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Quick Blast

In 2019 after a good summer sailing from Beulieu River across the Baltic to
Stockholm, we thought leaving the boat south of Stockholm for the winter
was a good idea. We could then have another season in the Baltic over the
2020 season perhaps leave the boat in Denmark, then back to the UK in
2021. Through the Covid torn summer of 2020 it was looking like no sailing
and it would be 2 years south of Stockholm in the heated shed in
Navekvarn and I would not see NCT until summer 2021.

With a window in the travel
restrictions I decided a quick
trip was possible and
convinced our eldest son
Ben (he is a qualified YMI) it
would be fun to sail non-
stop from Sweden to
Denmark around 450 NM.
After talking to a few sailing
friends and checking
boatyards in Bornholm I
decided that Augustenborg
South Denmark was my best
option and booked in with Anders for the winter. I managed to find flights
from LHR on BA using Avios points for 50p to Stockholm and 50p back from
Copenhagen! I arrived in the boat yard a few days early to get the boat
back in the water and ready to go. Ben flew out on bank holiday Monday
31st August and we got on board around 22.00hrs with a nice NE F3/4.
There was talk of leaving immediately but we decided we could take a
more direct route through the rocks in daylight so we got a few hours sleep
and up at 04.00hrs on Tuesday and off as the sun rose (Pic1).

For 2 days the wind was kind maintaining a F3-5 from the North East and
we were able to fly the chute (Pic2) and we made a very respectable
300NM over the first 48 hours averaging over 6knts in a lurching following
sea. Not sure the old girl knew what hit her – I don’t think NCT has sailed at
that speed for that amount of time before in her life!

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