Our voyage from Sandwich in Kent, to the River Elbe from Monday to Friday the last week in April is the calmest North Sea passage I have ever made. The conditions actually ideally suited for a multi-hull, with light winds on the quarter.
From Sandwich we crossed over the Themes river estuary, dodging wind farm parks and sandbanks, then up the coast past Greater Yarmouth. By Wednesday evening we were for the first time outside of mobile phone signal range, and without the luxury of internet weather forecasts.
The last weather models we downloaded showed the wind increasing to 20+ knots on Saturday early morning, so the time to arrive should be before then to not have too hectic a time at the Elbe river.
As it happened the weather forecast was very reliable, and we had the wind changes as forecast. We can’t make any claim to setting any new speed records. Honestly though, to make a passage so calm — difficult to believe we weren’t moored alongside a pontoon — is enjoyable. Lets see how the trip back down from Sweden goes – later this year.
We were early enough at the Elbe to have a night stop at Helgoland; a small island off the coast of Germany. It was already quite busy, for the beginning of May, and we had to raft up with other boats five deep. A pleasant stop indeed though, and the next day we moved to Neuhaus some distance up the Elbe and then the Oste rivers.
For the Kiel canal transit we need to not have strong head-winds, as this reduces our motoring speed from 4.2 knots to 3.2 knots quite soon… so we wait at Neuhaus for a good weather forecast before motoring the 50 nautical miles to Kiel and finally the Baltic Sea!
