Hard Times to cope with updates on my blogsite

Though I try to be out on the water nearly every weekend, it is difficult to find the time to write about. I must admit, I spend some time reading other Sailors blogs. And with a lot of interest. The "Commodore", Tillerman of course, sets the pace. Eliboat has got interesting features about boatbuilding. Sailing in the far neighbourhood, the Lübeck area must be watched and Orkun is out there Match racing and reminds to my career as a Match racer. More relaxing stories I read "at five o´clock" and I never miss out on Valencia news because I livesail and are not dead. But I have no favourites, no ranking order. I read normally the sites, which I have linked, mostly late on Sunday nights, when I come home from sailing. Relaxing. As I did also last weekend.

One of the weekends without any regatta-engagement, we just cruised into Denmark. It is only a 20 miles trip to reach one of the islands, where it gets cosy. The harbours are not fully packed and you can have a nice walk through the country side. This time we cruised to Søby on the island of Aerø.The picture shows an old windmill in Søby. A nice spinnaker run, autopilot on and...sunbathing. On the way back we had to do upwind work and we tried to cope with the windshifts as best as we could. (no land sight) I got more familiar with the VMG feature on my older Garmin and the tracking plot, later transfered into my laptop showed only one "wrong" leg when the course became bananashape. You all know this. So difficult to make the right decisions there and than. It had been a good exercise for the upcoming Schiffahrtsregatta this weekend. We will sail nearly the same course to Aerø, but this time with about 100 yachts of size from 36ft up to 100ft and more. We might even have the two Volvo 60´s in the fleet again. ex "Illbruck" and ex "SEB" are located in Rostock in the Baltic Sea and for them it is just a catjump to sail to Schleimünde. The boats are classified into IMS Cruiser/Racers (mostly X-Yachts of the new breed) and Yardstick. "Samantha", the Dehler 36db is classified in IMS II. We are three who know my boat and the crew is filled up with guests, invited by Peter Gast (Organizer) from around the world. This regatta has a tradition of 10 years and there are mostly around 1000 people taking part. Shipowners, shipbrokers and bankers coming together. Why me? I have learned the job as a shipbroker. Have been a junior clerk for 3 years in a shipping company and spend some years in shipping. I do hope to be able to report more about this much admired event even after the regatta. Of course we are "going" for a podium place but it depends also a little on whom we are getting as guests. If mostly fall seasick it will become difficult. Weather forecasts are for strong wind and rain.