PARKED BLOG - Use: http://sailingzephyr.blogspot.com

About the BLOG:
Since I have handed over the ownership of the blog to Bent, there are some minor technical changes:

1. The address is now: http://sailingZephyr.blogspot.com 
2. The ownership is changed from the google account of Kjell Arne to Bent
3. All articles are "republished" and some of the earliest with new pictures, film-cuts and sometimes a little more text.
4. Old comments and followers are gone - so please register as a follower once more

Stuck in Coxhaven

Sorry for being late with updating the blog, since we left Rendsburg.

The second half of the Kieler kanal was finished on sunday, with a straight head wind in the river Elbe and down to Coxhaven going by mainsail and motor.

Quite huge boats joined us on the kanal

Finn is watching for the other boats

Wilma and Koos in "No-X"

We arrived Coxhaven in heavy rain and low tide. Monday morning Bent had been awake and out for investigation of the harbor while the rest of us still had a good sleep, and he announced that the harbor restaurant had a excellent breakfast buffet to offer, even though we had our fridge full of good food. Bents suggestion for the buffet won - and was really a nice experience.

Wilma and Koos sailing in "No-X"  did we first meet in Rendsburg, and now later in Cuxhaven where we're all stuck in the port because of the strong winds out in the sea.  We have had a really good company with our new dutch friends here trading Christians gourmet dinners, with some great sailing programs for our PC's including professional GRIB layout program (ZyGRIB). The plan for tomorrow, Wednesday, is to have a crew meeting together with "No-X" (Koos and Wilma) and the German neighbour boat. As the weather says right now, its looking good to depart at noon and we are all going to the same destination Nordeney. The navigation precision is increasing even more tomorrow when Bent is picking up another new GPS for more accuracy in our navigation.

A working day in Rendsburg

Saturday 21-aug-10 started out with doing some planned repair on the Zephyr. Last year Bent experienced that a 20 ton+ vessel rammed into his aft on Zephyr, while the boat was secured in the port. The marine repair company doing the excellent repair on the hull, did not do so well when mounting the rig. They managed to deliver the boat back without working engine- and deck-light, with two port stay (babor stag) twisted and finally the VHF antenna still positioned in transport mode. None of these problems have had any impact for sailing or security (The top mast navigation lights and VHF has always been working). Anyway was the calm and nice Rendsburg marina was a perfect place to fix this problems. The electrical wiring was hard to spot between the mast footing and the cabin ceiling, but finally interesting to observe that the cable was actually not connected at all. When first found, this was easy to fix. The port stay went also really well all until Bent suddenly slipped the end block of the spreaders on the mast.

It first followed the stay wires it is holding, but managed to slip off and out in the water. Ok, no big deal was our first idea, and Kjell Arne started free diving after the lost block. That was too hard with a visibility of 10-15 cm on 4 meter depth. The very nice and service-minded people on the Marina-office, called a local diving instructor, Rudy, which was living only few minutes drive from the Marina. He found the block after 5-10 minutes of diving.

Rudy is preparing the dive

Rendsburg

Today on Friday 20-aug-2010, we started from our harbor in Kiel at 08:45 to make sure to get trough the lock (da/no: sluse) which opens at sharp 09:00 (German precission). Compared to Nordic boat locks, this one much wider and longer, while the water level change on some 10 cm or whatever is not recognizable. During the rest of the Kieler kanal, we don't passing any locks before entering Elbe close to Brunsbüttel.



We continued our good work of increasing the quality of Zephyr today, when we found and repaired some of the electricity going through the mast. Even the marine repair companies do fail (sometimes too much).
Rendsburg is really a nice city, as well as the marina here.



Our evening today was almost magic sitting in this warm nice summer weather under the newly installed bimini eating shrimps and drinking cold white wine.
The traditional competition for guessing the correct sailed distance was for second day on row wan by Christian, which Bent suggested was not so important to mention in this blog…
Start: 08:45
End: 15:30
Dist: 22,8 nm


-

Location:Rendsburg, Germany

Kiel

This day was quite productive when talking about preparations which had been delayed earlier. We've fixed the sprayhood, secured the lifeboat, added light to the rescue floating whatever what we call this horse-shoe-thing we could throw after swimmers. The cockpit simply went even more professional than it already was.



The walk in Svenborg city yesterday, after buying some items in a local groceries store.
Today's sailing was really great. We started out width some hours by motor to navigate through all these narrow man made channels in the shallow water west of Langeland. On this first part we was observing literally thousands of white swans swimming around in the sea. Then we set sail when we had open water all the way to Kiel. It was one single leg with wind from starboard until we navigated into the harbor at midnight (as usual ;-).

Start: Svenborg 19-aug-10 15:10
End: Kiel, 01:01
Distance: 51,3 nm

Svendborg - last stop before Germany

Hi there everybody following us - we're pleased, and thanks for feedback on comments, SMS and phone! :-)
Finn, Christian, Bent and I (Kjell Arne) arrived at Svendborg 16:15 this evening after close to 6 hours of head on wind with iron-genoa (some people name it running by motor... ;-) from our successful 33 hours stay at Omø.

Bent is experiencing the intence rain in his face

 This day was also kind of wet and windy, and the fresh fish we was donated made a perfect dinner this evening. The approach into Svendborg today was very much like the Norwegian Blindleia or similar to some of the classic places on the Swedish Bohuslän coastline:

I really have to express our great confidence to having Bent as our skipper. He is very focused, security minded and even noticing small details which need to be corrected before it makes any interference with our sailing. We're really having a good time everybody here on Zephyr!
Start: Omø, 10:37
End: Svendborg, 16:15
Distance: 26,7 nm
Average speed: 4,8 knots

PS: It's a kind of strange this post. There is absolutely NO wireless connection in Svendborg Harbor.  I took my iPhone, asked for wireless connections, and walked up in the city now in the middle of the night.  When approacing the "Pistolstrædet" connecting the main walking street, I found the open wireless connection named "Fullrate" and sat down here on the street and posted todays blog. (Thank you pal, for borrowing bandwith on your "Fullrate" wireless server! ;-)
To all  our followers: Be prepared to wait a couple of days or more, if we're sleeping in a no-wireless area, or simply sailing non-stop for a couple of days.

Some pictures/moments to remember

To sail into the sunset on monday night gave us some scenery which is worth to remember:

Farøbroen

Storestrømsbroen, Foto: Kjell Arne

Nymånen i Nord

Storestrømsbroen etter solnedgang

Den maten vi fikk servert hos Jørn Bondo var av sjelden minnerik kulinarisk kvalitet! Vi brukte unskyldning om å repare båten - og ble et døgn ekstra!
Takk Bondo!
:-)