Carra Tidings

Life on board Carra before guests arrive is always busy: cleaning, laundry and food shopping and generally getting our act together. By 9pm we were ready for bed and almost ready for Pip and Casey who were arriving the next day. All that remained was the food shopping and Mags planned to beetle off first thing in the morning to buy a week’s worth of rations.  The phone ran – it was Pip “we are here”. ”Where is here” I said. “In Svendborg” … “Oh shxt’ my astonished reply. I had got the wrong day….. I ran up to meet them at the bus stop. It was 21:30 and they were starving as they hadn’t eaten – now how to break it to Mags, who has a deep fear of undercatering …. I knew by the fact that we had eaten leftovers there was nothing on board…… except our emergency rations – for when you arrive in a harbour late and can’t be bothered to cook. 2 tins of ravioli. I could tell the depths of Mags’ trauma by the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to cook, a rather lose term for heating up the ravioli. This was communicated by “by the look” which roughly translated it as “you messed up, so you are cooking and serving up ravioli”.

The next day was relaxed affair in Svendborg, exploring the harbour in our dinghy, from which Casey swam from. The following day was a short hop to a beautiful fjord called Thuro – an anchorage that very much reminded us of some of the Swedish ones. Pip loves wildlife and we were hoping to see the sea eagle that we had seen on our last visit…. It was a no show. Dinner in the cockpit – all was good with the world.

The current runs up to 3 knots through the Svendborg sound – so leaving at 6:15am was imperative to catch the last of the favourable tide. We decided to let Pip and Casey sleep in – and of course we saw heron and a pod of dolphins on the way out…. though I am not sure that Pip believed us.

We arrived in the beautiful harbour of Æroskøbing, where we would meet Liz off the ferry. We moored next to the swimming beach which was soon used, before a wander around the intimate cobbled streets with the beautiful coloured houses. Windy weather was a good reason to do some more exploring the next day. The crystal clear waters, the sandy beach lined with coloured beach huts coupled with hot sunny weather made for a great swim well that is until Mags decided to play football with a lion jelly fish, which then stung her.

The next drama was Liz proving that flip flops, wet feet and a 10cm tall curb aren’t a great combination. She went over on her ankle….. she heard the snap and being an A&E super nurse knew exactly what she had done…. Poor Liz.

A BBQ followed and an great evening of hilarious conversations, enlightening song tracks and Liz doing a model impersonation with her single roller. Our party was then joined by a massive grain ship bearing down on us stopping metres from our boat. Thankfully we were downwind of it – otherwise we would have disappeared behind clouds of dust from the grain.

We sailed up to Lyø and were thankful that we could get alongside (there is only one space) as that meant Liz could get off. The idyllic village of Lyø is about a mile away. How could we get Liz there….. on a bike – with me pushing her up the hill. A restorative beer and Liz made it back to the boat just as the rain filled ominous clouds built. There were then some impressive down draughts of wind just prior to the thunderstorm – the deluge came. An eerie light with the setting sun and the rain – it was quite beautiful. A still calm followed as the wind and rain died and a full rainbow shone out. Next thing Casey leapt in for a swim. Only to emerge to find a chap from a Tallship playing his accordion.  Which prompted Mags and Casey to dance…. was it a jive, polka or freestyle – no one could quite tell but it was hilarious.

A peaceful sail back, we tied up in Svendborg  – the guitar came out and the cockpit choir was formed – with some very dubious singing.

Foot note  On returning home Liz found, as she suspected, a fractured ankle. She was amazing – what she manged with a broken foot on a boat and on land and never complaining even though it was clearly painful – only grumbling when you had to persuade her to ice it….. yes nurses do make the worst patients….