Stage 13: Germany - Warnemunde to Neustadt

Friday 27 July
We set off early, sailing off the anchor in a very light wind, but had to motor out of the lagoon. It is a tortuous winding channel, with quite a few buoys showing the way. The charts say that the depth in the channel is at least 2.1 m, but we saw the depth oscillating wildly, several times dropping to 1.3 m, and since our draft is 1.25m, that was rather alarming. We had set a shallow water alarm to 1.5 m, and it was shrieking frequently. We decided later that it was the weed which the depth sounder was detecting, and we had probably had plenty of depth all the way. Eventually, we emerged into the open sea. There is a huge wind farm there - 162 turbines, apparently. One of the nearby marinas listed among its attractions the excellent view of the wind farm - it almost convinced us to visit the marina if that was the best it could offer!

The ferries at Gedser













Once we got out into the open sea, we had to join a ferry route between Gedser and Warnemunde, so we were in constant look out for ferries, of which several passed. We were able to sail, though rather slowly, with the drifter and mainsail in a flat calm, blue sea.

When we got to the deep water route which takes all the shipping bound for or coming from the Eastern Baltic, we felt it advisable to motor in order to cross reasonably and predictably quickly.









So we passed back into Germany. Then the engine was switched off and we sailed the rest of the way into Warnemunde. We chose the huge new posh marina, for a bit of a change, and after showers and a bit of a spruce up after our nights at anchor, we actually went out for a meal in a restaurant.

Saturday 28 July
The posh marina is close to the channel into Rostock, and when I got up this morning, I saw a huge cruise ship moored just the other side - the Costa Fortuna.

It sounds like a bad joke, but it really exists! We needed to get Internet access again, so we looked up (using the marina free wi-fi) where the O2 shop in Rostock was, and took the ferry across to Warnemunde Alter Strom and then the S bahn to Rostock (with the usual wrestle with the German ticket machine, which keeps on asking silly questions). After a 20 train journey through the suburbs, we arrived at the grand end of Rostock with big smart houses. The centre is very busy, and it was very hot. We felt like real country mice. The O2 shop sold us what we needed and set it up, but it didn't work, and the nice lad helping spent a long time on the phone determining that there was a fault at the server end. He promised it would all be ok tomorrow and gave us a phone number in case it wasn't.

We visited the Marienkirke, which is immensely tall and light, making us feel even more country mouse like, after the Danish churches. It has a super astronomical clock, which a guide to a party of the Costa people was explaining can be used to tell the sun rise, sunset, date of Easter, astrological signs, moon phases and so on as well as the time.

We ventured out into the heat, and wandered along impressive the city ramparts towards a surviving gate tower, which is tall and impressive, but with a big glass shopping precinct built almost on top of it.

By this time we had had enough of a big city in the full heat of summer, and came back to Warnemunde to stock up on food for another few nights at anchor. In the evening, there was a huge fuss of ships' hooters and foghorns, and the tourist boats were all milling around, and people lining the dockside. It was Costa Fortuna leaving the port and Warnemunde was saying goodbye. Later still the other cruise ship that had been berthed there also left, but only a few hooters saw her off.

Sunday 29 July
We left Warnemunde on a cloudy but fine day, still warm, but not nearly as hot as recent days. The wind was east, but there was not a lot of it, so we sailed very slowly. Eventually we turned the corner and could sail a bit faster, and we headed down into a very narrow channel round a peninsula into a big lagoon called the Salzhaff. By this time, it had started to rain, so we rapidly left the buoyed channel which goes to the village at the end (of which we'd passed the seaward side a couple of hours earlier), and headed past the fishing stakes to find somewhere to anchor. The depth oscillated wildly between 2 and 8 m, where we'd have expected 3-4 m from the chart (weed, again, probably), and we dropped the anchor in the middle of a bay of this lagoon. The fishing stakes seem to mark eel nets, and we think that provided you do not actually run them over, you are probably ok, but they always make us a bit nervous. Alshira started singing again as soon as we were anchored, and the rain stopped, and we are roasting a chicken for dinner - pretty good, eh?

Another boat sailing in the Salzhaff













Monday 30 July
During the night there were some squally showers, but the morning was calm and clear. We sailed off the anchor, as usual, and made our way back to the main channel. The anchor came up draped in enough weed to cover it completely, but it had held well. We turned around the end of the peninsula which encloses the lagoon from the sea, following our track on the chart plotter from last year. Suddenly there was a depth alarm and immediately we went aground. We could see the sandy bottom, and the deeper water just a few metres away. Gordon got the engine on, and we backed quickly off the sand and sailed off, feeling rather chastened! However, the rest of the sail to Timmendorf was lovely, with just one tack to clear a shallow patch, ominously labelled with a warning about numerous large stones. Timmendorf is a tiny fishing harbour on the western coast of the island of Poel. It is quite sheltered, except from the south west (which is where tomorrow's wind is supposed to come from, of course). We helped another boat which had gone aground as he tried to leave his box - winching him backwards. We explored the village - nothing here except for holiday houses, a campsite and ice cream shops, and walked along the beach below the clay cliffs to the south.

There have been some thunder showers, but sunny intervals between them. Tomorrow, we intend to explore Poel by bike.











Tuesday. 31 July
It is pretty bouncy in the south west wind, but our next door neighbour, a motor boat is tossing around far more than us. We got the bikes out to explore the island. It is only about 5 or 6 km across, sort of U shaped with a narrow channel from the south to the main village, Kirchdorf. We had been there last year, by boat, but had not seen the rest of the island. It has lovely sandy beaches all around the northern coast, with woods through which we cycled - a lovely path except when it went through deep soft sand, when our bikes sank and we had to walk. On the eastern end there is a separate tiny island with a very shallow channel to Poel. Lots of families were wading across and setting up their picnics on it, so we waded across too.

It is partly a bird reserve - there are many restricted wildlife areas around here with no access, or access only outside the breeding season. We cycled down to the causeway that links the island to the mainland, and then up the main road to Kirchdorf and back to Timmendorf. In one of the fields, we saw two roe deer, who leapt away from us, jumping through the wheat field. Kirchdorf has a couple of quiet harbours which we will visit again sometime.

Back in Timmendorf, a boat whose engine had failed came in and tried to berth next to us. A concerted effort from half a dozen men on the pontoon, us and the crew hauled them in past the stern post with the sacrifice of some of their varnish.