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!
:-)

The White Cliffs of Møn

This second day of Around the World with Zephyr and Bent has been the longest so far.
Even though Christian and I had been working like hell yesterday and we went to bed not long before the birds woke up, we was called for duty by captain Bent early in the morning, when you guys, reading this blog was still at sleep.
We had to move the boat up to the diesel-pump, fill it up together with the two 20 liter extra cans.
(oh yes, we're still sailing most of time though ;-)

The Køge Bay was not very nice to us this morning, but the boat speed was alright, since we had some nice 12 m/s wind speed. The only problem was that the rocking, rolling waves we got indicated at least a double wind speed here in this shallow ocean. But great, no one got sick.

One of the big challenges of today, was to hit the narrow and shallow Bøge Stream - a manmade channel with a depth only 20 cm deeper than our keel. The waves was higher than the boat-hull. We turned out again, took the longer route (20 nm) around Møn island, which also Bents friend, Stig thought was a better idea.

Christian and Bent presenting The White Cliffs of Møn

Another great idea with this route, was our experience of seeing one of Denmark most famous nature attractions: Møns Klint - from now on renamed to The White Cliffs of Møn. :-)

Start: Rødvig, 16-aug-2010 10:00
End: Omø, 17-aug-2010 01:15
Distance: 91 nm

Location:Approaching Omø

Avreisen og farvel til Ishøj

Sorry guys, if you don't read Norwegian - at least for this time:
Den fantasiske gjengen av seilere i Ishøj seilerklubb, hadde dermed også ordnet med fulle startprosedyrer med avfyring av startpistol på 30 minutter, 10 minutter, 5 min og start. Det var sikkert 100 besøkende for å si adjø til Bent som har bodd 6 år i Ishøj havn. Det var glad-jazz band som spilte, fyrverkeri og flust med gaver og hilsninger i nydelig vær.

Da Bent kom til Ishøj for 6 år siden, var det bare for å klargjøre jordomseilingen, og stikke av gårde igjen ganske snart. Med den fantastiske gjestfriheten som alle i Ishøj havn viste, og med dette oppmøtet vi fikk, er det ikke så merkelig at Bent ble boende så lenge i Ishøj før reisen startet.

Vi er nå (endelig) underveis! Presis kl 16:42 søndag 15. august hadde Bent spøkefullt gjennom et år sagt at avreisen skulle være. Og slik ble det:

Kaien er fullpakket med venner som vinker farvel

Mye moro ble det med våre tre fire returer til Ishøj havn etter dette, innkludert bading rett innenfor moloen fra båten til Ivan og Bent.

Noen av alle båtene som fulgte oss ut av havnen

Først tøffet vi rolig et par timer for motor på et speilblikk vann i et område beryktet for mye grov sjø, mens så kunne vi sløre i nærmere 8 knop resten av turen til Rødvig. Neste dag går turen mot Omø hvor vi skal plukke opp Finn før veien går videre mot Kielerkanalen.

Start: Ishøj, DK, 15-aug-10, 16:42 (20:00)
End: Rødvig, DK, 16-aug-10, 00:15
Dist: 25 nm
Location:Rødvig,Danmark

The last preparations

In the well equiped boat shop in Ishøj, the last list of needed items for our sail journey is bought today, some 24 hours before we are setting sail first time.

Bent have just experienced that the one thing we could not get, is a broken inner glass for the stove. I think we still should be able to bake bread or whatever anyway.  Just don't touch the glass!

(This artiicle will be updated later... ;-)

The English Channel is Right this time

The White Cliffs of Dover
Original author: http://www.flickr.com/people/fanny/

I've got even more good advices - and this time from my friend and experienced sailor, Stig. As he puts it - most sailors are counting between 80 and 100 nm for each 24 hours, which makes the time insufficient for the longer trip around England.  But Zephyr will be heading back some day, and give this route a new chance.  Stig also suggested Dover as a nice place to visit - which we should have in our mind.

Because of the extreme currents, a good eye on the GPS/chart-plotter more often than the compass was also one of his good suggestions...

The two routes

As mentioned before, we have two quite different approaches for going from Copenhagen to La Corona in northern Spain.  For planning without any commercial mapping programs, I´ve got the good idea from my sailing friend Ole Petter, using the Google Earth applicatioan with the ruler making path markings along the route for counting up the nautical miles. I´ve played with this method to accumulate the length for each of the routes:


The original plan through the Kieler kanal and then follow the English Channel, is the shortest obviously with a little more than 1200 nm.

nm     To - From
133    Ishøj - Kiel
  14    Kiel - Flemhuder See / Holm
  46    Flemhuder See - Brunsbuttel
  51    Brünsbuttel - Spiekerroog
233    Spikeroog - Belgia
190    Beliga - Isle of Wight
201    Isle of Wight - ile d´ Oessant
340    ile d´ Oessant - La Corona
1208    SUM

The other route is some 340 nm longer, but might look a little more interresting with sailing all of Loch Ness, among several other scottish lakes.  Then all the nice small british islands including Isle of Man:

nm     To - From
164    Ishøj - Skagen
477    Skagen - Inverness
  15    Inverness - Loch Ness
  20    Loch Ness
  10    Loch Ness - Loch Lochy
    8    Loch Lochy
    7    Loch Lochy - Ben Nevis
    9    Loch Linne
  20    Loch Linne - Oban
110    Oban - PortPatrick
  48    PortPatrick - Isle of Man
  78    Isle of Man - Bardsey Island
  59    Bardsey Island - Ramsey
110    Ramsey - Sennen Cove
415    Sennen Cove - La Coruna
1550    SUM

Dream Legs

The best thing about virtual sailing on the desk with charts or on the computer, is that you can fast and easy switch between whatever courses you like:

Alt plan mixed with photo of Zephyr

Our good skydiving and sailing friend, Jan Arvidsson, came up with a suggestion of a better route, even though not so much longer. To first head up north, passing Skagen and then going to Inverness, the Caledonian channel to Oban and then around Irland rounding Fastnet Rock in the south before going straight to La Coruna? It is an interesting idea, about 1600 Nm compared to otherwise some 1300 Nm.  If the alternative route is following down the Irish Sea between Irland and England, this route sould be cut down to something like maybe 1500 Nm.



Some reasons for avoiding the English Channel:

• Extremly crowded with huge ships
• Often fog
• Current may sometimes approach 6-7 knots
• Tides up to 6 meters
• Shallow water gives ruff vawes

Extensive planning and timing is needed for when to sail or going to harbours, to avoid negative effects of many of the listed problems. Certainly those are releveant also for the other route, but usually not to the same extent.

Preparations before the start

Two X-boats match-racing towards Moss in the Oslo-fjord
Photo: Kjell Arne

It is important to make sure that we are prepared to handle ruff offshore conditions for several days. Bent are currently installing both radar and radar reflector, and the boat are equiped with all typical logging instruments beside Navtex for navigational warnings, auto pilot, chart plotter both in cockpit and inside.  As backup navigation are we also bringing good old paper charts as well as at least 2 hand held GPS-units and a PC with chart programs.  The free SeaClear program, based on scanned charts are a great tool, turning a laptop into a professional navigation system.

Life wests (12 pices) are certainly on board as well as a rescue float for 6 persons. The 4-cylinder Yanmar diesel engine has an 200 liter tank for fuel. The tanks for fresh water has a capacity on 400 liter.

Intro to this Blog

English will probably be the language of preference for most of the blogs, simply since most of the readers (skydiving/EET friends) are not of Norwegian origin, which captain Bent, and I am. This might even add some extra amusement to the english spelling and expressions in this blog!
;-D

The 43 feet beuty - S/Y ZEPHYR, is an Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 43 built in France in 2002. Bent Laursen has been sailing her since he got the boat in 2004.

In this advent before hauling anchor 15-aug-2010 - I'm blogging from my hometown, Oslo, while Bent is preparing the ship in its home harbour in Ishøj, Copenhagen. The first route will go through the Kieler canal before heading south through the English Channel, crossing the Bay of Biscay and hopefully reach La Coruna in northern Spain before saturday 28-aug-2010.

A ruff messure of the distance from Ishøj to La Coruna shows 1235 nm. Given an average SMG (Speed Made Good) of 3 knots, it will take 17 days of non-stop sailing to reach La Coruna.

Given my own partition, which is maximum until 28-aug, it looks like I have to find my destination in either England or France.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Ole Vigs gate,Oslo,Norge