In the harbour of Hamburg

July 22, 2019

We have a amazing yet busy time in the port of Hamburg. The City Sporthafen is located in the middle of the city, at the foot of the Michel (Church tower) and directly next to the Elbphilharmonie. Subway Station “Baumwall” is right on our doorstep and the “Landungsbrücken” are not far away.

We officially moved from house to ship on Friday, July 12th. The following Saturday we sewed bags for the front stowage spaces in order to be able to store the four foresails separately. One seam was 2.15 m long, I had to rewind the bobbin thread 4 times. We said goodbye to the Jade-Yachting-Werft who had looked after us so well.

On Sunday and Monday we sailed from Wilhelmshaven to Hamburg with a stopover in Cuxhaven. In Cuxhaven we moored in the row for the big boats. We had already done this several times with the Dragonfly, when we did not fold the side-hulls in, but this time we were no longer the smallest boat in the row. You have to get used to that ☺

I thought it would be more difficult to sail up the river Elbe. We were lucky with the wind, predicted the current correctly and thus made good progress. There was no heavy traffic and we hardly met any big pots.

Entering the port of Hamburg with your own ship feels like a childhood dream come true. Even though I didn’t have such a dream in my childhood, the harbour was always something special, were you could feel a breath of the big wide world. Now we are here with the best city address and a view at the locations of the TV-series “Notruf Hafenkante”.

Mathias is building an additional storage shelf for the technical room. He still has a lot of spare parts that have to be stored properly. He also likes to have tools and the like in “his kingdom”. Many last-minute things still came from our house to the ship. (According to the motto: “You can always use some tape, you don’t have to throw it away.”) In the meantime we have marked some things with the stamp “too much of it” and will unload them again.

The summer weather is coming back, so far we are doing fine without shore power. The passing harbour round trips mention us as a “solar powered catamaran”. Maika’s comment: “Shout ‘Trimaran’!”

Of course, the best part of our stay are the visits from our friends almost every day. They are all curious to see the SAN and so far were thrilled.