Smoerebro' in Kobenhavn, Smorgasbord in Malmo

click to enlargeRobin had done a superb job of positioning Voltair in a quiet backwater quite close to the city centre and we were able to get a taxi to within a few feet of the bow - once we could find a taxi at all which could take all 5 of us. Rachael had her legs temporarily removed in order to fold herself up into the boot, and the rest of us got proper seats.

The aerial view is by courtesy of Google Earth. If you don't already use this remarkable program, you really should. It's free and it's fun - and we have downloaded our track from the GPS in such a way you can see where we've been..... that's the orange line in the picture. More about this later! However, you can see in this shot where we were moored, just across from the very popular Nyhavn (where all the blue dots are - these are photos of the location, accessible from the Google Earth program), and the old town with its palaces and churches.
by the round tower

We had a great day sightseeing in the city on Thursday - little mermaid, round tower, Radhus etc, but failed to get to Tivoli gardens after dark for any serious mischief.

"Lunch" had given us the worst difficulty. We tried Robin's method for towns with lots of restaurants, but it didn't work - the ONLY restaurant serving proper Smorebrod was the first one!

Old friends - sat on a parkbench Click for another view

It was a long walk out to the Little Mermaid statue to the northeast, but worth it. A business friend had recommended two statues in the park nearby - one (known as the Gefion fountain) of a team of supernatural oxen ploughing the proto-Denmark out of a chunk of Sweden - the water spurting up from the ploughshare as it created the leads sea around the islands, read the full and interesting legend by clicking this link, and the other a wonderful statue of a Valkyrie on horseback.

Click to enlargeWe decided to take one of the ferries back into town, which deposited us, after passing the royal palace, yacht and operahouse at the terminus in Nyhavn - just the right place for a glass of Tuborg and some street jazz (yes, there was a festival on in town for the week), so we were quite late having supper, and most of us were asleep already at the time we were supposed to be going off to "start" the evening at Tivoli.

Click to enlarge

We left on Friday morning and ran the gauntlet of sailing across the line of wind generators just to the east of Copenhagen. We had at least 1cm of depth to spare (i.e. the depth said 'zero' at one point but we didn't touch), and a few more centimetres between our mast and the blades. In true Fireballer style, Dave and Jane soon had the spinnaker up and we were heading for Malmo, though not, it has to be mentioned, very fast.

LYC's magnificent clubhouse
We ate our smorgasbord of shrimps and herring in the clubhouse at the sailing club of Limhamn, surrounded by pictures of olympic sailors and yachting memorabilia, and enjoyed ourselves immensely as the sun came out to greet us, and the clouds lifted off the top of the bridge which now links Denmark to Sweden.

traffic

Then it was time to start south-westwards towards Germany - our eventual destination. In a light southwesterly, we elected to motor onwards and made 30-miles in the right direction, finishing for the night in the marina at Rodvig, rafted out 4-deep alongside various other nations.

Yesterday we had a fine sail in company with about 20 other yachts, all beating out towards the narrow channels and reed-lined broads that led through from the eastern bucht into the heart of the Danish islands. It was quite a culture shock after Norway, where we were used to sailing between rocks a few yards apart in depths of 50m. Here in Denmark, the depth sounder rarely goes above 10m, and on the way in to last night's berth at Vordingborg, we did a mile or more with it reading 'Zero'. Shortly, we are going to find out if we can also go in the opposite direction!

Vordingbord approach channel

Vordingborg is a lovely small town about 20 miles further west than Kalvehave where we had paused for some shopping (and where David and Bob got drenched when the skipper decided to leave harbour in a sudden cloudburst). Once again (having brushed our keel clean on the sea-grass during the approach) we ended up 4th boat out in a raft near the service block and Wi-fi hotspot.
Vordingborg - 11pm



Now, Vordingborg was absolutely rammed last night - car parks as well as marinas overflowing. It just happened to be the final evening of their summer festival, and a well equipped soundstage, with several megawatts of amplifying power, soon had our intestines quivering to the beat of .......
...... Teddy or fat git?Bamses Venner (click this link to their website) otherwise known as the "teddybears" or "fat gits", perhaps. That's unfair! I hear you cry.... they did release their first album in 1975, so Flemming Bamse Jorgensen, (head man), is entitled to look a bit the worse for rock-n-roll, never mind about the sex and drugs! Do explore their website - there's some great pictures - pity there's no audio.... the bit of video I took overloaded the camera's microphone!

Dancing master



Bob was soon in demand, as the sole unpaired Englishman, and was soon jiving blondes to a standstill (as you do) - (or at least - as I do in my dreams).

Best wishes from Bob, David, Jane, John and Rachael


Oops! - nearly forgot. If you click on this link, you can download the track of the yacht over the last week, from Copenhagen to Lubeck. This will probably open in your browser as a load of numbers - DON'T PANIC - save the file on your hard drive in a convenient place, with a suitable name (it will prompt you to use dkjktracks.kml), and then when you double-click it, it should automatically load Google Earth (assuming you already installed it) and superimpose our track on the globe. Then you can zoom in and see exactly where we've been! (Not sure I like the sound of that).


To go to Voltair's new "Homepage", where you can catch up on the postcards that fell down behind the cooker, click here.