Last January, Gosia met Elizabeth in Miami and they went sailing out of the Shake a Leg facilities on a Sonar chartered from Magnus Liljedahl’s Team Paradise.  It was a good productive boot camp, followed by another and than yet another.

In October Gosia drove Better Than… in her first regatta:  VI Trofeo Cesar Manrique, Lanzarote, Canary Islands. We did not finish last and then the girls went all the way to Texas.

Thirty-eight J22s, some of the best woman crews in the world, Olympic medalists and hopefuls, match-racing veterans, all-in-all a very intimidating group of girls.  They sailed an impressive eleven-race regatta with a fifth place for the first day.

Just watch them next year!

Better Than… put on some mileage this year, close to 13000 NM, which would be over half the distance of most around the globe races.   Well, some of it by ship and truck, but still…
We did some IRC racing against smaller boats in Key West and against the big boys in Miami, some vicious one-design in blustering England, some sunny quiet Sardinia and some medium Lanzarotte. We also raced offshore from Stockholm to Szczecin with the tall ships and the not so tall.
We flew the courtesy flags of 11 countries and Corsica, which pretends not to be French for good reason.
Our program involved more people than ever before.  I had to get a larger address book to keep track of the overflowing contacts.  We made lots of new friends and met up with the old ones. New people, new ideas, new goals, new places.

Key West Race Week was the first proper IRC event for us.  We didn’t really have a chance to check our abilities with the masthead shoots and long pole before, so it was a very interesting experience racing against the Swan 42 Esmeralda with Ken Read and his bionic pro crew.

Our team was as good as ever with Chris & Waldek Zaleski, Britt Hughes, Peter McCloskey, Devin Santa, Max Hutter, Steve Hoffman with a stomach virus, Marc Reiss, Jahoo Glinski, John Malloy, Marcus Schlesinger from Austria and the Rojek clan; Gosia, Andrzej, Marcin and Paulina virtually from France. Nina joined us for few days of sunbathing and partying.

Marcin could not stay beyond Monday, so Waldek took the helm for the rest of the week.  It was practically a two-boat regatta.  We didn’t see much of the other boats after the start.  However, Spirito Malouen, Synergia 40, a very well sailed boat from France with a killer rating and very ugly paint job, corrected over us in every single race.
The general feeling, reinforced by Ken Read’s article for NYYC, was that we don’t have much of a chance to beat a 42 in IRC.  Boat per boat we have even speed up wind, downwind  they are faster in light breeze.  We had only one race in medium breeze (up to 15kt) and they managed to sail as low as we and probably faster.
That was perhaps the best Swan 42 that will ever be sailing with pro driver and crew, but we knew right then and there that we have to join the other 45s to have fun.
One design baby…

We had a good time with cooking competitions every night (can’t tell who won) and a little bit of a party here and there. Special mention goes to Nina for her leadership in that department and Diana for an endless supply of Key lime pie.
For me that felt like vacation; having all those pro captains doing my job, running up and down the mast and playing with Harken grease, while I was sipping rum in the trailer.
Gosia, Devin and Nicola helped with deliveries.  On the upwind way back we hoisted the trysail for the first time ever and while unrolling it, we found in the flakes an extremely dehydrated family of mice, very sad.

Later we took fourth place in J24 Midwinters in Tampa.  This was an adequate result as we managed to catch two Z flags, one for each brother Z!
I then went to Antiqua for a fabulous week of island hoping with Dorota on the Swan 601 Cherokee, run by Hamish and Kaja.  They took us to Martinique visiting all the islands on the way.  This was a new and beautiful experience for Dorota and me, Dominca being our favored island.

Better Than… survived the next few months in Cracker Boy, in Palm Beach, next to Rima and Harrier who were not so lucky (see the picture in “friends”).
The storm went through the neighborhood breaking palm trees and power lines and throwing boats off their cradles.  Dave Jurkowski miraculously lived through Harrier’s misfortunate short flight to the ground, walking away with minor injuries, and dripping with adrenaline.
Phil and Laurie got married shortly after and we all joined them for their honeymoon in the yard.  As Phil beautifully phrased it, “we can’t quit crack.”

In march we called in some of the oldest sailing friends, Piotr Sernicki, Peter McKenzie, Mark Malloy, Mark Reiss, Jeffrey Udell, Don Kelly, Britt, Max and Peter McCloskey for SORC Acura, Miami.
Peter Craig was too busy or something, so the regatta was rather downscaled comparing to previous years. Fewer classes less boats, no tent. We raced in the only IRC division against the big boats: TP52 Samba Pa Ti, Windquest, Russal Synergy, Decision, Kerr50 Magic Glove, Hissar, Numbers, and Bella Mente, finishing 7th in front of Decision and Bella Mente.
Your pet sucks…
It was sort of depressing sailing behind the big dogs.  We were giving up to easily, not focusing on our jobs, we were always behind.  I, myself, hoisted the A shoot backwards and we sailed like that for a good few minutes before anybody noticed that something was wrong.  That wasn’t fast.
Life in Miami was very glamorous.  Mark Reiss arranged the 10 star Sheraton accommodations for us and there was plenty of entertainment, especially during our extended commutes.

April and May were all about preparations for Europe.  I spent weeks in Florida usually as a house guest/pest in residence at the famous Mangiorre mansion or in Bonbon’s modest house, very conveniently located in walking (didn’t have guts to try) distance to the marina. The entire detailed plan failed like domino pieces when Peters and May started pushing the schedules back and forth. The 40” container in Ft.Lauderdale, full of cheap American goods as well as the big American truck, all my inexpensive tools, clothing and bicycle, got dragged by 3 different trucks to the Homeland Security compound 700 feet away from the hazards and customs clearance.  It takes 10 days minimum and is extremely high tech; they did not even ask for the pad lock combination.

I took a short brake, drove to Jacksonville where I joined the Zaleskis, Randy and Maciek for the US J24 Nationals.
Not only did we win the regatta with 17 points to spare, but we also discovered that Jacksonville is not just an annoying turn on I95 with endless road construction, but that it is also one of the best places to sail in America, with a beautiful club, full of warm friendly fun-loving people and surrounded by miles of paradise gardens. The highlight being the alligator BBQ cook out.

In the mean time, Timo and his sons were helping me with the boat and Jeff flew in to calibrate and check the electronics.  After an emotional good bye, we took off for Fort Lauderdale leaving behind an empty trailer, Tiki Bar and the Palm Beach Princess.
It took another 14 days, 4 different hotels, rental cars, 8 reschedules with Jet Blue and 3 with Virgin Atlantic.  Finally, the Dutch flagged Suomigracht showed up, large and brown, and they loaded under the command of loadmaster Darius Borkowski. Despite Polish connections, I couldn’t watch the process since it is very dangerous for national security and all. I took some pictures from far away across the river and then heard from friends in Newport who spotted her looking proud in front of NEB.

• 1. Go to Rotterdam unload other boats and come back.
• 2. Turn the ship around, get a land crane, unload the boat and move the ship, drop the boat into the water, while the ship is being held out by tugs, bring the ship back to the dock and unload the cradle.
• 3. Remove the rigs from Falcon and Better Than… and reach the boat with the crane no. 2.

Dave and I joked that maybe we could heel the ship and swing the hook at an angle… Well, that is what they did.
The ships captain pumped water ballasts to heel the ship 6 degrees and the crew moved the boat on the cradle to meet the hook with a narrow 5mm off the mast.  It was raining and blowing and we were all numb, but we got her off the ship with only a bent windex.
The container followed 3 days later with our van, which has the wheel on the left side, and at that moment it stopped raining for a whole 10 minutes.
Dave, Kuba and I worked long wet hours to make up for the lost time.  Surrounded by other Swans, we got all the advice we could absorb from the America’s Cup people and Don.
By the end of the week she was all shiny and smooth.  I figured out the electrical conversions and we had only few projects left for Cowes.
Weighing went well.  She made the class minimum by 46kg.  For the first time I was grateful for the precipitation.
We loaded the van and raced Kuba (who was on on the slow ferry) to Cowes.

The smoking ban took effect in England and Gordon brown succeeded Tony Blair in the June 30th elections.  It went from ugly to nasty, carnage and more carnage.  Boats going out for practice and ambulances waiting for them at the dock and it remained like that for another 10 days; broken masts, broken boats, lots of halyards, sails and egos.

Thank God I did not have to drive any more, the rest of the crew arrived to my rescue.
A full set of Rojeks, Chris Zaleski with the whole family, Waldek, Britt Hughes, Brendan Shattuck and our hero chef Diane. Later on the British contingent from the Pocket Battleship team joined in; Marc Gilett, Katie with baby Emma, our navigator Ian Harrison and Andrew Button.
Our accommodations were of royal standard, except for a couple bathrooms with drainage problem. In exchange, the bathroom I shared with Britt came equipped with a time capsule.  We didn’t figure out the operational procedure since the manual was missing, but there was some kind of rrare rradiation or ultra vibrration that caused Britt to snore a little.
The parlor was truly grand, with an internet room, an oversized TV in the living room, a terrace in the back for drying ripped sails in the rain, a table large enough to sit us all for dinner and a proper professional kitchen with a butlers room and pantry. Diane used the facility to its full capacity, constantly running three or four ovens, blenders, grinders, washers and dryer.
Just one small and very slow dryer? I don’t understand those people.
She was up before me almost every single day, feeding and cheering us up.  Now from this perspective I can’t remember why anybody would leave that house.  We had Diane and all necessary supplies and even if we ran out of wine, Kuba could drive to the market and buy more.
Just kidding.  Our objective was to fight for a trophy awarded by the famous Royal Yacht Squadron of Great Britain to the winner of this international competition held among the teams of sailing yachts (Teams built of yachting enthusiasts from across the world).

There was a dilemma; go practice and risk everything, or don’t practice and risk entering the regatta rusty and uncoordinated.
Andrzej and Chris wisely chose the middle ground.  We went out and sailed, hoisting the shoot only when our magnums would register a consistent drop below 25kt and we did not race in the preworld’s regatta, which turned into a demolishin derby for most of the Swans that used it as practice.
Mike Urwing didn’t give us too much grief this time, concentrating mainly on safety issues.  He found some of our life vests to be out of compliance with British laws and our medical manual outdated by 2 months (they rewrote the section on hypothermia, moving it to the mental disorders chapter), we were ready to go.
One of my responsibilities on the boat is shopping for cool stuff to make sure that there is always a secured stash of things that any body might find helpful for improving their performance in the races. This including navigation tools such as charts, tide tables and new hot gadgets. I went shopping for solent special magic fedders online back in December to have a special motivational Christmas stocking stuffer for Chris.  There was a list of books and multimedia publications with intimidating titles like “Hazards of Solent”, “How to Survive the  Solent”, “Win Races in the Solent Everyday”, I picked one and decided to get charts locally.
Good intuitive decision.
The main business in southern England is theory on the Solent; publishing, manufacturing and selling all kinds of hocus pocus.  They have a college of Solent in Southampton and the University of Oxford produces eight Solent PHD’s per annum. I had some hard choices, but I have spent Andrzej’s pounds well I believe.  We used most of the stuff that I got, except the Solent sun deflectors for the compass and the 400meters of anchor chain that I was supposed to carry in case of light breeze.
It was blowing a consistent 25 to 30 from the southwest for most of the week, so we were sailing east of the Medina River in the shadows of Osbourne hill with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s royal palace on it. The waters of the Solent run on their own; there are very strong currents caused by Atlantic waters pushing into that narrow channel from one side or another changing every six hours.  The waves are not tall since it is a protected sound, but they are strong and confused and they frequently change.  We had fewer problems dealing with the conditions than most of the fleet.   Marcin did well and we only broached once and only because Atlantica wiped out next to us forcing Marcin to come up.
We did not experience any problems.   Just a broken jib halyard, windex, 1st stanchion, broken winch, rips in several sails, a few busted clutches, broken vang, bent pulpit, busted backstay ram, 3rd stanchion, second, a couple of exploded blocks, a spin sheet, the inhauler. Having good friends around, mainly Peter McCloskey and Roger Marino, we managed to keep the boat afloat through the regatta.  Although neither Dave, Kuba nor I had much time for the social events, I hear we did not miss much.

The first race was good, we finished 9th.  On the second start we had a situation with Jeroboam and we lost the protest, which was a blow to our confidence and motivation.
If you google the worlds “JEROBOAM CA’ NOVA protest” you will get nine pages of results.  In Cowes they had 7 and they never lost one!
But I must say that after a few months of yachting and socializing with them, they did not lie about the weather once! Real gentleman.
We had our own set of problems, mostly mental.  From my perspective, we had a hard time getting off the line with speed and for that kind of catch up game we were a little to slow in changing gears and indecisive.  With the tricky narrow wind and current lines, picking a side and staying there is crucial and we almost never had an opportunity to execute our plan, being pushed by the boats ahead. Crew frustration had a toll on Chris’s confidence.  There was too much daunting him and it did not feel like we were a team. It is always dangerous when you hesitate calling your teammate’s name, because you are not sure.  Boat handling and coordination were great, though there was one slow recovery after the broach when the downhaul got loose and we couldn’t get the pole down for a very long time.
For a number of teams including Belicossa and Goombay Smash, this was a sad last event in the class.  We will never see those boats under those names again.
The last day after the races felt like a graduation day on campus, beer and tears everywhere, moms and dads loading minivans, hugging and garage sales everywhere.  We picked up some hot items from Massimo’s stash, including a bunch of slightly bent stanchions and the dock box, desired by every boat captain.  Plenty’s Mat offered us the winning trophy in exchange, but we declined.  Thank you Peter, the trophy we can win next year.
We had two more of Diane’s masterpiece meals, checked our e-mails free of charge for the last time, loaded all the wet stinky stuff into the van and went back to Hamble to convert into cruising mode.

I have never done proper cruising in my life.   I read some books and enough internet material on the subject to have a plan, but nonetheless,  it was a logistical nightmare.  Dave stayed on the boat unloading racing gear and loading stuff flowing from the container, I worked at the container loading things onto dock carts, and we had 8 people running with dock carts back and forth, everybody keen to get it done since it was raining, bumping into one another occasionally since we were wearing rain gear with hoods covering our eyes. The labeling machine I bought for this kind of situation did not work well in the rain so there was some confusion as to which cart should stay where.  As a result keen workers would drop of their cart at the boat, pickup another one that was waiting and rush it back to the container where it had just come from.  It looked like a production line in a communist factory, except at a much more agitated tempo.  Look up Larry, Moe and Curly robbing a bank.
Some things got misplaced and left behind, but we got it done. The cradle dismantled and modified in size to fit the container which would be shipped to meet us at the next racing location, to be determined later. Gosia, Kasia and Kuba got the provisions and fuel before we loaded the van which felt small for the first time.
After a safety briefing and some lectures over our last meal, Better Than… left the river Hamble in the evening of July 10th, in the dying southwesterly breeze, along the English south coast towards Dover, passing Portsmouth with its famous spinnaker tower in the setting sun.
It was a good ride, mostly sailing, nobody was too hungry and we spent most of next 24 hours trying to bond and learn about each other.  Working in three two man shifts, three hours on, six off, with Kasia and Paulina as floaters, St.John put his I pod to work and the time was flying.
It was rather gray but with decent visibility when we passed the White Cliffs of Dover and decided not to stop and have Kuba meet us in Amsterdam.
The commercial traffic in the English Channel and the North Sea is unprecedented compared to any other passage aside from perhaps Singapore.  Passing the shipping channels on the sailboat moving at 8kt is always very tricky and exciting, especially on the first night of the trip when one’s visual perception gets easily tricked into panic mode, seeing things much larger and closer than they truly are, or even worse, the opposite.
We experienced that phenomena on the first night and actually every night after.
On the second day everybody got their sea legs figured out and Kasia started feeding us regularly.  Gosia was driving most of the time and Paulina regained her sense of humor, she even played some squash for us, it was beautiful.
Soon we approached the Dutch coast east of IJmuiden, with its separation scheme of a forest of wind farms and industrial smoke stacks on shore. We performed our first sail drop without accident, put our quarantine flag up and went for the locks.
It was a Hamble landing dejavue for me, with big breeze and ripping current.  Dave took the wheel making it look easy. http://www.amsterdamports.nl
We went about 8 feet into Holland, found the docking spot and went searching for the authorities.  The police/customs office was warm and dry.  The officer was a bit surprised by our request, but he took our passports and gave us pretty stamps, a procedure long forgotten in United Europe.
After putting up a French flag sideways, we took off for a 3 hour motoring trip to Amsterdam in the building traffic of small boats, barges and ships.
The Sixhaven marina at which I made arrangements, turned out to not have enough water, but Kuba made arrangements in another one just across the river from Amsterdam Central Train Station.  Our spot was ready after some boats moved out and we landed slightly brushing the bottom of the keel.
Here comes another 3 Stooges episode.
Every time we touch the dock things go out of control.  Where do we go?  Where do we sleep?  How to get there?  Where is the van?  Where to eat? What to see? etc…
We wasted the entire afternoon practicing that routine while the red lights of the most fun town in Europe were burning down.
We ended up in 3 different hotels about 30 miles away from each other, since there are no straight lines in Amsterdam. Thank God for Paulina’s leadership in picking out a centrally located hotel where we moved in the next morning and St. Johns touring guidance based on prior research.  We managed to see almost everything from Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum to the Red Light District. Everything in Amsterdam has something to do with van; Van Gogh, Univeriteit Van Amsterdam, our van, however, despite it’s pure diesel muscle and cargo capacity turned out to be useless in that bike dominated world.  It was Kuba’s ingenuity and persistence that got it through those crowded streets and placed it safely on the edge of the Kerkstratt canal tightly squeezed between two trees.  A love for Amsterdam is perhaps the only thing we got consensus on during that whole expedition, with or without cannabis or heavier drugs. It is romantic, young, vibrant, unpretentious and full of incredibly harmonious chaos. In terms of climate as well as woman it was also a huge improvement over Britain, but we had to go, leaving Paulina and Kuba behind.
During our passage and even before, in England, I noticed an unusual pattern in the battery charging system; a very unpredictable on and off.  I had been blaming it on the English weather and very irresponsibly invested all my hopes in a dehumidifier’s healing power.  Plug it in, turn it on, and go to town.  Wrong.

We took off from the Neolus marina toward the sea and shining sun.  It was just like in my all time favored “Rejs.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Rejs, known in English as The Cruise (or The Trip Down the River), is a Polish comedy film released in 1970, directed by Marek Piwowski who also co-wrote the screenplay with Janusz Glowacki. The score was composed by Wojciech Kilar.
Rejs is considered as a masterpiece by many and as the earliest cult film in Polish cinema. Shot in a quasi-documentary style, with a cast featuring not more than two or three professional actors, the absurd plot parodies life in the People’s Republic of Poland, reducing a weekend river cruise to a hilarious parody of the entire communist system.
A stowaway (Stanislaw Tym) sneaks aboard a ship departing on a cruise down the Vistula River. The captain takes him for a Communist Party cultural coordinator and the intruder gladly adapts to his new role, immediately setting to work at manipulating the passengers and crew into silly and vaguely humiliating games. Before long, Tym has got everyone under his thumb and created his own comedic dictatorship. A memorable performance was given by Jan Himilsbach, an amateur actor who formerly carved tombstones.
After a good 3 hours of that light comedy, the batteries were down to 80 percent, the wind force outside swelled to 30 knots and we had to stop.  Gosia picked up some helpful locals who gave her a ride to a nearby chandlery, but despite friendly advice, we could not find a solution to our serious problem.
Before taking the boat apart we moved to the Ijmuiden, a huge new modern marina just inside a humongous man-made seawall protecting us from, by that time, a roaring sea.
The first boat we passed coming in was the mighty Bonbon, under the command of Jan Mayer, taking shelter there during their delivery from Hamburg (after the transatlantic race) to Palma with some electrical problems.  It was a blessing since they had already made friends with the only electric expert in town.
It was Saturday afternoon and there were hundreds, maybe thousands of boats in the marina.  Our expert was busy and all my electrician friends in New England could only offer me double condolences.  Since both of our alternators were dead, the main Mastervolt probably committed suicide in England and the small Volvo, working too hard for both expired from exhaustion.
Gosia and the senior Michaleks went on the accommodations reconnaissance mission.  The facilities are large, modern and plenty, but due to a combination of storm and weekend, they did not have a bed to spare.
I was facing the ultimate nightmare: sleeping an entire cast of characters on the boat.
Not that I didn’t have color coordinated bedding or towels, pillows or ear plugs for everybody, but the unknown factor was what scared me the most and the others were sensing my fear and getting unreasonable and aggressive towards each other.
We could not find any options locally so Gosia decided to take a road trip to the next town.
The bus driver from Mali spoke little English, so we got out in the middle of nowhere and after exploring miles of middle class Dutch suburbs carefully decorated with statues of gnomes and various Christmas ornaments, we finally found an open Chinese restaurant.
They couldn’t help us with the hotel search since there were none, but the General Tso’s Shechuan style chicken was delicious and the house wine heart warming and reasonably priced.  St. John approved the Dutch/Chinese Sprite and had as many refills as Gosia and I wine.  A short taxi ride back and we were all slipping into the boat like  one happy family without a single snore to be heard.
Dave came back equally intoxicated after Bonbon took off with the rising sun and he also managed to find a berth without waking anybody up.
Sunday was a beautiful day and we all went to the showers equipped with our brand new black towels which made us all look like those Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus Corsican twins whose entire bodies are covered with pubic hair.
Nobody likes to look like a schnauzer especially on an empty stomach. Our current guru promised to show up in the early afternoon so we went for breakfast.
They didn’t have any idea how to make a white omelet in Holland, mainly because they don’t have the equipment for separating egg yolks from whites.  I showed them the trick cementing Dutch/American brotherhood forever.  I hear that the dish took off like wild fire crossing into neighboring countries.  They call it Amerikaanse albinisme (American albino).
David thought it would be a good idea to celebrate,  so we opened the bottle of Talisker Andrzej got from Klaus Diederichs or Grant Gordon of Fever. Kasia made some polish hors d’oervres and the whole celebration moved to the cockpit, so that I could perform some preparatory dismantling for the electrician. For David and St. John, this was a commencement to a kabanosy world that they would soon live to the full extent.  This was one of those parties you remember forever.  We got our neighbors and some passing fellow cruisers involved.  I heard, but I am not sure that there was, Zubrowka from Michalek’s reserve and some cherry liquor and Sprite.
Hans the electrician came with the assistant and after running some tests and criticizing the quality of my tool collection, announced that we need 2 new alternators which could easily be obtained on Monday, one made in Poland from his Volvo shop atthe facility and another from the Mastervolt factory conveniently located in Amsterdam, a short 20km taxi ride away.
We moved into the nearest hotel leaving the Michaleks with the dirty dishes from the daylong libation.

Sailing along Frisians Is not the most relaxing thing to do in yachting, it is hard to pick a safe line between the traffic and the beach, you have to watch the charts, radar and the sea constantly, channel 16 sounds like a United Nations High School cafeteria while novice crew take turns at the wheel for Dave’s surfing lessons, others being busy reading revelations in Chapman and cruising guides, you always need theoretical base for next chapter.
Elba is a fast flowing river, even south of the channel in 20feet of water current rips at 3/4kt and it seams like the shore with all the wind turbines and flocks of sheep keeps moving east with us. We estimated to get through Kiel Canal before the night but Elba has slowed us up by 6 or 7 hours.
The locks in Brunsbuttel open every half an hour on an hour, we narrowly missed 9PM.
You must remember we are displaying the yellow red and black we are in Reich folks!

Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal also known as Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, has a serious set of rules and regulations that you can check for yourself all 76 pages at:

http://www.kiel-canal.org/pages_english/vorschriften/regulations-KIEL-CANAL.pdf

We respect rules, we read them, try to understand them, then filter them, consider the consequences of braking them and carry on, that is why so many people have moved to America, after all we are still flying our stars and stripes 60” by 36” on a 5’stock.
Pleasure boats may sail in the canal between 3.30AM and 11PM, but we were in hurry trying to make it to our prepaid hotels in Copenhagen and there were no berths in the Brunsbüttel yacht harbor so we carry on towards Holtenau
I have sailed through a number of canals at night despite day light regulations of the same fashion, and I was not concerned at all.
The night was quiet, there was no traffic and they did let us in without any fuzz, it was Gosia’s shift so I briefed the crew on the traffic lights pattern and possible hazards and took a nap.
At first it was a walk through the park, we passed some docked vessels in the harbor and there was some shouting in German but we did not make much of they, didn’t sound threatening.
A while later Gosia crossed in safe distans behind some ferry that flashed their beamers at us and yelled through the loud speakers, but they do that in Germany, standard precautionary procedures in concentration camps and everywhere, we yelled thank you and Danke schön! and kept going, the next one about 10NM east was much more persistent we have stopped in the circle of 4milion candle light spotlight and the car ferry was chasing around us in fast doughnuts with 3 different loud speakers and horns on, somebody heard machine guns and German shepherds barking, I can’t confirm that but passengers were yapping for sure.
I am not easily intimidated, but that was not a friendly behavior, after checking the charts and the cruising guide we made a by the book U-turn and wet back to look for nearest legal mooring, we found it after about 3 miles, Nautor Swan facility and a bunkering pontoon with few small sail boats, we docked and went to sleep.
Ten minutes later the search torches hit us from the side of the canal, on the shore stood police car with two cups who ordered us to move to Brunsbüttel inner harbor immediately, we complied without cry, despite our fatigue.
An hour later we started docking, it took forever even with an assistance from bundes polizei, since there wasn’t any room.
After we secured the lines I was called to dock with all documents of the ship and crew, they checked them thoroughly and took notes and than I got the full report of my crimes, 26 counts some more serious then others. The highway patrol officer told me in decent English that they have to punish me by issuing a summons of 5 EURO in cash; I accepted at 2.50AM we were good to go in 40 minutes, leaving behind fat new folder in archives of Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.

I read the rulebook very carefully afterwards; we actually broke 48 rules by motoring on the very edge of the canal at 7.6kt in the straight line with no other vessel in sight!
Even the post office clerk with his hooch is officially obligated to enforce the low in Bundes Republic!
We would have no illegal alien or any crime problem if we assign this kind of authority to our power armed red neck society.

I mentioned the flag, and I could not drop the subject since we carried it on display thought most of Europe causing emotions from unfriendly to hostile. The peace demonstration took form of public urination verbal abuse and mooning, finally kidnapping in Kiel the night before our obedient return passage through Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal. Luckily we did not get fined for sailing without national colors.

When we sailed into river Odra around 7AM there sat older couple on the bank in the woods with their picnic basket, polish flag and a sign “WELKOME SAILORS”, and there were hundreds of people waving, in the shipyards and farms, and falling apart ancient gray industrial sights. Banners everywhere. It still smells and looks like decaying 70s PRL (People’s Republic of Poland) I remember, but it is pretty romantic at the same time, Steve Devoe commented at some point “don’t they throw out things here?” They get attached..
My new friends on Nauticus showed me the jib with stamp from infamous 79 Fastnet race they still use, last year they won Polish IMS championships, and they charter that boat with their vacation earnings driving buses in Ireland!
The first week of August 2007 was by far the most eventful week in Szczecin’s history since ally’s weeklong bombing campaign that leveled the city in 1945.

We docked as a second boat, met our liaison officer Claudia who picked up our laundry and delivered two heavy bags of invitations, goodies and propaganda. My brothers showed up parking miraculously right next to boat, and they managed to do that every time despite all security, barricades and flowing river of people, real talent in civil disobedience.
Out of the way authority; Glinskis are coming!! I have lost that skill; I am such a wimp.

Andrzej Rojek and Steve Devoe took charge: forcing our refreshed dressed to code navy personnel to work while delivery crew got expelled to my mothers command for rejuvenation procedures.
An hour later massage came announcing the boat cleaner than ever and need to move it to second row in order to limit direct exposure to the public.
There was a steady procession of visitors to all vessels including ours, the crowd control turned to be the greatest challenge. Yachting etiquette is in total regress among it seams entire European sailing community, Gosia tried very hard with little result to hoist it few levels, in the name of god.
The big wigs being Rojeks and Devoes lived in a charming little hotel near the waterfront while the rest of us including freshly arrived Zaleski family occupied every chamber of my parents house, overflowing to the neighbors.
Somebody will perhaps scribe about Glinski’s involvement I must say how very proud I am of my dysfunctional family which reunited for those few days, every one of them. Love you guys.
And again wet and dry parades, rock concerts, dances, hayrides, politicians and religious figures, Bosman beer and fireworks, very loud and plenty.
Friends came from all over Poland, to many to mention, on the last day Marta’s grandfather Stah Raciborski showed up for a tour, he was the first sailor I ever met and he got us all into that mess. His older son Marcin was the head of organizing committee in Szczecin.