Thar she blows!

As always, there are still a few things to do after launching and stepping the mast. In my case, it was the antenna cable for my AIS, which was apparently damaged in several places. I had already repaired the connectors directly at the mast, but it turned out the cable was broken under the flooring. So, I installed a new one, this time running it along the ceiling in the passageway from the salon to the V-berth. It doesn't look as nice, but it works, and that's more important to me.

That evening, I asked Laurin if he wanted to go out for a short shakedown sail, so we set off around eight o'clock and originally intended to just sail to the Schlutuper Wiek. But things went so well, and we were able to sail a good distance down the Trave river, that we decided to move the boat straight to Travemünde. We sailed until about Stülper Huk, then continued under engine power, arriving at Passathafen shortly before 10.

Unfortunately, although Travemünde is very touristy, the tourists we're talking about here don't go out to eat after 9 PM. So, we ended up taking the bus back to the marina at the lock, still hungry.

The next day there was a relatively short and not entirely optimal window of time when the wind would at least allow us to make some progress towards Wismar on a beat. The downside was that this window wouldn't open until 4 PM, and even under good conditions, I estimated it would take about six hours to cover the 24 nautical miles.

But I wanted to give it a try, so together with Markus, I set off pretty much on time at four o'clock, and we arrived in Hohen Wieschendorf around half past ten.

We hadn't expected what was about to happen in between at all.

We were just on the last longer tack to the northeast, with the tack being around Groß Schwansee. The boat was running at about four knots, not quite close-hauled. Suddenly, Markus was very excited, and when I looked in the direction he was pointing, I understood why. Just behind the boat, the dorsal fin and the dark back of a harbor porpoise broke the surface of the water. Harbor porpoises are toothed whales but much smaller than their relatives, the orcas. The "common harbor porpoise," which is found in the Baltic Sea, is only about 1.50 meters long and weighs about as much as a slender person – between 50 and 60 kg, with particularly large specimens weighing up to 90 kg. According to estimates, there are only about 300 of these animals left in the Baltic Sea. It was all the more beautiful that not just one, but surely three or four of them "visited" us here – because they stayed in direct proximity to the boat for at least 10 minutes, surfacing barely two meters away from us, crossing in front of the bow, and at least once, I observed one of them rolling onto its back, showing us its white belly, and swimming aft under the boat.

It's a bit difficult to describe why encounters with whales are so special. Perhaps it's because they are somewhat like us – they are social animals that communicate with each other using a kind of language, yet they live in an element that is foreign to us. Sure, we travel with ships and boats over the water, we dive and swim, but what it means to live in the water is hard to grasp. In any case, we were delighted by the friendly companionship and also by the fact that the group came back to us half an hour later. Something about us seemed to pique their interest.

But that wasn't the only surprising encounter on this trip:

When we came around Lieps into the Wismar bay, it was already dark. We had been motoring for over two hours, and in addition to the navigation lights, we also had the steaming light on, adding four more colorful lights to the bay, which is not lacking in navigational aids. There's the shipping lane that leads from the north around Poel to Wismar, the leading lights at Hohenwieschendorf Huk, the lighthouse in Timmendorf on Poel, a navigational marker on the southeastern tip of Lieps, the leading lights at Walfisch (this "whale" is a bird island in the inner Wismar Bay), along with a few cardinal buoys around the Mittelgrund off Poel, and seemingly, once again this year, a ODAS There was quite a colorful array of lights, and we were probably getting tired. So, we puzzled over what kind of strange buoy it might be that, in addition to a red light, also carries a white light and shows no identification, i.e., it doesn't flash or blink.

A bit later, Markus said, "Peter, that strange buoy, it's a boat." And if we hadn't been so tired, we would have known. What doesn't flash or blink is a boat.

Next, Markus said, "Hey, it's following us." "Nonsense," I said, "it's heading towards Boltenhagen" – I could see the red and white lights, indicating the boat was on our port side. But then, the lights began to draw closer together. In the dim light, I could make out the bow wave, and suddenly, the boat curved behind us and positioned itself on a parallel course to starboard. I had never experienced anything like it before, and in the darkness, it was a strange feeling. The boat gradually closed the distance, and after some time, I could see a person on the foredeck looking towards us. When they were within shouting distance, they instructed me to maintain our course and speed – easy enough, as we were already running on autopilot.

"Are you heading to Wismar?" she asked. I replied, "No, we're heading to Hohenwieschendorf."

The next question was who the skipper was, to which I replied, "I am."

The next question was whether I had been drinking alcohol, and my response was a slightly offended "Of course not!"

After that, we exchanged a few words about how the situation felt a bit strange to me and how I had been visible on the AIS the whole time – which I couldn't say the same for, because when it's very dark, my plotter is dimmed so much that individual elements are no longer discernible.

So this was my first encounter with the naval police.

Half an hour later, we moored in Hohenwieschendorf, where Markus's wife picked us up and then drove me back to Travemünde.