a long buoyed channel into it from the channel which passes around the north side of the island. It looks a possible place to stay on another trip.

Saturday 21 July
Still the strong west wind, so plans to cycle 25 km to the west end on Moen to see some chambered cairns and the like were shelved in favour of a much shorter bike ride to one on the east side of the island. It was pretty impressive - about 5000 years old, two large stones on smaller ones leaving a decent sized space underneath, maybe 3m long and 1 m high. The whole construction was on a hilltop with a view all over the island.

From there we headed up to Moens Klint again, following the road and then a bike path through the woods. Predictably we took the wrong path and joined a mountain bike trail. Doing a mountain bike trail on slick tyres and a racing bike was an interesting and pretty exhilarating experience - the downhill and windy bits were fine and fun, but the tyres couldn't quite cope with the steep uphills! Once we got to the visitor centre, we locked the bikes and took the staircase down the cliff, all 481 steps of it.

You can walk along the narrow beach on fallen chalk and rounded sea-washed flints. Having seen the cliffs from the sea, and from the top, this gave us yet another perspective on this amazing scenery. There were lots of house martins nesting under overhangs in the cliff - well, they must have had somewhere to build their nests before there were houses - but I'd not seen house-free house martin nests before!

We then cycled down to the lighthouse, from where we could get down to the beach under the cliff further along and walked along another section.

Sunday 22 July
It was a lovely morning, with a moderate westerly wind, so we were off again, early. We sailed on a lovely blue calm sea the 10 or so miles down to the channel between Moen and Falster, but here we had to turn directly into the wind to sail between the islands, and the dredged channel is very narrow, so, reluctantly, we started the engine. As the channel widened, we decided to sail again, especially since there seemed to be a current in our favour and it was a bit choppy - wind against current, presumably. We tacked the last 4 miles to Stubbekobing where the boxes are rather narrow, as warned in the German chart book, but the second one we tried was OK. There is a horrible gravel silo dominating the coastline, but it otherwise seems to be a nice quiet standard Danish town with a wide main street, and the usual crop of brightly painted houses.

However, the harbour and the coast all feel as if they are in a large lake rather than the open sea feel of the harbours we've been in recently - we have moved back into very sheltered waters!

The only problem we had, apart from the narrow box, was that when we were motoring, I had heard a loud click and water flowing. Now, it isn't unusual to hear water when you are sailing, but I had investigated it properly and found our saucepan drawer full of water - a hose had come off the tap, and water was being pumped into the drawer below the sink! We turned off the water pump and when we got to the harbour sorted out the problem. All our towels were soaking, and there was a bit of water in the bilges, but a marina tumble dryer and lots of sponging sorted that out. The hose was reconnected, and no harm was done.

Monday 23 July
Another beautiful day. We wanted to look at some of the sights at the east end of Moen, so we took the ferry to Boego - a charming old wooden ferry called Ida, had a quick look round Boego and then cycled across the causeway to Moen.

Boego is a quiet, normal Danish island, with a nice normal church mostly notable by a resident cat who we couldn't persuade to leave us alone.

On Moen, we went to the third of the churches which the Elmelumde master painted, at Fanefjord. The frescoes were quite similar to the other churches, with many of the same scenes, but the restoration was better, so they were even more striking. The church also provided visitors with a leaflet telling us what scene from the bible was illustrated in each panel, in German, Danish and English, which helped a lot.

Just down the road from the church is a huge burial mound at Gronsalen. It is about 100 m long, 10 m wide and 2 or 3 m high - a grassy ridge surrounded by large stones, with a couple of pits in it, presumably where the burials have been excavated. It was impressive because of its age and a super view of the island and the sea from the top.

We came back on the ferry and did some shopping, preparing for the next three or four days when we hope to be able to anchor off various islands around Falster.

Tuesday 24 July
It was another gorgeous day, blue cloudless sky, and rather weak south wind. We left Stubbekobing and sailed under two huge bridges, heading west. One links Boego (and hence Moen) with Falster, the other links Falster with Zealand. We had the drifter up, and at times could manage 5 kts, that is, until the wind died away. We had to motor a bit, otherwise we'd have been out all day and night, but after we'd cleared one of the narrow channels between sandbanks that this area has in abundance, we could sail the last bit, towards the island of Femoe. We anchored just off the eastern shore, and almost immediately I had a swim to cool off. It is probably the first full days sailing we have managed dressed in tee shirts and shorts, and probably the hottest day of the Danish summer so far. This side of the island is just farmland, so one way we can see trees, cornfields and a farm, and the other, just miles of blue sea and distant islands completely surrounding us.

In the evening two disturbing things happened - the wind rose and it became slightly choppy, and there was a long fetch and little shelter in the anchorage, and I looked at my phone for the German 3 day forecast and found that it predicted gales for Friday, when we intended to cross to Germany. We set various alarms in case the anchor dragged (we discover that the depth alarm worked but the handheld GPS anchor alarm didn't) and revised our plans to cross to Germany a day earlier. All was well with the anchor and the wind and waves died away during the night.

Wednesday 25 July
I discovered where that poor weather forecast had come from - it was actually last week's, from the cache, since reception was bad - whew! We sailed off the anchor and tacked towards the narrow channel which divides Falster from Lolland. It was another lovely hot ( but windless) day, and soon we had to motor towards the bridge at the north end of it. We had read the notes in German and Danish, which appeared to say that we prepared to go through the lifting bridge when two red lights flashed and actually went through when they were steady - going forward against 2 red lights feels wrong!

In fact, we couldn't see the lights when it was obvious that we should go through, but we got a cheery wave from the bridge keeper, so presumably we got it right. We anchored just off the channel on a big lagoon bisected by the buoyed channel. It is rather like the Schlei, a winding reed and wooded banked river/fjord ,a rural idyll!

Thursday 26 July
It was a lovely morning again, this time with a light north wind, a blue sky and no clouds. We were able to sail off the anchor, waiting for a few minutes to allow a small dredger to pass - the channel out of the main town, Nykobing, is used by some small ships. We sailed, very slowly, over the road tunnel between the islands, and down the winding fjord. It is a bit like the Broads, but with very few houses on the banks.

As we approached Nykobing, where there is a lifting bridge, which is supposed (according to the chart) to be closed over lunchtime, but otherwise open on demand, I radioed the bridge keeper to ask when he was next going to open the bridge. 20 minutes, he said (which didn't sound much like on demand to me!) and then we saw a big neon sign on the bridge giving the next opening time.

It didn't close for lunch either - we are learning to treat the charts with some skepticism. We started sailing again as soon as we had cleared the bridge and drifted lazily round some islands into a huge lagoon, about 3 miles across and 2 miles long, with woods and fields on three sides and a small village on the north side. We anchored about half a mile off the north edge, sheltered from the very slack wind by a low marshy island. It was pretty hot, and I swam again, as I have done for the last few days. The sea is warming up perceptibly.