Bringing you up to date with the videos

I've released a couple of videos recently. One tries to show a couple of boating trips we undertook. Elizabeth wanted to explore some parts of the local river, the Ilmenau, that we'd not been on before, but when we tried to rent canoes for the trip, they were all booked out. After a bit of head scratching, we decided to do what we'd done a few years before and take our 2 optimist dinghies and use them without rudder or centreboard and basically make short squat canoes out of them.

Together with Hazel, and Elizabeth's friend, Lisa, we launched from the launching place just after the mill at Medingen, quickly rejoined the main river and then paddled our way down to Grunhagen for the haul out and end of the trip. In between, we had a short lunch stop on the public picnic tables at Wichmannsburg.

The Ilmenau is a placid, but very beautiful heathland river, flowing gently down to join the river Elbe near Hamburg (actually nearer to Winsen) and its always a pleasure to travel gently down this picturesque waterway. The trip was made the more exciting because a storm a week or so before had blown several large trees down across the river and these had to be negotiated with the dinghies. However, we were only forced into one portage and managed to get through or over all of the other obstacles.

Our second boating trip was when Elizabeth and I took our Pelican daysailer up to the Schlei, Germany's only fjord (although lacking the steep mountainous sides - it's green and rolling countryside there), in the very north of Germany. We stayed at a friendly campsite directly on the waterfront that had its own slipway and jetty for campers' boats. Arriving in the afternoon, we set up camp and then launched Pelican and headed out on a delightful afternoon sail for a few hours, returning to the campsite jetty just after 8 in the evening. Winds were light and we had a gentle downwind sail to a small island, rounded the island in what was very close to no wind, and then were very lucky that the wind shifted and built to give up a most enjoyable reach homewards.

The next day, we headed out after breakfast with the intention of sailing in the direction of Schleswig, the city located near the inland end of the Schlei. We spent several hours beating up the narrow waterway, carefully timing our crossing of the ferry path and then, at about 1 o'clock, as the water widened out, our close reach took us straight to a beckoning small sandy beach that we sailed straight onto, dropped the jib and parked for lunch. Our afternoon sail saw us close hauled in about a force 3 wind, sailing towards the looming city of Schleswig. However, not wishing to miss the campsite shop that closes at 8pm, we decided to do a 180 deg at 3 in the afternoon and basically run back to base. The run back took seemingly next to no time and we were moored by 5pm after a brilliant day of sailing.

Anyhow, here's the video, follwed by another that takes us back to the Tapatya build. Enjoy!

---