We did take off early (at 3:30am) and made it to Rødvig with a lot of tacking against ever increasing winds. We had initially wanted to sail to Klintholm but after listening to never-ending gale warnings on the vhf and our tacking angle now being at 160 degrees because of the steep waves, we decided to turn into Rødvig instead. This turned out to be a good choice.
Backing Amy into the box required a lot of lines that had to be attached here and there and slowly pulling ourselves towards the jetty. There was a gentleman (Georg as it turned out) waiting patiently for me to hand him a rope. I was trying to explain how it isn’t possible to go astern with Amy (like always) but he didn’t need explanations and could apparently appreciate our working with the lines. This made him instantly likeable.
Georg and Sabine were both from Germany. The following day we went out to dinner together and had a very nice evening. They needed to go west and left a few days later.
We were stuck. The south-easterly winds just wouldn’t change direction for almost a week. Fortunately Rødvig was a nice place to stay. We rented bicycles and explored the vicinity. We took walks. And I cleaned the underwater hull once again. The water was freezing cold and it was a most horrible ordeal. But it turned out to be well worth it.
I was becoming extremely frustrated. The weather hadn’t been really bad but ever since having crossed the North Sea there the weather was so unstable with constant gusts of well over 30 knots and thunderstorms and heavy rain that the weather windows of going from one place to the next without getting hammered were very small and it didn’t seem like that was going to change anytime soon.
For doing things on land we did have enough of good weather, so Zissi was definitely enjoying herself more than I was.
Our window came the following Sunday. There was still to much wind during the day so we waited until evening and cast off with the last light and sailed towards Rügen in a perfect southwesterly wind and decreasing waves.