The sadly depleted crew slipped moorings to catch the 0900 swing bridge out of Klaipeda marina. Once in the river, we set full sail and wafted along with the NE3 on our starboard beam. Clear of the harbour, the asymmetric sprang to life. Bright sunshine, a broad reach in flat water, big boy's breakfast with Gdansk ahead...Ken and Sam, you definitely jumped ship too soon.

The skipper set a course to keep us outside Russian territorial waters, giving a stiff ignoring to the firing danger areas: these have no standing in international waters. And anyway, it is a Weekend. By 1920 we'd reached our turning point set at the closest point of approach to Russian waters, and ran dead downwind under main alone,  the wind having backed to N4.

A wonderful star lit night soon passed, but it did actually get properly dark - scary! Clearly we are inching south, and the calendar is ticking over too. The Milky Way was resplendent in all it's glory - such a magnificent sight when there's no light pollution.

As dawn rose Gdansk was in sight, and we enjoyed the 3m chug up river past umpteen moored ships and slips to the marina in the centre of town. A slight problem in that it seems we have arrived at the start of the equivalent of Cowes Week, but we managed to squeeze in somehow...

Plan is to stay here for 24hrs and then continue west. More later.