Part 6

At last the boat was ready to sail again. Never one to disdain the advice of local seamen, I decided to avoid sailing the last forty miles along the coast to Tyboron. Peder arranged the necessary road transport to Struer on the Lim Fjord, so that I could sail the remainder of my journey in comparatively sheltered waters. We went overland to Struer on the Saturday following my landing, and I found myself alone once again.

On Sunday morning I got under way but had hardly gone more than a mile out across the fjord when thick fog came down, and I had to return to Struer before I lost sight of the leading marks.

Monday morning, though grey and hazy, so that I could barely make out the shadow of the coast a mile away, commenced with a light Southerly wind. I decided to make for Nykjobing at least. Before an hour had passed the fair wind turned S.E. then E. again and I had to motor the whole way.

On nearing Nykjobing I proudly hoisted my Red Ensign and my Ocean Cruising Club burgee for the first time on the trip. I felt the little boat had earned this privilege! A number of large car ferries, plying their back and forth courses from the Island of Mors to Salling sounded their sirens in friendly greeting, and their officers waved to me from their high bridges.

On reaching Nykjobing harbour entrance I decided to seek shelter there for the night. The wind had died and the motor was behaving like an invalid; also, it is hardly advisable to negotiate at night the complicated, unlighted channels through the narrower part of the fjord beyond Logstor for one's first passage through. On landing at 1645 I immediately sought out a supply of fuel for the motor for the next day.

The following day came, cheerless as before, very thick grey haze, almost no wind, and my poor ailing motor hardly able to give me three knots against the West-going stream. I barely saw the islands of Fur and Livo as I passed close by and it was approaching an early dusk when I passed the town of Logster. It was clear that the faster stream in this part of the fjord would prevent me reaching the harbour at Nibe. Navigation would be impossible here after dark, so I headed across the fjord to a place the chart described as a landing near the village of Haverslev.

I could not find this landing so I had to anchor off and try to steep on board. The cushions were heavy with sea-water. T had no blankets. The Primus was out of commission. The fog descended so that visibility became less than fifty feet. Almost freezing water dripped down from the rigging. I smoked cigarettes because I had not yet found a Danish pipe tobacco which suited my taste. I shivered energetically all night. But I did not sleep. By the first faint glimmer of the following dawn I was under way again, relieved and happy to be on the move.

The course between marks - average distance perhaps three-quarters of a mile - had to be set each time by compass because of the fog. I reached Aalborg with great joy late that afternoon. I learned there, from several new-found friends, on the following day what the consequences of a mistake in navigation might have meant. A local fisherman had found two men that very day, stranded in a small motor cruiser in shallow water two miles from the shore, along the route I had just completed. They had been there without heat, food or bedding for three days and nights, and were in a very poor shape indeed because of the continuous penetrating cold.

And I had been bleating loudly to myself all the while about my own misfortunes!