Join the ranks, they'd cry…

I left as the Frenchies were leaving, and I shouldn't have. I should have waited a some hours and would still have arrived roughly at the same time. At the time, it felt like the sensible thing to do, despite knowing the tide was going to be against me to round the island and get back to the sea. But I was on their outside so I needed to move regardless to let them go, I also thought that the leaving part might be a bit tough. But well, I can power through and once outside, the wind would be beam-reach to broad reach, it should be fine to head East. Alas, my engine was not quite as powerful as their, and for the first few hours I was against wind and tide and barely moving… Fortunately, at some point, it was possible to set sail and have the space to beat up upwind. But that was rough… The wind was still really, really strong and a lot of waves that were stopping Elvira's progression. Each time I managed to get some momentum to fight the tide, one wave a bit bigger or a bit less well negotiated would stop me and make me lose some progress. But by the by, I manage to get out of the strait, where I ended up in the middle of a group of fishermen. Trying to stir the boat downwind in that wind and waves was not the easiest thing ever, especially as just for that moment the wind dropped a bit… But after that fun bit sorted out, the wind came back, and I could pick an easier course to steer (but the auto-helm was not happy to do it and started to do increasingly worst).

So, hand steering for the whole 18h of that trip and gosh the end felt long! It was rather frustrating to see the entrance of the Elbe at night and still having a good way to go. To top up that nice setting, I realised my bow light had just died, and a crash jibe tore off the attachment of my spray hood.

I arrived in the harbour at 2:30, once again I was really stressed by the tide as I needed to be in a harbour before it changed. Else I would have just be stuck going 0.5kts forever in the Elbe, fighting to get the last few miles to get into the marina… But I didn't have to do that, so all is well! After that ordeal, it took me a few hours to clean up the boat and to cool down enough that I could get some sleep.

It doesn't show so well on video, but there were waves and the boat was rolling quite some.

As the evening got closer, so did those dark clouds, making the whole thing pretty dramatic.

Feeling rather small!

But then, they cleared up a bit, making that very strange light…

… and what a sight to behold