Logbog & Dagbøger

Dear Diary,

We finally left Lowestoft on Tuesday, July 29th and sailed to Den Helder in
The Netherlands where we arrived on the Wednesday morning having rowed and
tacked together for the first time on the trip. Tacking is when we move the
sail from port to starboard to turn the ship.

We rested up in Den Helder and left Friday morning, heading for Limfjord in
Denmark. It was a bit of a hairy crossing – the rain was extremely heavy
and the met office had predicted thunder storms so Carsten ordered our life
suits to be worn. I have to say it is not very nice to wear a life suit on
‘land’ – you feel choked at the neck and your hands swell and turn nice
shades of red and purple as the cuffs are so tight but in water they feel
fine. It rained so heavy that we even got wet in the life suits. It was
horrible but the bright note was sailing to Glyngøre in Limfjord to the
best reception yet. The people were amazing. They organised a place for our
tents, a drying room for all our wet clothes and blankets and best of all,
they prepared a barbeque with fresh vegetables and salads, meat and bread.

It was also here that we said goodbye to Cable One – our accompanying
vessel – and said hello to Jupiter, our new accompanying vessel. We have a
modern accompanying boat for safety and to store extra food. When the
Vikings sailed in their longships they probably would have had accompanying
vessels too – most likely knarrs, the big ocean going trading boats like
Ottar at the Vikings Ship Museum – a reconstruction of Skuldelev I and we
know from historical records that when the Vikings sailed in longships they
sailed in convoys of between 60 and a 100 ships – that would be an awesome
sight.

We left Glyngøre on Monday to a waving audience of I think the whole town.
I had anchor watch from 5am to 7am that morning and even then people were
coming down to see the ship and wish us well.

We arrived into Hals late at night to a reception of a drying room after
yet another extremely wet night on The Sea Stallion and hot soup. It has
definitely been the wettest sail so far – the rain just did not stop for
even one minute and everything got wet. We had to bail the boat a lot
again.

Well, I’m on watch now so I’ll head off.

Miss you,