05.21.09
Day 4, 19-05-2009 (written on 20-05-2009)
All the below times are in UTC+1
All miles are seamiles
A knot is about 1853 Meters/Hour
Today we woke up early, around 7:15 AM. We had a long journey ahead of us. We had to sail 45 miles from Berjning to Assens, thus far the farthest we have done. We sailed out at around 9:30 AM, after breakfast. We were determined to reach Assens. The first part of the journey we didn’t have favorable winds so we had to use the motor to get around. Right about the time we reached Middelfart (A town we visited earlier) at which point we could raise the sails and get some action going.
About half way there we saw something VERY cool! We saw some dolphins! Actual dolphins! For the first 5 minutes I was stunned to what I actually saw, then ran for my camera and got some very cool shots! Sadly, I did not manage to get a shot of when they surfaced, but the pictures of them are very bright and you can see them in the water. They swam along with us for about half an hour at which point they disappeared, probably to return ‘home’. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a link to the pictures.
When we reached Assens we first had to buy a ticket to stay in the dock, so my uncle and dad sent me back to the boat to attach this sticker to the boat to let the dock master know that we paid. While they sent me back, they took off to buy an ice cream and when I returned my dad told me this guy behind the counter spoke English and that I would be able to get the ice cream myself without using German or Danish. Well.. lets just say he could use a crash course English before going to the UK. My dad was constantly laughing of course seeing as he tricked me to believe this guy spoke proper English. It was quite an adventure picking the flavors for my ice cream, heh.
After all this, we had to do some shopping. We had been on the water with considerably good weather (which we never expected) and we hadn’t been using sun cream. My dad had already turned towards the color of a lobster and my uncle wasn’t far behind. Me being lazy with my book was only half that color and only really burnt my nose and forehead somewhat. So off to find us some sun cream and food for the next morning. To our surprise though, according to the first shop we found, we were ‘too early’. They didn’t have any sun cream in stock because the right season hadn’t started yet. We were quite amazed. Luckily the second store that was not even 50 feet away did have sun cream. When my dad and uncle wanted to smear it over their face though, they turned out to be as white as the face of a clown, it was quite hilarious. I think I got one picture where you can still vaguely see that they had a too thick layer of sun cream smeared on.
In the evening we found this Mexican restaurant where we had a nice decent meal. Some stuff was quite spicy, especially the pepper steak that my dad ate but the "Pollo el Diablo" (Spicy Chicken) could’ve been spicier. I guess my appetizer was kind of hot and took some of the spice away. It was a good meal nonetheless.
And again, no hotspots to be found anywhere.. and if I can find them, they are paid or faaaar away from the boat. So I am still writing ahead in my Notepad++ to keep it as much plain text as I can. Too much of a pain to copy all the formatting from word over to my blog.
Regards,
Olrik
Billy said,
May 21, 2009 at 10:34 pm
That’s insane that you saw those dolphins. I was under the impression that they’d be scared of the boat and scatter when you got near. But those pics of them right next to the boat sure are good
Billy3
Olrik said,
May 23, 2009 at 4:05 pm
@Billy
We didn’t use the motor and were only using sails when we saw the dolphins. I am sure that they would’ve fled if we started the motor. It was great though, because they came to us and kept circling around the boat. I will never forget that moment
Regards,
Olrik