Learning the Limfjord the hard way...11 & 12 August

The day started fantastiskt in the Limfjord, and ended (late) fantastiskt as well at Thyberøn, the exit of the Limfjord in the North sea.

On the way to Nykøbing in there Limfjord

But along the way, we learned what the Limfjord may be the hard way …


The fist incident was in Ålborg in the morning, when departing the harbour. For whatever reason, the water in the harbour was covered with algae looking as if all farmers along the Limford had decided to mow their grass the same day and dump it in the fjord. It took only two attempts to use the bow thruster to get off the pier to get it filled with grass, to the extend that it would be blocked!

Tyvär, as it is a very useful feature on a 45 foot centre board sailing boat, but after all, just a dive to do for cleaning it under waters in the next harbour.

Niklas, in charge...

Then, with Niklas steering and I cooking our lunch, we ended up on a sandbank in an area of a marked channel where this should not happen.

Screen capture of our trace on C-map on the chart plotter

On the screen capture of the chart plotter (above), you can see where we got stuck, in the medium blue area corresponding to the 4 to 6 metre deep zone. With the centre board up, we were only one metre deep and it should no have been a problem! Niklas jumped in the water and walked around Belisama to identify the best path to get her water-borne again. I regret not having taking picture of this, but we were so concentrated to get her out of this situation that it did not cross our minds. The rudders could not be moved anymore as they were sunk in the sand, and there was a 1.5 knots current pushing us ahead even more on the sand bank. Pulling forward using and anchor was not an option as the water over the sand bank was getting shallower. The way backwards was a risky option as the rudders were already stuck in the asnd and could be bended on the way back. We then attached the anchor to the beam cleat and put the ankarolina on the electric winch, after having used the dinghy to bring the anchor in the middle of the canal. It worked nicely, and after an hour, we were water-borne again.

Last windmills before reaching Thyberøn

But this was not the end of our problems… The following morning, I checked the filter in the water cooling system because of this grounding and found a full load of the grass I described earlier from Ålborg harbour. I soon realised that the water intake pipe was full of grass as well when I could not close the water intake valve. It took a good half-an-hour dive under the hull to extract all the grass from the water intake, using a long forceps inherited from a previous life working in hospital.

When finally, we fixed everything and made it to the North sea for a long 265 nautical miles ride from Thyberøn to Den Helder, Denmark, a power failure disabled suddenly all electronics while crossing the busy passage to Bremen, after a large wind farm.

Wind farm of the Danish coast

It happened after a 36 hour ride on spinnaker, just when crossing “the rail” under spinnaker. I soon realised that the battery were low and therefore called for a shutdown of the whole electronic. Then, I found that the inverter was on, by itself, as I know that I would have never done this on such a long crossing. The chart plotter would not start because of low voltage. I switch on the “Boating” Navionics app on the iPad, just to discover that the charts for Denmark not having been used over months had been removed, and inaccessible from where we were in the absence of an Internet connexion…

Finally, as the wind decreased and the swell increased, we got the asymetrical spinnaker entangled with the genoa and the trinquette Requiring an hour of meticulous de-entanglement by Nyklas, from below!

The lesson learned from this series are;

• Stick to the centre of the canals when marked with green and red buoys. In fact, we got asked just a mile earlier to stick to the right side of the channel by some nautical Danish authority!
• Get a small diving bottle on board, with a diving suit and corresponding weights for these kind of fixes. We could not have done it properly by just swimming or snorkelling under the hull. Besides, don’t forget to get it filled before the season.
• Double or triple check your electric power balance on these long haul crossing.
• Close all switches from 220 volts since I think some reset of the electronics put back by default the inverter on.
• Always check that you have the loaded charts that you may need on an independent iPad with sufficient power;
• And try to keep a nice long forceps on board

And above all, we learned that the Limfjord is a very nice piece of water to go through!