Miss Liz II arrives.....

27th May, I fly in to Berlin from Geneva and meet Jon who had arrived the previous evening from Manchester. Jon well rested but after a 3.30 am start not the same for me. Never the less, we headed for Berlin Hauptbanhoff and waited for our train to Greifswald. An interesting three and a half hour journey followed before getting to our destination.  Dropping our bags off a the hotel we headed straight down to the Hanse boat yard to see if we could find Miss Liz II.No name, so after some guess work, we found her.

But, we had a few issues. The safety gear hadn't arrived from the UK, and as you can see from the photo, no mainsail!

28th May. Early start and off to the harbour with our new best buddy, Andy from Inspiration marine - our commissioning engineer. No good news on the safety gear. The weather was now blowing a gale (and more), and as the 29th is a German holiday, the possibility of getting away was looking slim. After woorying over lunch, things started to move. The Volvo engineer arrived for the pdi....then told us it needed to be tested at max revs to be signed off....and as he was on holiday tomorrow Friday would be the day..AAGGGH! Andy to the rescue, he said he would do it and we promptly set out on the river for a quick test. To keep us busy we managed to find an ensign in the local chandlery.....not very impressive (see below) and some electrical tape as we needed a name. Miss Liz II was too hard upside down in the wind so MLII had to do....

By now after much pestering, we found the safety gear and started work to attach the lifebuoys and stow the life raft. Then all started to happen, the main sail appeared and the spray hood was attached. Now we felt we were getting somewhere. Where is the delivery crew?  Answer, on a bus stuck somewhere in Germany. Not scheduled to arrive until 11.30! Andy to the rescue again as we needed to to victual the yacht, so he gave us a lift to the supermarket where we used the "edible? Put in trolley" approach.

29th May. Set off early with Andy to calibrate the compass and autopilot. Wind now dropped to a manageable 20 Kts and by noon we had waved Andy goodbye and set sail for the UK with Mark (skipper) and Pete onboard from Halcyon yacht deliveries.

Pete Matthews and Andy, heading out for testing.

 Heading out of the River Ryck for open waters

 Mark White and Jon, looking enthusiastic.

Finally, at the helm. Here we go!

Noon, exactly, the voyage commences. Crossing the bay to go past Straslund.... hoping to catch the bridge open. Arrived to see a closed bridge, but all of a sudden, as we approached the bridge started to rise. As the green lights came on boats appeared from nowhere and we got to find out how the German queuing system works. Answer, no system, no queue, stampede. With the Volvo putting out its 72 HP, we raced through in pole position.....

 The Stralsund bridge assault....

 Ve need more power!

 We win!

The bigger bridge at Stralsund....how is it that you never believe you will fit under a bridge??

After Stralsund we had the long journey to Kiel ahead of us, but first across an inner sea to Bock, and out into the true Baltic.  Interesting fact, the Baltic has no tide, but as we found, the wind can increase or lower depths by up to 1.5 meters...so beware!

By now the wind had dropped off and we had a glorious day, so we continued to motor, and by early evening we were into the Baltic.

 Jon at the helm....

 Is it meant to be this nice?

 Flat calm is not the word....

 Evening over the Baltic..

First sunset...

The evening weather remained calm, but we did have some wind and the sails were hoisted again. With the electric winches an easy task. As the sun set we ate pasta with german sausage carbonara.. a good end to the day. That night we crossed the shipping lanes and Nysted (Denmark) before arriving at the Kiel canal the next morning....