I’m on a boat! At the moment I’m in Klintholm Havn, a small Danish fishing village on the southern island Møn. In the last week I’ve travelled from Dublin to here via Copenhagen, Aalborg and Aarhus. In the past two days we’ve sailed more than 100 miles. We’re waiting for the boat to be lifted so we can clean the bottom and continue on our way to Spain.
I flew into Copenhagen last Wednesday evening. I got to the hostel around 11pm – late flights and public transport – and ended up meeting two Canadians and two Americans. We had a few quiet drinks that evening and then spent the following day cycling around the city on rented bikes. It was an awesome way to see the city and was one of the most affordable things about my time there. 100 krone (15 euro-ish) for a bike for 24 hours was well worth it. We saw many of the sites and generally enjoyed the city.
In the early evening I split off and went to train in Choke BJJ Copenhagen. Apparently the place quietens right down during the summer so there was only the coach and two others there. Luckily, the quality was shit hot. SP, the coach rolled – and went through – everyone; and the other two guys were both technically excellent and I had good, hard rolls with them.
After getting choked out a few times, I headed back to the hostel and met up with the group from earlier as well as a Welsh guy and a Finnish guy. We hit the town for the night and started off drinking wine outside a jazz bar. Once that closed we moved on to a more standard pub for a few hours. The two Americans were catching an early flight so were going straight from the bar to the airport.
The following morning I packed up, checked out and slowly made my way to the airport for my afternoon flight to Aalborg. It wasn’t a rush but I didn’t have time to dawdle around the city. I made the mistake of heading straight to Terminal One where my flight was from – the domestic flights left what was little more than a shed with a café – and so didn’t get the opportunity to do much in the airport. The flight was short, by the time we took off the pilot had to start the landing procedures. My godfather, Peter, and his brother, Billy, met me in the airport and we drove to the boat.
There’d been a slight change of plan; rather than heading from Aalborg to a shipyard in Strandby in the north where I’d meet them, the boat had been delayed in Aalborg and was planning to head south to Klintholm where there was a lift that could take the boat out so we could clean the hull. Once I arrived, the boat was ready to set off. We spent the night in Aarhus – I went for a wander in the city and then to bed early – and left the following morning.
We were up early the Saturday morning to fill the fuel tanks and start are trip. It was 110 miles to Klintholm and we’d two days to do it. Our aim was to get 70 miles done the first day. Unfortunately for us, the winds were all coming from the south so there was a lot more motoring than sailing. Even still, we managed to get the guts of 70 miles done and anchored off a small island. We’d been up since 7 and only put the anchor down at 10 so everyone was in bed fairly early.
Sunday was another early start. After some slight drama involving seaweed in the engine water intake we were once again motoring into the wind. Sunday was far more dramatic – we passed a pair of humback whales, a mother and her calf, just as we were approaching Møn. The weather was spectacular – it reached around 25º – so I spend a good bit of the afternoon sunbathing on the aft deck. We’d made significant distance the previous day so we got into Klintholm at around 5. After tying up and tidying the boat, I went off and had a poke around the town.
Klintholm is a nice quiet spot. It’s mainly a fishing village but there’s also quiet a few tourists through. Most of the town is aimed at the tourists with a couple of restaurants and a general shop. I ended up eating in a lovely Italian restaurant. The owner had come to Klintholm on holiday twelve years ago and ended up staying there! After that it was back to the boat and to bed.
Today we are waiting for the crane operators to arrive so we can lift the boat to clean and paint the hull. If all goes well – and it should – we’ll be out of here by Thursday or Friday. The winds are meant to be easterly for the week so we’ll have another long days sailing the 70 miles to Kiel in Germany. Then it’s through the Kiel Canal for two days and into the North Sea.
