Tomorrow’s the day. Koraki goes in the water, as planned. And it's time, for once, to emerge from the tunnel of boat-work.
This region between the Schlei and the Flensburg Fjord – Angeln, it’s called – is one of the few landscapes I’m this fond of. Rolling moraine hills. Threaded with small roads hedged by bushes and trees. Roe deer, pheasants, gulls, sea eagles … there’s so much wildlife about. When archaeologists dig here they find nothing of the Romans but a great deal of the Vikings. Until 1864 this was Denmark, and it still shows – in place names like Brodersby (Koraki’s home port), and in a Danish-speaking minority. Good country. Over the years I’ve spent here working on the boat, it has come to feel remarkably like home.
Part of that familiarity comes from the talk with the boat neighbours here, who also have a launch date in mind by which everything necessary is meant to be done. Michael above all, who – as chance would have it – likewise carries a Starnberg number plate but now lives in Brodersby. One reason they moved here to the Schlei is that it reminds them of Sweden. (They lived some years in Stockholm.)
A landscape I’m tremendously fond of. And it was good to knock off a little early at the yard today, with the work on the boat. Long as the list of remaining jobs is, this was the moment to go for a run along the Schlei, then dangle my legs over the water and have a beer.
Tomorrow, then, an early start, to put Koraki back in the water.
