Through the Limfjord
Thyborøn didn’t look enticing. There was nowhere sheltered to anchor and I didn’t at that point feel confident enough to manouevre Teal under sail in the confined waters of the little port. Our charts of the Limfjord showed a nice sheltered anchorage at Lemvig, around 10 miles further on, and as it was still early in the day we decided to continue.
Catherine had arrived in Denmark two days previously, and was amusing herself looking at Viking remains until we should arrive. She was also doing plenty of worrying, for the crossing had taken us a couple of days longer than we had expected – more due to the calms than the gales – and she was well aware of how small a boat we were in. I let her know our plans, got a very relieved text message back, and we agreed she should join us in Lemvig the following day.
In fact I had texted several people from my mobile phone the previous night when we had got within range of the Danish shore, to let them know we were still alive. Peter told me later that he had been on the verge of calling the coastguard and telling them we were overdue. My mother on the other hand had apparently not made any connection between the news articles talking of ferries hove to in storm force winds in the English Channel and the fact that I was out there in the middle of it, and had been blithely unconcerned the whole time.
The Limfjord is fairly narrow at Thyborøn, but soon widens out into a broad expanse. It is however very shallow, and a narrow lane of buoys curved away before us to mark the dredged route across the sands. It seemed to take forever to pass through them and to turn south down the inlet to Lemvig.
We were both utterly exhausted. We had only been able to grasp odds and ends of sleep the last few nights and as we sailed slowly the last few miles to the anchorage, I felt grey and lifeless. It was such a relief to unlash the anchor from its stowage behind the mast and to drop the chain hand over hand and feel it bite in the sandy bottom.
It was still only early afternoon, so we put the canoe together and went ashore briefly to explore and get a few fresh provisions. Then we came back, and sank into oblivion.
Catherine bounced along to join us the following afternoon, with a big rucksack and a selection of enormous straw hats to cram into our little living quarters, but we remained at anchor all the rest of that day. After our rough crossing there were a few repairs to make.
Our bilge pump had gradually got stiffer and stiffer to use on the crossing. We had kept using it nonetheless, but on the way in across the bar (just when we needed it most) something had given inside and it stopped working at all. I improvised a new handle to get it working again: a sturdy piece of oak that I was rather pleased with as it looked a lot prettier than the chrome and plastic affair that had powered it before. The stiffness remained a mystery - until I looked in the bilges and discovered that the intake was completely choked with wood shavings. It made me chuckle, for it seems to be a curse that afflicts all sailors who set off for the Baltic. E.F. Knight had employed a carpenter to work on 'Falcon' before he crossed the North Sea, and shortly after setting off found his own bilge pump not working. On lifting the sole boards he found his ship was suffering from the same lurgy, and he had some choice words to say about his carpenter ('knave' for starters). Exactly the same happened to Arthur Ransome on 'Racundra', on her maiden voyage around Latvia and Estonia. Even that master mariner Griff Rhys Jones had a complaint to make when he set off for Germany after a refit and found (in a blow) that his bilge pump was strangely no longer working... 'Sawdust!' he complained. ' The box was clogged with sawdust....' All these men could curse the shipwrights and carpenters they had entrusted their noble craft with. I, of course, had only myself to blame.
Having dealt with the bilde pump, I thought it would be a good idea to shorten the mast a few inches. When Julian had scarphed the new section onto the base of the mast we had decided to add a couple extra inches to give a bit more space under the boom for the sawn-off canoe. Anyway, it was such a lovely bit of timber and it seemed a shame to cut it off short. But the extra length wasn’t really necessary, and I thought it better to stiffen Teal just a touch by reducing weight aloft. Also, the mast step had nothing to prevent the mast rotating, and it had spun around quite alarmingly at times during the crossing. I thought we could do something about that at the same time.
To accomplish this we had to lift the heel of the mast from its socket on the deck, first loosening the rigging sufficiently to allow it to come up a few inches. The mast is pretty heavy, so we winched it up using one of the cabin floorboards standing vertically as a crane. With the heel of the mast dangling precariously just clear of the mast step I took the handsaw and chopped off a few inches, then cut the next two inches down to a square shape. I made a matching square socket to fit in the mast step, screwed in from underneath to prevent it rotating, and down we went again. I’m not sure if the shortening of the mast really made a great deal of difference, but it was certainly better not to have it twisting so much.
In the morning we beat slowly out of the anchorage under staysail and mizzen.
The wind was blowing hard again out in the open waters of the broad Nissum Bredning. All around the horizon wind turbines were spiralling merrily, but we had to disappoint Catherine the archaelogist, for there wasn't a single Viking to be seen. The waters here were once stiff with longboats marshalling to nip over and collect a spot of Danegeld from the poor Anglo-Saxon softies across the water, and to inject a bit of hybrid vigour into their gene pool while they were about it. There is every likelihood that running in all our veins were traces of blood from berserk, bearded Norsemen intent on rape and pillage. Perhaps that is what was drawing us over there. It all seems so tame now, with the cosy little farms and villages - what happened to the Danes to turn them from such blood-thirsty warriors into the calm, peace-loving nation they are now?
We nervously passed through the bridge that spans Odde Sund, which opened specially for us. The wind thankfully just allowed us through the very narrow gap between the pillars without tacking. Beyond were several more wide 'Brednings' and narrow 'Sunds'. It was a lovely change from the North Sea to be surrounded by pretty fields, to feel the shelter of the land, and to have the enjoyment of constantly changing scenery. Having said that, the ride was anything but gentle, for in the broad Brednings the wind whipped the shallow sea into short, steep waves that tossed us about like a cork.
Halfway up Salling Sund a little branch led off to what looked like a pleasant sheltered anchorage, and I decided it would make a good stopping place for the night. The wind had been gradually increasing all day, and wasn’t far off gale force now. The route took us down an inlet which narrowed for a while, and then widened out into an expanse about a mile broad. The wind was from dead astern as we ran down the inlet, but it looked like there should be good shelter behind one of the headlands that formed the narrows.
‘Keep to the middle until we’re past the headland’ I said to Catherine, who was steering. ‘It’s pretty shallow near the edges.’ But I hadn’t emphasised enough just how narrow the navigable section was, and we strayed too close to the eastern shore. There came a sickening lurch, and we stopped dead.
Being pushed on by the best part of a gale made it hard to get off again, and getting the oars out and using them to pole off the hard sandy bottom achieved very little. There was nothing for it but to get the canoe together again and lay out the anchor to kedge off.
Teal had come with only one anchor, an iron curmudgeon in the traditional 'fisherman's' pattern. We kept that stowed below decks most of the time, and for most purposes used the more practical 'CQR' anchor that I had bought in a boat jumble. But although we got it well away from the boat with plenty of chain out, when we heaved away it just dragged across the hard bottom. We dug the fisherman's out, and tried again with that, fighting hard to paddle the canoe just a tiny bit to windward and well out into the channel. But to no avail- the fisherman's also dragged when we took the strain. Only by attaching both anchors to the end of the chain and heaving on them both with all our strength did we finally manage to pull ourselves off. Relieved, we nipped round the headland we had been aiming for and anchored in the shelter beyond.
We didn’t have time to get the canoe back up on deck, and although it was only a few hundred yards, she managed to turn turtle and swamp herself just as we came up to anchor.
The next day remained extremely windy and we decided to stay at anchor. We were running low on food, so we left Teal at anchor and paddled ashore. It was good to get away from the boat for a few hours, and meander along quiet country lanes to the village a few miles away. To Catherine's delight we found an old Viking burial mound amidst the rolling fields, with a long view over the whitecaps sparkling in the sun in the winding channels below.
Clear skies and a pleasant breeze wakened us the next day, and we had a fine sail out of our little anchorage (taking very short tacks in the section we now knew was so narrow), and continued east through more broads and sounds until we reached Logstør. Here the Limfjord becomes narrower and shallower, and we could feel a stream begin to make itself felt as the tides of the North Sea tried to push through the constricted channel to the waters of the Kattegat beyond.
We intended to stop in Logstør, but the tide swept us right past, for the winds were now light and when we turned and tried to beat into the tide we could make no headway. If the wind and tide were determined to push us east it seemed foolish to fight them, so we gave up on visiting the pretty little town and continued another couple of miles until dusk fell. We anchored in the middle of nowhere, just outside the navigation channel with nothing but a distant turbine, a beautiful sunset, and the seabirds for company. Bliss. Who wants civilisation anyway?
We reached Aalborg the next day, and perfidiously decided that civilisation had some advantages, at least for victualling purposes. It was still early when we sailed nervously into the little marina on the outskirts of town. We had to sail, for although we had oars we only had one rowlock, having lost one earlier.
Parking a boat under sail is not like parking a boat under engine, and certainly nothing like parking a car. For starters - and quite importantly - there is no brake. There isn't a reverse gear. There isn't even much of a throttle: sails can be up or down, or in or out, which gives some loose control over speed, but they have to be constantly trimmed against gusty winds blowing from every quarter in turn. There are no big rubber tyres giving a solid grip on the road either - it's more like trying to park on black ice. Finally, you don't have to tie your Astra to the nearest parking meter to stop it drifting away when you do finally make it alongside.
Just to make it extra exciting on Teal, we had our super-long docking probe of a bowsprit sticking a mile out the front, itching to ravish any Gin Palace foolish enough to present a broadside to her. If we should get things wrong and start to swing the other way, so to speak, our mizzen bumpkin stuck another 3 feet out the back and was equally willing for some rearguard action.
Luckily it wasn't too tight an entrance, and I was able to bring her head to wind alongside the pontoon without too much fuss, sails alternately fluttering and bent to the wind as I tried to judge the right amount of momentum to bring her alongside the pontoon without ramming the expensive yacht tied up just ahead.
I was slowly getting used to handling Teal now, and becoming a bit less nervous at sailing around tight corners without an engine. Later on I would have been pretty blasé about sailing into that marina, but at the time it certainly made me sweat.
Catherine and I walked into town and found rowlocks and a chart at a chandlery - the chart we were using stopped at Aalborg and the next one we didn't start until we met the Kattegat at Hals, another 15 miles away. I bought a tube of Sikaflex too, a sticky goo for sealing up deck leaks. Then we stocked up on food and made our way back to our ship.
Julian, who had stayed with the boat, greeted us. 'Err.. this man was wondering if his friend could come and film us?'. It seemed a strange thing to want to do, but if it made him happy I didn't see why not. I haven't a clue how he had discovered us, but he was from the local TV station and they were low on stories for their evening bulletin. Whether or not they ever used the shots of us coiling ropes and taking the canoe apart to stow away properly for the open sea crossing coming up I'll never know.
By late afternoon we were underway again, although we had long halts at both the bridges that cross the water near the city centre before they opened for us. The character of the Limfjord changed markedly beyond Aalborg. No sleepy villages and quiet anchorages any longer, but a broad purposeful river lined with power stations and industrial sites, and the ebb and flow of commercial traffic steaming up and down to service them. With a favourable wind it didn’t take long to sail the remaining miles, and in the early evening we popped out the narrow entrance and began making our way through the dredged channel across the sandbank that lay offshore.