Joys of Cruising Baltic Germany

[Lisa Longshadow]

TrentPieds,

Thank you for your reply. It is extremly helpful!!!

FYI, I have a 60,000 BTU Diesel Hurrican Heater with 4-zone controls inside my ship, but I just worry when leaving it unattended for weeks and months at a time.

Cuz of Schengen, I have to layup the boat for 3 months during the winter.

Presently, my plan is to start at Helsinki in early June and cruise the coast of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany until September. Then layup in Germany for 3 months?

~Lisa

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Lisa Longshadow

TrentPieds,

Thank you for your reply. It is extremly helpful!!!

FYI, I have a 60,000 BTU Diesel Hurrican Heater with 4-zone controls inside my ship, but I just worry when leaving it unattended for weeks and months at a time.

Cuz of Schengen, I have to layup the boat for 3 months during the winter.

Presently, my plan is to start at Helsinki in early June and cruise the coast of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany until September. Then layup in Germany for 3 months?

~Lisa

Germany is a good place for that. Just leave the boat in the water with some electric heat on.


I leave my boat in the water in Denmark. I try to get on board at least once a month (and cruise too if I have time) but I have left her for up to 3 months with no problems. Bit of trace heat in the engine room and bilges keeps off any frost. It doesn't get far below 0 here and never for long.

[Renegde_Sailor]

Thank you for the info, I am thinking I am going to have to sail over and see that part of the world as it is something that has interested me for quite some time.

[TrentePieds]

Lisa

Dockhead beat me to it, but I hope the stuff below will fill in some blanks for you :-)

With you existing diesel heater you'll be well away even during the winter, but like you, I would not leave a diesel heater running while I was not aboard.

The solution is simple. When you get to the port where you are going to lay up for the winter, pop into the local hardware store and buy a couple of 1.5KW electric heaters. As you know, Euro-voltage is twice that of US voltage, so just buy the heaters there and consider them disposable. They'll set you back mebbe thirty bux a piece.

Or, if there is no shoreside power where you decide to put up, just don't worry about it. Normal “housekeeping” will ensure that frost in the cabin will do no harm. And when you go aboard, even in freezing weather, the diesel heater will have you all toasty in ten minutes flat.

The water in the western Baltic never freezes and it doesn't even get cold enough that your portable water would freeze in the tank, but since you'll be gone for three months, just drain the tank(s). Topping up will not be a problem. The shoreside water is potable everywhere.

Tidal range in places like Marstal is measured in CENTIMETRES, not in feet :-) You'll be lucky to see a three inch “king tide” :-). Just don't be running aground – the tide won't lift you off :-)!

As for snow on deck: My attitude is that t'aint much of a boat that can't shake a little water off 'er decks. Snow in Denmark is like snow in Seattle – it happens, but it only stays for a few days. TP lies at her berth in the Salish Sea without a “winter cover”. Why bother? I can hose the mussel shells and the otter poop of 'er faster than I can mess with a cover :-)! In the winter the cabin temperature is often sort of 45ºF in the very early morning. Like the interior of a fridge. Not a problem. A “polar” sleeping bag, and a hoodie to cover my bald head, keeps me warm. TP is just that – thirty feet – and when I fire up the 1,500 watt electric heater the cabin is up from 45ºF to 65ºF, or so, in the twenty minutes it takes me to make the morning coffee.

You will find that wherever you go in Denmark, people will make a fuss over a yacht wearing the Stars and Stripes or with “San Francisco” shown as her home port. In Denmark sailing clubs are as ubiquitous as dandelions in a lawn. There will be some budding sailor in such a club that'll be happy to take a swing by after school to keep an eye on your boat while you are gone. You'll find that apart from having an accent that'll make you giggle, young Danes speak English as if they'd gone to school in the states. Which some of them have :-)

TP

[TrentePieds]

Here is a trick for them wot like things simple.

Take a bit o' plywood about fifteen inches square. Mount an old-fashioned socket for a screw-in incandescent light bulb in the centre of it. From any old bit of aluminum sheet, or other "tin" sheet, fashion a cone big enough that there will be a three-inch distance twixt the inside of the cone and the light bulb. Mount the cone on little stand-offs so the air can get in twixt the cone and the bulb and presto - there's your cabin heater!

In days of yore I used that in 27 footers around Vancouver, and it did the trick :-)!

TP

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

Here is a trick for them wot like things simple.

Take a bit o' plywood about fifteen inches square. Mount an old-fashioned socket for a screw-in incandescent light bulb in the centre of it. From any old bit of aluminum sheet, or other "tin" sheet, fashion a cone big enough that there will be a three-inch distance twixt the inside of the cone and the light bulb. Mount the cone on little stand-offs so the air can get in twixt the cone and the bulb and presto - there's your cabin heater!

In days of yore I used that in 27 footers around Vancouver, and it did the trick :-)!

TP

Best trace heat for long term storage with you off the boat is a dedicated device like a tube heater or frost heater. These are very robust so much less likely to cause a fire, and very small capacity, a few tens of watts each or at most a couple hundred, and with a thermostat which can be set a few degrees above zero. E.g. https://www.yachtboatparts.com/tube-...kets-256-c.asp or something like a Dimplex.

I would never, ever leave a fan heater going on board with no one on board, not even for an hour.


Note that more and more marinas charge by the kW for electrical power -- I've paid 50 euro cents recently.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

Here is a trick for them wot like things simple.

Take a bit o' plywood about fifteen inches square. Mount an old-fashioned socket for a screw-in incandescent light bulb in the centre of it. From any old bit of aluminum sheet, or other "tin" sheet, fashion a cone big enough that there will be a three-inch distance twixt the inside of the cone and the light bulb. Mount the cone on little stand-offs so the air can get in twixt the cone and the bulb and presto - there's your cabin heater!

In days of yore I used that in 27 footers around Vancouver, and it did the trick :-)!

TP

I use light bulbs to keep our well house from freezing. Just use various shop lights to hold the bulbs and leave them running during he cold months. The well house is well insulated so just a few bulbs keeps the well house at 50-60F. I use multiple bulbs in case one or two burns out.

Used to use plastic shop lights to hold the bulbs since I could hang the light where I wanted it. The plastic rots and breaks up after a few years so know I use metal lights.

Now a days the bulbs are CFLs which still have enough wattage to warm things up. Might have to get something like DockHead posted if I can't get CFLs.

The pressure tank does have a heater strip that will supposedly come on if the temperature gets near freezing but I don't think it has ever gotten that cold.

Later,
Dan

[TrentePieds]

Hello Dan :-)

Yes, incandescent lightbulbs work wonders :-)

We Scowegians have a long tradition of getting by with very little, and of knowing what the consequential dangers are, as well as how to guard against them.

To pick up on Dockhead's comment: I'm sitting 'ere looking at a 1,500 watt electric heater. It looks like an old-fashioned hot water or steam radiator, just exactly like the radiators you find in many a shoreside Scowegian dwelling.

This one's a beaut! Thermostatically controlled, of course, with infinitely variable temperature setting from "pretty cool" to "hot damn!". "Tip-over" safety switch so it switches off if it falls over. Cyclical (continuously repeatable) on/off control that can be set to "X" minutes every "Y" hours. I'm sure that, once set, it would execute your commands year after year with no further action required on your part.

What more could a young girl want :-)?

Oh, it's also fan-less, of course. Hm... If I'm not careful...

And why would this paragon of an electic heater ever fall over in a fifty-foot boat snuggly moored in such a place as, say, Rødvig south of Copenhagen? I know that Rødvig is a throbbing, pulsating hotspot for nightlife, but still?

There is the tide to consider, of course. I see that tomorrow the tidal range is four inches - I kid you not! - four INCHES! 'Nuff to give a sailorman the willies :-)!

Oh, yes - one more thing about the heater: All the labelling is in AMERICAN. Wonder why that is ;-)?

TrentePieds

[dannc]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

Hello Dan :-)

Yes, incandescent lightbulbs work wonders :-)

...
To pick up on Dockhead's comment: I'm sitting 'ere looking at a 1,500 watt electric heater. It looks like an old-fashioned hot water or steam radiator, just exactly like the radiators you find in many a shoreside Scowegian dwelling.
...

TrentePieds

We had an electric heater like that once upon a time and it works just fine.

To backup what Dockhead is saying about power costs, one has to balance the needed heat with expense of the power. If one is using 100 watts an hour, after 24 hours one just burned through 2.4 KW, and after a month, that could really add up. Heck, the per hours cost is high if power is 50 cents a KWH!

I would LOVE to stay in the Baltic, even over the winter, but not sure which is worse, the Schengen requirement or the wife's requirement to be warm and comfy.

Later,
Dan

[TrentePieds]

Dan AND Dockhead :-)

Remember I made the point that in the WESTERN Baltic, not for nothing called the "South Seas" by the locals, you really don't need heat in the boat when you are absent. I would consider a boat badly found if there were gizmos of any kind aboard that couldn't handle a few degrees of frost for a short period of time while the crew is absent.

How d'ye spose we locals got along for HUNDREDS, even a thousand, years :-)? Ergo, it doesn't matter how much they want for a kWh. You don't really need even a single one.

Even so, I looked up the price of juice in my native city, Odense. Wow! DKr 2.43/kWh whereof the juice itself costs DKr. 0.93 and the rest appears to be taxes etc. But remember: Danes just LOVE to pay taxes. It is, they tell me, the "price you pay for living in a civilized society" :-) Still, DKr. 2.43 = US$ 0.36. I pay a Canuckistan dime per kWh here in Vancouver, B.C. - about 13 Yankee cents.

Half a Eurobuck is roughly .55 cents U.S. That seems to me to be extorsion, but I do know that benighted little Denmark has moved into the modern world since I left. In any event, as I say, in absolutely lovely places like Marstal, you don't need heat while you are absent. When you are present, the diesel heater will obviously do the job if an extra sweater won't.

So while we are about it, the present price of diesel (automotive use) in my hometown is about US$6.50 per LITER or roughly five and twenty bux a gallon.

Just to round out the picture, the MEDIAN income of employees in this little excrescence on the end of Europe with little other than bacon and butter to sustain 'em is DKr. 540K per annum. Dunno how they do it! It must be the tourist trade :-)

And for American visitors: You DO know, don't you, that you have to offset the cost of heating against the cost of the air conditioning you don't need :-)!

Cheers!

TP

[mcarthur]

...and if you are lucky, you may just see Caruthers and Davies flying along searching for fishing grounds



#Ref: Riddle of the Sands

[DShant]

[QUOTE=TrentePieds;3802687]



I pay a Canuckistan dime per kWh here in Vancouver, B.C. - about 13 Yankee cents.



What a pleasant thread for a change! Nice to hear about a good cruising ground.
TrentePieds Being a Canuck myself I can't help noticing you either have these numbers backwards or reversed the calculation. 10 cents C$ is about 7.6 cents US$. I expect your electric power might be 13 cents which would be about 10 cents US


Still really cheap by most standards. I am in California right now and the AC is running like blazes. 40 degrees here. Talking about having to heat seems absurd!

[judyinboston]

My husband and i discovered the Baltic and especially the Island of Rugen.

We were there the year the wall came down and when the country of Germany voted to reunite. Lots of charm (thatched roofs) but one could see how run-down things were. Nevertheless, we loved it. Two years later, I decided to write a novel set there (foreign climes often call to me), and we returned and did lots of research, and even took in one of the nude beaches, not exactly my comfort level.

We discovered a classic yacht, the Zeesboot, which became a big part of the story.The book is "World of Mirrors."

IN the meantime Rugen has become an up-to-date resort, and the area prospers. Good eating, as well as sailing.

I am not a sailor, per se, but we had a good friend on Long Island who had a Condordia and we sailed (and crewed) on New England Waters often during the 1970s and into the 1990s. Such lovely sailing. Many good memories From Cuttyhunk to Chatham.

This is maybe my second post, but the Baltic, esp.the German part, seems to be often overlooked, and if you're sailing in that part of Europe, it's an interesting place with all the Hanseatic League History to boot. :smile:

[TrentePieds]

Ah, yes! Post in haste - repent at leisure. :-)

Absolutely right, DShant - I had it backwards,

And Judy:

A "Zeesenboot" is a somewhat specialized fishing vessel. It drags behind it a trawl-like net, although a much smaller one than a modern trawl. Zeesenboote had no engines but they were good sailers when in competent hands, in the same way a Galway Hooker is.

The Zeese, sometimes called a "Danish Trawl", was set without "doors" (large flat pieces of wood) to keep the trawl spread, so the warps were set from the outer end of the bowsprit to the outer end of a spar that was shipped over the stern. This gave a spread of maybe forty feet. The bottom of the trawl was weighted in the same manner as a modern trawl, and the upper line was provided with floats to keep the trawl open.

The boat was hove to under full canvas and simply drifted to leeward under the pressure of the wind, thereby dragging the trawl over the bottom. This worked just fine in inshore waters where the water was shallow and the fish were plentiful.

A delicacy in my childhood was the European plaice, just pan fried in butter, and served with pan fried potatoes. The whole issue was drenched in beurre noir and garnished with parsley.

The plaice was a major catch for Zeesenboote.

Cheers

TP

[Lisa Longshadow]

With only 3 months between June and September, and starting in Rauma, any thoughts about heading to Helsinki and then onto Estonia?