Catherine's impressions.
The Baltic is the Mediterranean! A huge bowl of the bluest of cloudless bright blue skies sharply etched with vivid green trees and pretty houses washed white, pale yellow, red and ochre, each topped with a neat red-tiled roof, clustering around ports in the small towns and villages of Danish South Zealand.
Having duly arrived in the British Kiel Yacht Club and been deserted by my crew (why do they always have 'commitments'?), my next task was to get myself and the boat to Copenhagen to meet Catherine. But first I had to address a persistent transmission rumble which had been giving me some concern since the stern tube replacement (got to have something to worry about on long passages). I spent a morning re-aligning 100kg of engine to within +/- 5 thou relative to the propshaft. Eventual success and did a short sea trial up to the 1972 Olympic Village at Schilksee to purchase courtesy flags for Denmark & Sweden.
My son Oliver came to visit from Ystad, Sweden last Christmas with his 1 year old daughter, and, owing to the large number of presents to take back with him, left his boots behind. It would be far too expensive to post them, so why not sail there with them (money spent on sailing doesn't count) and spend summer in the Baltic and maybe leave the boat over there for a couple of seasons; anything to get away from the succession of Atlantic lows experienced last year.
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