In 2017 Rex and I set forth to sail up into the Baltic to explore Denmark, picking the boat up in North Holland, and leaving it in North Holland for a while on our return. We had a five week window, so we knew we would have to limit our exploration to East Jutland and perhaps take in part of the island of Fyn.
We picked up Duonita in Enkhuizen, and set off to our first stop-over, Harlingen. Sailing up the Ijsselmeer towards the Waddenzee via the Kornwerderzand Sluis, disaster struck. Perhaps a wrong twist of the body at the wrong time, Rex did his back in. He had no idea how it happened, but he was suddenly brought to his knees by intense stabbing pains. We instantly knew it was severe enough for us to agree on reaching Harlingen and to moor up there and drop all plans to go further for the time being.
Rex sought medical help and had two weeks recuperation in Harlingen. We knew Denmark was out of the question. We slowly worked our way back to the UK from there, and it took many months for Rex to restore his back to something near normal.
I cancelled all activities during 2018 because of family commitments, but Rex was keen to have a crack at Denmark again in 2019. A plan was hatched, involving a detour to take a friend, Richard across to Amsterdam on the way (he was eager to experience sailing across the North Sea).
However, the Gods conspired against us again. Rex only had a five week pass, a tough call when the lengthy detour was taken into account. Then foul weather forced us to shelter in ports for days at a time. In addition a friend had recently lost her life in a car crash, so we needed to be able to easily access public transport to attend her funeral.
Whilst skirting the Frisian Islands it became apparent that if we did manage to get into the Baltic, we would more or less have to turn around straight away to confidently return back to the UK within our time window. I could see Rex was getting extremely frustrated with this dilemma. So what did we do?
Read on and find out how the adventure unrolled.
The actual route taken can be examined on the route link. How the story unfolded can be revealed by following the diary link.
Read and enjoy!
