Sailing to Copenhagen

I didn't do any photos on our journey from Anholt to Copenhagen, I did do some very few in Copenhagen ... well, let me just say that we enjoyed Copenhagen immensely.

I had one crew member with me on the trip from Gothenburg to Copenhagen. I got a bit desperate in the end, I sort of had to point at someone and say: "hey, you'll come and join me to Copenhagen ... or else!" My crew mate had never been to sea before (except on the ferries, of course), he was at one hand looking very much forward to the trip, at the other hand he was very much worried of getting sea sick - I did tell him Kattegat can be pretty rough, and that's no lie - though this time it wasn't that bad. People react differently to sea sickness - this guy had bought some bracelets that were supposed to help. On the way out from Gothenburg he immediately got quite sea sick. He did not puke (though he carried the bucket with him). Soon he laid down on his back - he didn't lie like that for long, just a couple of minutes - then he woke up and told me that he had actually passed out - and then he was completely OK for the rest of the journey! Even though he didn't have any experiences or maritime skills, it was quite useful to have company on the trip. Just to be able to tell someone "sit here, keep a lookout, and wake me up if anything happens" is golden during the night hours.

On the trip from Anholt to Copenhagen we were without any kind of Internet or cellphone coverage for many hours. My crew mate was so impressed by the sunrise - he had never been able to take the time to enjoy a sunrise like that before!

We were quite so lucky with the conditions, just enough wind so we could have full sails out, and not too rough. From Anholt we had the wind in the back, tried to do some butterfly sailing ... but it was quite bad, I don't have any boom for the genoa, and it would constantly flap due to the waves until we got in the shade of Helsingør. Not good to listen to, not good for the sails, not good for the rig. Eventually we furled in the sails and continued by engine as the wind got weaker.

We were also really lucky with the weather in Copenhagen, it was sunny and almost no wind at all. To get into the city we would have to go around all the harbour, that's quite unsheltered and can be a bit rough in windy weather.

According to international law, any boat should have the flag of the country of registration ... and if it isn't registered, then at least the flag of the country where VAT has been paid ... I thought a bit on this while travelling around in Gothenburg with the dhingy, so eventually I decided to improvise a bit. Now, let's hope I won't be needing the boat hook!

In the early morning on Sunday I first went to the city center to meet up with some people, relax a bit, charge my laptop and get online for a while. I ordered some food and drunk a beer, and just when I was finished eating, someone called me and asked me to move the boat IMMEDIATELY. I've had a sign in the window with my telephone number only for a week and some few days, and this is already second time people call my number due to that. Now that was quite a bummer since it sort of blew up the planning for the day. I headed back ... but there was not really any need for it, because when I arrived they had already managed to move my boat by themselves, with a bit of help from my crew mate.

We did get some work done on the boat, the people I was to meet downtown got to the boat and met me there instead. We decided to head over to a pub or café since we had even run out of beer on the ship, eventually we found that the nearest should be The Address in Tuborg harbour. When arriving there ... we didn't even check the prices, the place looked like a very expensive exclusive kind of restaurant ... so instead we rather did some shopping and did our eating on board the ship. Some of you may have heard of the Tuborg brewery, it was originally in this area - and they have beer bottles decorating the harbour entrance.

Much later we finally managed to get back to Copenhagen. This old, rotten ship here is a lighthouse boat - in the old days they used to have such ships permanently anchored up at places where it was too difficult to build fixed light houses. It was quite amusing to see such a ship on close quarter ... and this ship looked really rotten, like it could sink any moment. There were people inside. Unfortunately my camera just went out of battery here, so this is the only picture I got - and I'm quite disappointed I didn't get a picture of the whole boat, including the light.

We went sightseeing in the channels. Finally I managed to get a bit of charge into my telephone from a USB battery I had in my rucksack ... the last photo I could take before it got too dark.

We got almost where I wanted to go, but then we had to stop due to a causeway. I didn't see that one on the map when planning ... but zooming in, yes, then I could see that the channel was "broken" into two parts by a causeway. We moored up and went for a walk to Christiania and a bit around inside there. We tried getting something to eat - but it was already 22:00 in the evening, so no hope there. Eventually we went to Nyhavn for that. One beer and a pizza.

We had forgotten our life wests, and we had quite some speed back to the boat. Actually, that's statistically the most deadly situation on sea - men in the age of 40 going without life wests in full speed in the darkness after taking some beers. Well, we survived.

Next day my crew mate decided to remain in Copenhagen, but he gave me a lift to the nearest bus stop. Since I have a friend that is occasionally using the nick name Xanadu, I had to take a photo of this boat that we passed on the way ...

Finally, the train station, and buildings being destructed behind it. Quite much construction work in the area - sometimes things have to become worse before they can get better.

All photos available in better resolution on IPFS QmTJaJ4mup2ZXWgQeUgAR63zyhGWEHEkuSeFQG4Cd2xevq. License: CC BY-SA 4.0