We woke to an overcast day. Our plan had been to spend two nights here, this evening watching the Champions League Final match featuring Liverpool against Tottenham Hotspur in Madrid. At the same time we could refuel Duonita. I walked up to the harbour master's office to pay our dues. "How far is it to town?" I enquired. "Oh, 8 kms," replied the young fellow. "Is there any transport?" "Yes, there is a bus from over there," he said pointing to a bus stop 40m from his office. "There is a bus every hour." "And where can we get diesel?" I asked. "Ah, not until after the weekend. We have run out. But you can buy diesel at a garage in town." It gets better by the minute I thought, trying to imagine the bus driver's reaction as we man-handled cans of diesel onto his bus. "Is there anywhere on the way to Brunsbüttel where we could pick up fuel?" was the most obvious question. "Yes, Norderney. It is self-service and you pay by card," he replied. I thanked the man and went back to break the news to Rex.
He had not yet crawled out of his pit, but we discussed the matter in depth. Our next leg would last 28 hours, and we certainly did not have that amount of fuel on board. OK, we had the sails, but it is wise to cover yourself in case there is no wind or the sails fail. So after a great deal of pondering over passage details, tides etc., we decided to move on to Norderney. That would also break up the 28 hour passage to Brunsbüttel.
We slipped our lines and headed almost due north for a couple of hours to avoid the huge sand bar which stretched out from Borkum. As we passed the town, we spied golden beaches bedecked with numerous beach huts, with people accumulating for a sunny day on the beach. The town, from afar, had about the same appeal as Blankenburg.
Once two hours out, we tentatively crossed the outer reaches of the vast sand bar, and took up a course parallel to the islands. It seemed to take ages to pass Borkum. Then, under blue skies and a kinder sea, we edged along Juist, which resembled a very long, low sand dune topped by trees.
As we veered off down the Schluchter to the narrow channel into Norderney, the waters became quite shallow. We had to closely hug a string of red cans with less than 2m of water below us. It was then a case of sticking to the buoyage channel all the way around to the marina.
The marina appeared to be quite full, and I shouted across to some youths, "Where can we berth?" "Look for the green boards on the pontoon," replied one of them. This is a common procedure, a local berth holder will turn his red board over to green on the other side to indicate he is not returning that evening, thus freeing up his berth for another short term user.
A chap shouted across pointing to a slot. We headed for it but soon found it was too tight a squeeze, and Duonita or the adjacent boat could get damaged.
I hiked off to find the harbour master. He was a jovial chap, very much on the ball, and clearly knew our boat's name and location. "You can take any berth on those pontoons over there," he advised, pointing out their locations. So I returned to the boat, we carefully popped our way out of our existing predicament, and headed off to where he had indicated. In no time at all we were moored in a spacious box. This was spacious, modern marina, and fairly cheap too.
