At 'Marken' island just 15 miles north og Amsterdam

Very nice houses along the chanals

Marken and it's chanals

Lot's of brighes, and some strange looking

Came from Harlingen cross over the lake towards Amsterdam. Harlingen had a harbour festival with alot of people and live bands. Harlingen is open water harbour, so you have to prepare your ropes for the tide. ( 2,5 meters.)
After a great night at the festival, we went on a nice sailing day crossing the lake. I never seen so many sailing boats at one time, probably about 2000 ships.
We stopped at island 'Marken' which is a fantastic beautiful little village with 1800 residence all year round.
The lokal people we meet are born, rised and live here. Many works around Amsterdam, which is only 25 minuts away in a car away. The island was connected to main land 53 years ago with a road.
Tomorrow we sail into Amsterdam, and spend one night there before we go out to the open water and the British chanal.

Close to Amsterdam (28/8-10)

Ok, I'm not at Zephyr anymore, but I can't keep my blogging-finger away from giving a short resumé:

Ijsselmeer controlled by dutch dikes

Saturday (28/8) evening, Bent called me about some computer technical issues which we solved together, and he also then explained shortly about the proceedings of Zephyr.  They are now in harbor a place close to Amsterdam:

Bent told about a interesting navigation on shallow channels width sand and mud bottom. They happened to get stuck several times, and Bent think the channel has been more distinctly adjusted for Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 43 from now on...
The straight red line on the upper part between the black dots, shows the artificial dutch dike which are regulating the Ijsselmeer to an average level somewhere between high and low tide.  Zephyr needed to wait for some hours (or a night?) before they was let through the lock. When first sailing on Ijsselmeer, it was really a great experience with almost no waves and good wind doing more than 8 knots.
When I talked with Bent, they where sitting together with some nice English sailors sailing a catamaran.
We all wish we were there!
:-)

Zephyr leaving Coxhaven - Kjell Arne leaving Zephyr (26/8-10)

After some 3 days with too much wind in the English channel for proceeding the sailing, finally a opportunity window came on Thursday morning at 04:00. The wind is decreasing and the tide was optimal:

Resulting wind forecasts based on GRIB files

Thanks to education from Koss at No-X, we've learned how to master the core information delivered by and for professional meteorologists - GRIB files (GRIdded Binary is a mathematically concise data format commonly used in meteorology). When downloading these fresh files from our region, we can make our own precise weather forecast for our localization, destination and own selection of time. 

Zephyr in Coxhaven

The destination for Zephyr before next stop could be anything from Gröningen to Amsterdam depending on weather and sailing conditions. Since Kjell Arne had a  flight booked for going back to Oslo on Friday, the safest was to terminate the participation here in Coxhaven.


It has been really nice joining Zephyr, Bent and his crew for nearly two weeks now, since I first came down to Ishøj on Friday 13. August.  I know there are many people booked up for later parts of this relaxed, safe and really joyful cruise with Zephyr.You will enjoy it!


About the BLOG:
Since I have handed over the BLOG-address and ownership to Bent, there are some minor technical changes:

1. The ownership is changed from my (Kjell Arne) google-account to Bent
2. All articles are "republished" and some of the earliest with new pictures, film-cuts and sometimes a little more text.
3. Old comments and followers are gone - so please register as a follower once more

Thanks a lot to Bent for allowing me to join the cruise - and thanks to all you folks, following my part of the documentation of the beginning of this event.

Old map from Hamburg Maritime Museum

Hamburg by night before flying back to Oslo, Norway

Stuck in Coxhaven (25/8-10)

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 passed us in the Kieler Kanal

Finn watching the rudder

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 in No-X

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 (21/8-10)

The wire attachment in Bents right hand

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 his mask before diving

Kjell Arne and Rudy are sharing experiences of the dives with 15 cm visibility

Rendsburg - and the Kieler kanal (21/8-10)

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 are the marina here. If you ever passing the Kieler kanal, you really have to stay one day on this beautiful place.

Christian, Finn and Bent is studying a model of the old city of Rendsburg

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. And I forgot to take picture of this? To bad - but you know how it looks like... ;-)
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

Kiel (20/8-10)

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 sun is shining and Christian navigating

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.

This was one of the areas with swans

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 ;-).

Sunset on the way to Kiel 

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