We did a lot of socialising on the rally – in this instance it was nightcaps on Footloose

On the Monday after the rally there was an inevitable sense of anti-climax, and sadness as the new friends we had made started to sail off on new adventures. Some of us however were planning to stay another day and prepare for the next stage of the trip.

Unsuccessful attempts were made to clear the rope from Dauntless’s bow thruster so he set off for Gdynia undaunted! We had a lie in and followed breakfast with coffee on Footloose. Simon and Sue joined us but soon we were waving them goodbye as they set off to return to Rugen before returning Nixe to the charterers on Friday.

Waving goodbye to Nixe

We took the bikes on two trips to the supermarket to stock up with beer and other essentials – alcohol is so expensive in Sweden – and this in spite of being rained on heavily during the first trip. We also took the boat over to the fuel pontoon to fill up and managed a load of washing.

In the evening the remnants of the cruise ate at the harbour café. They had a mosquito coil burning in the doorway so we remained relatively unscathed. Then we bid everyone a fond farewell, collected our laundry and went to bed in anticipation of an early start the next day.

Last meal in harbour café – waiting for food to arrive!

The week had passed all too quickly, in spite of the weather interventions.  Nicholas had led the rally with patience and good humour, although the phrase “like herding cats” was used by more than one person.

When we first made our acquaintance with the group they seemed a pretty mixed bag and indeed we were a disparate group of folk hailing from most parts of the UK, Eire Germany and USA. We did gel together however, sure there were sub groups, inevitable with about forty people on eighteen boats, and it seemed to me to be two things that made the group work, one a sense of tolerant good humour and two a realisation that we all  had a lot of sea miles under the keel. That is not a euphemism for advanced years, but simply that we had all done a lot of cruising in many different parts of the world, and cruisers respect that. For us, new boys in the Baltic, the benefit was a wealth of knowledge about all the countries’ coastlines we are hoping to visit in the future.

We are very much looking forward to meeting up again at the reunion at CA house in London next December.