Phwoaargh worra sail

Please forgive the robust subject line - it was a v good sailing day. The Baltic delivers again. We are working our way around the island of Fyn and last night positioned ourselves for the expected wind and it worked. A steady F5 Westerly and we had 6 hours sailing with the wind on the quarter and then the beam to take us across the top of Fyn and down its east coast to Kerteminde. 

In the biggest gusts we saw 8.1knots SOG (speed over ground) on our GPS plotter. The maximum hull speed of our boat, even assuming the heeling over increases our waterline from 27' to 30', is 7.3kn so we must have had a 1kn current with us too. No tides in the Baltic but there are currents which flow roughly with the wind.

We threaded two narrow channels between Fyn and smaller islands, crossed a narrow shipping channel that leads via a canal to Odense (the main town/city on Fyn) without any ships in the way, saw a few yachts but not many. The open sea had decent waves by Baltic standards but nothing compared to the Channel in this wind. What a joy. No pics though cos it just doesn't transmit the joy. There is a random pic of people sailing at sundown from a couple of days ago.

We've had enough of canals and commercial ports which is why we skipped Odense. 

The last few miles across the bay to Kerteminde were dead upwind, and rather than beat ourselves to death tacking in we put the motor on and dropped the sails. Quit while we're ahead seemed a good plan. 

Now we are nursing our aching shoulders and arms (heavy weather helming syndrome) and cooking dinner in our berth in the large marina (pic - note the German flags which are very common). There seems to be some issue about this berth being for charter yachts, however it had a green available sign (rather than red reserved) which is the system in the Baltic ... so there.