Skagerrak and Back

By Martin Edge

“Skagerrak and Back” is the story of my North Sea circuit aboard my 27ft yacht.

In 2007 I bit the bullet and decided to head for foreign climes. We crossed the North Sea from the Firth of Forth to Norway. We skirted the coast southwards to Sweden, through the Skagerrak past Denmark and into Germany. We travelled through the German and Dutch canals and back home through the uninviting waters of the English east coast. Most, but by no means all of the journey was sailed solo.

When I returned I wrote what started out as a ‘log’ of the trip. This is not, as you can probably spot, a tale of astonishing derring-do and bravery in the face of insurmountable odds. Neither does it purport to be a pilot book or sailing directions. It’s just the story of an achieveable summer cruise aboard a seaworthy wee boat.

Hopefully there’s enough detail of the places I visited to whet the appetite and give you some idea just how good a cruising ground this part of the coast of Scandinavia is, or make you want to head for the surreal sailing waters of Holland’s canals.

As I say the story started out as a ‘log’ of the trip. But I really couldn’t be bothered keeping the kind of detailed sailing log that tells you exactly when I made a slight course change and how many Wheatabix I had in my long-life milk that morning.

Sailing alone does sort of heighten your awareness of your environment. In my case it sharpens what the charitable might call my ‘critical faculties’. So as well as the story of a cruise the log turned into a series of observations about the nature, culture, people, economy and boats of the places I passed through.

This is the first in a series of cruising 'logs' about Zophiel’s voyages. “Floating Low to Lofoten” is about my trip to the Norwegian Arctic, “A Gigantic Whinge on the Celtic Fringe” is the story of our circumnavigation of Ireland and "Bobbing to the Baltic" describes a trip from Edinburgh to the Russian border.

Recently some of the people who have been slandered in these tales have suggested that they should be used for kindling. I’ve taken these kind words to heart and published them first for Kindle and now for other e-readers.

Soon I'll be publishing two volumes about some land-based travels, entitled "Travels with my Rant" and "The Front of Beyond". These are gripping tales about nipping over dodgy borders in places like Nicaragua and Burma and being kidnapped, after a fashion, in East Timor.

This volume contains a lot of colour photographs. If you’re struggling with grainy black and white on an e-reader, there’s more sailing tales and the full set of colour photos from this volume on my website at edge dot me dot uk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Edge
• Release date: Dec 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465828606

Martin Edge

"Travels with my Rant" Most of my writing is about my travels. Mostly very slow travels. For some years now I've been plodding round the seas of northern Europe aboard a small sailing boat. To date I've published three accounts of these trips. For years I poked around in some of the more obscure parts of some developing countries, hitch-hiking and travelling by boat, train and bus. Some of the buses were slower than my boat. The record was 12 hours to go 11 miles in the Shan State in northern Burma. I'll soon be publishing two volumes entitled "Travels with my Rant" and "The Front of Beyond". These will include tales about hopping across dodgy borders in places like East Timor and Nicaragua. Whilst travel may broaden some minds and narrow others, travelling slowly and alone changes your perspective on the world around you. I like to think it hones the senses and heightens the critical faculties. Others have agreed that yes, it does make me rant on and on about everything. My travel writings are not gripping tales of derring-do and one man's survival in a savage wilderness against all the odds. I am, in fact, something of a wimp. Neither do they consciously seek to maintain the mythology and exoticism of travel to far flung parts. The fact is that more or less everywhere on earth people wear jeans and ride scooters. The documentary makers must have a hell of a job editing the world so that it's full of tribal head-dresses and loin cloths. Culture shock isn't all it's cracked up to be and nowhere on the planet is as alien as it appears to be from a distance. Except Manchester of course. I've tried to give a flavour of the places I've visited and to discuss those aspects of their landscape, environment, people, culture, economy and politics which make them interesting. In 2014 I published a sort of pilot book entitled "105 Rocks and Other Stuff to Tie your Boat to in Eastern Sweden and Finland". It's full of photos, maps, descriptions and waypoints for, as the name suggests, 105 Scandinavian rocks and other harbours. It's available FREE of charge at my website (www.edge.me.uk) as a web file and as a pdf. There's yet more stuff on my web page at http://www.edge.me.uk/index.htm. This includes a pile of more academic papers written while I was Head of Research of the Architecture School in Aberdeen.

Book preview

Skagerrak and Back

Martin Edge

Copyright Martin Edge 2011

Published at Smashwords

First Edition

Published in Great Britain

Martin Edge asserts the right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd. This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

http://www.edge.me.uk

Skagerrak and Back

Zophiel’s Two Summer Cruises in 2007

Martin Edge

These scribblings are dedicated to my other half, Anna Pizzamiglio, without whose help this trip would have been halfway between unpleasant and impossible.

Table of Contents

Preface

Cruise 1

Cruise 2

Part 1: Heading Norgewards

Part 2: Gorgeous Norge

Part 3: Solo Through Sweden

Part 4: Doing Denmark

Part 5: Amongst the Germen

Part 6: Going Dutch

Part 7 Beautiful Belgium (Probably)

Part 8: Vive La France

Part 9: Drear Old Blighted

Part 10: Home Sweet Home

Postscript

Post Postscript Rant: The Great e-book Tax Scam

Preface

This is the holiday journal of a floating, ranting wimp. It is the tale of that wimp’s progress round the seas of northern Europe.

In 2003 I bought a small and slightly scruffy yacht called ‘Zophiel’. Though rather small for long distance cruising, the cutter rigged Vancouver is a seaworthy heavyweight. The first one was designed for a couple of nutters who were emigrating from Canada to New Zealand and wanted to do it in a 27ft sailing boat. Other Vancouvers have crossed oceans and sailed round the world.

My ambitions are rather more modest. Actually that’s not true. I’d love to join the ranks of the fearless ocean navigators and sail round the world. But, as I’ve already mentioned, I’m a bit of a wimp.

So over the past few years I’ve spent summers cruising around parts of northern Europe from Zophiel’s base under the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh. Most of these journeys have been sailed solo but sometimes I’ve had a crew, particularly for the longer sea crossings. Again, I’m no Bernard Moitessier.

Skagerrak and back is the tale of the first of these trips, in the summer of 2007. I wrote the account intending it to be a sort of extended log of the journey. My tendency to rant about everything I see around me has been, as usual, my downfall. 

So to distinguish between simple descriptions of the trip and observations about the landscape, wildlife, customs, economy, politics and boats of the places I visited, I have rendered the latter in italics and headed them ‘Pondering’. I hope you won’t find this somewhat unusual schema too annoying.

By 2007 I’d spent four seasons exploring the coast of Scotland, north-east England and Northern Ireland aboard Zophiel. This had culminated in 2006 in a circumnavigation – more or less – of mainland Scotland. In 2007 I decided that the time had come to expand our horizons.

The plan was to try for a North Sea Circuit. I would head to Norway then round the coast to Sweden, through the Skagerrak and Kattegat to the Kiel Canal, then through the Dutch inland waterways and back up the east coast of England.

Normally, the short North Sea crossing, heading north-west on the return leg, would avoid heading into the teeth of the prevailing south-westerlies in September. But in the summer of 2007 concepts like ‘prevailing’, ‘normal’ and indeed ‘summer’ had little meaning.

There is a follow-up account to Skagerrak and Back, called Floating Low to Lofoten. This describes Zophiel’s 2008 cruise north along the coast of Norway to above the Arctic Circle. It’s even longer and more opinionated than this book, I’m afraid. A third volume, A Gigantic Whinge on the Celtic Fringe, is an account of Zoph’s 2011 circumnavigation of Ireland.

Martin Edge

December 2011

Cruise 1

We set off from Port Edgar, under the Forth Bridge, heading for Peterhead – en route to Norway - bright and early on June 16th at 6 am to get the full effect of the spring ebb out of the Forth.  The crew for the first leg to Peterhead was two victims volunteers from Port Edgar Yacht Club - Ian Cameron and Jon Roberts - and me. We’d had a series of north-easterly gales of late, but the previous day’s strong north-easterlies were predicted to die away, leaving gentle enough conditions for the trip. Just before we left there was certainly very little breeze in the marina.

The first major problem circumnavigating the North Sea was getting out under the Forth Rail Bridge. The wind was back up to 30 knots from the east and wind-over-tide created a steep sea that had us practically stopped. Half the crew – Jon Roberts – began to look a bit green round the gills.

We battered away in the hope that conditions would improve outside the main flow of the tide, but the wind and the steep sea kept increasing. This was quite surreal. I was expecting to have to face dodgy conditions at some time, but this was my home mill-pond. Between us we’d sailed under the bridges thousands of times. This was supposed to be the easy bit.

After about an hour and a half of motoring as hard as we could we’d covered just under four miles. We decided to stop amongst the moorings off the small Fife town of Aberdour for breakfast to see if the predicted lessening in the wind would happen. We picked up a vacant buoy. It was so rough on the mooring that Jon was too busy chucking up over the side to eat his vegetarian bacon buttie, which was probably a blessing. The other half of the crew, Ian Cameron, then announced that the heads was broken and indeed there seemed to be some blockage preventing it flushing.

Clearly the gods did not intend us to get to the Skagerrak. We gave up and sailed back under deep reefed main and staysail, surfing at 7 knots, which is fast for Zophiel, honest, arriving back on the pontoon at 9.30, about 3 months, a week and eight hours early.

Back at Port Edgar there was a mutiny as both the crew refused to countenance another 6 am departure the following day – especially without a functional bog. Captain Bligh at least got as far as the Pacific before the crew mutinied. I got four miles. I spent the rest of the day with a mounting sense of futility and a plunger trying to clear an almighty blockage in the bog by all means at my disposal. Ah the romance of the cruising life.

A week or so later I heard that Ian had sent an account of our fantastic summer cruise to Port Edgar Yacht Club’s cruising email list, explaining in humiliating detail how we got to Aberdour and had to go home. Thanks Ian.

Cruise 2

Part 1 – Heading Norgewards

Undeterred, the following day, again at 6 am, I left Port Edgar with my other half Anna as crew at high tide and got the benefit of the spring ebb and a working toilet as we motored out on a flat calm Forth with about 2 knots of westerly wind. A dolphin helped celebrate our exit from the Forth with the last of the ebb at 11.15 am. The only thing that marred our day of sunbathing was the inevitable haar that descended after 6 pm, bringing with it a force 4 on the nose. However we entered Stonehaven harbour in the early evening and rafted up against a 45 ft aluminium Dutch yacht for the night.

That evening we encountered Zophiel’s big sister, the Vancouver 34 ‘New Chance’, dried out against a wall in the inner harbour. I had run into her (not literally) three times the previous year in different places on the west coast. I reintroduced myself to the skipper, Alan Cawthorne. It was after ten p.m, but despite the fact that I’d woken him up and he was in his jim-jams he was nonetheless friendly and civil. He is now, according to best estimates, 86 and virtually blind. His wife Rhoda is 83 and does the navigation, since he can’t see the charts. Every year they go on an extended cruise. This year it was to be all the way round mainland Britain and out to St Kilda. She was disappointed that the last time they went they hadn’t gone ashore, so they were having another go. Given that most people their age would consider a short game of bowls a challenge and getting up the stairs a feat, this seems to me pretty amazing. This spirit of quiet adventure, carried out without fanfare, is one of the best things about sailing.

The following morning we motored out of Stonehaven in poor visibility and headed for Peterhead. We couldn’t be bothered leaving early