Today’s expression is ‘the long and the short of it …’. The short bit was the trip on the water (just 4.2 miles) and the long bit was the walk on land to the harbour master’s office and facilities. The reason for the length of the walk was all the building work taking place on the shore. Several new blocks of holiday flats were being built, but this had blocked access along the edge of the marina, so we had to walk a long way round to get past the building site. The photo in the pilot book looked nothing like Wendtorf now does – around 8-10 substantial buildings have been added since.
In Wendtorf we had arranged to meet up again with Renee and Claudia. We first met them and their boat Reset when moored alongside them in Stubbekøbing in strong winds. Since then, through the pandemic we kept in touch and, coincidentally, they were out sailing this week on a short break. However, they were coming all the way from Heiligenhafen (their home port) so we had plenty of time before meeting up at Wendtorf. We therefore spent the morning catching up on some shopping. The harbourmaster gave us excellent directions to the supermarket, but then pointed out that it was 2km away, so for two euros we hired a couple of bikes from Baltic Bay Marina to make the journey. I am generally quite comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road, but somehow on a bike it is different and just feels wrong! There was though a bike track a lot of the way, so it wasn’t too bad. Coming back, particularly after visiting the off-licence on the way back was not quite as easy with the weight of the booze in the front basket trying to constantly unbalance things. The clanking of all the bottles did though mean that at least people heard us coming and got out of the way – not least as it was downhill all the way back. From the looks we were given, they clearly made their own assumptions about our social behaviour. If my German had been better, I would have given them the quote from P.G. Wodehouse:
Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin
P.G. Wodehouse
Renee and Claudia arrived from Heiligenhafen late afternoon and we had a very nice evening catching up and ensuring that the boat would not make the same clanking noises as the bikes by ‘disposing’ of the evidence …….