This was a great days sail. Our escape from Klintholm was easy enough....for the boaties, we used a stern line and lots of reverse to swing the bow out into the wind blowing onto the pontoon, and then motored forward and to freedom !  Some big waves for a few minutes leaving the shallows, and Moondog got her first real water on the foredeck, but it quickly settled down to a good F4, gusting F5 for a while with a moderate swell.

 

Moondog really sailed well under full sail in these conditions, and was easily making between 6 and 7 knots with a very comfortable motion, with us sitting in the pushpit seats, feet up and autopilot doing all the work !

 

Ultimately the wind dropped to a F2 /3 and we needed to motorsail to ensure we arrived in Skanor at a decent time. We set a course to miss one of the Oresund Sound Traffic Seperation Schemes ( basicaly dual carriageways for big ships), but we would need to cross one of the lanes to get to Skanor. This was the opportunity to play with the radio, to call and advise the authorities that we were crossing. Another learning experience.....how to dial an MMSI number ( basically making a phone call by radio) when the radio did not have a number key pad. It was fairly obvious how to select a single number with an 'up' or 'down' key, but not at all clear how you moved the cursor to enter the next number. The manual was useless and after a long time I discovered that pressing the 'dual channel ' key moved the cursor....obvious to some perhaps.

 

Unfortunately, this was only part one of our first radio call. I called what I assumed was the right number, to be told that I needed to call 'Sund VTS'. This could not be found in my pilot books, and I settled on trying Trelleborg VTS, since this was the nearest major port and presumably looked after traffic in this TSS. So, big moment, first real call and we were talking to the right people. I suspect they were surprised that we notified them, but all very polite and we crossed the lane, and not a ship in sight!  However, some great distant views of the Oresund bridge, as we approached Skanor.

 

Normal mooring excitement.The Swedish twist on the theme is to put closed rings on the mooring poles and to set the poles at random distances apart, some of which Moondog would fit between and some that she would not. Eagle eyed Paul discovered that once we were fully committed and our bows were in the box he could just read a marker on the pontoon giving the breadth of box, which was a bit late to discover that we were not going to fit, but at least we had the satisfaction of knowing by exactly how much we were going to squeeze the poles !  Anyway, we made it in the end, and had not finished tying lines before a very chatty Swedish fellow came to  see us and we spent a happy 20 mins chatting about the boat and his home town, to which we are invited to take Moondog anytime....its on the way to Stockholm, so maybe next year...

 

This harbour was blessed with a very friendly harbour master, who hoisted the Union Jack as a courtesy flag on his flag staff, and gave us lots of local information. Most important was to visit the fish restaurant in the harbour, which turned out to be outstanding. A very plain building, but huge fish platters, beer and schnaps.....life is hard !

 

All in all, an excellent day......and we have used 3 courtesy flags in as many days...Germany, Denmark and Sweden.