This week we’re concentrating on September 28 & 29, in which Davies’s onboard library is discussed, and a dangerous concoction called ‘coffee-punch’ sampled.
We also talk at length about how you can support this project by pledging to pay for access to the live web adventure in the autumn, acquiring a beautiful Handbook Edition of ‘The Riddle of the Sands which we are threatening to write, and bag various other lovely rewards.
In the podcast we discuss: how we’re going to write a book of our adventures (02:20); our partnership with Unbound (03:18); details of the online adventure you could enjoy in the autumn (04:29); honourable mentions in mainstream media (06:20); the different levels of reward for supporters (06:58). For full details go to: http://unbound.co.uk/books/riddle-of-the-sands. Spread the word. We can’t go on our adventure without you!
Also – the serious and important business of researching ‘coffee punch’ (09:19); Kate Mayfield’s excellent suggestion for a punch recipe (11:11); talk of Danish ‘snaps’, aquavit and ‘bjesk’ (13:27); the fine tradition of singing ‘snapsvisa’ (16:15); the books on board the Dulcibella (18:34); the books on board Childers’s boat in 1897 (21:33); other popular books of the late 1890s about Germany (24:20); E.F Knight, the godfather of small boat sailing in the Baltic (27:16); club members Paul & Tony share their expertise about converted lifeboats (29:22); we start the great centreboard vs leeboard debate (31:08).
Club business: Jeff alerts us to opportunities to visit the Foreign Office building where Carruthers would have worked (33:12); Jerry alerts us to his own planned adventure on board his boat Marihona (34:17).
Missions for next week – members assistance required.
‘the strains of a huge musical box’. What kind of musical box would have been taking up room in a north German pilot’s house in 1898?
Beer. There appears to be quite a lot of beer drunk on September 30, so we think it’s about time we got to know the local Schleswig brews. Join us!
Duck shooting. Finally we get a chance to use our Lancasters (see http://www.riddleofthesands.net/wordpress/2015/03/30/at-lancasters-i-inquired-for-his-gun/). We’d love to hear from someone who’s been duck shooting, and we also need a few German duck recipes, please.
Vikings and the Schlei Fjord. We believe this was a key part of an ancient route for Vikings heading from the Baltic to the North Sea – yet another bunch of people planning to invade Britain by boat. Tell us what you know about this area.
The Curiously Specific Book Club 
Centreboards vs leeboards? Oh, leeboards for sure, all those Dutchmen can’t be wrong! You discussion covered the main points and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Having said that, the first yacht I sailed on as crew in the Islands was a centreboarder, and very good she was, too. But I won’t soon forget seeing a big Dutch sailing barge come roaring past us in the channel out to Terschelling with a lot of sail up in quite a heavy blow, relying on her leeboard to keep her off the pudding. Incidentally, while your podcast quotes people “sipping and unshipping” leeboards and storing them on deck, most of the Frisian boats have them pivoted on the side of the boat, where they are pulled up and down as necessary by tackles suspended in the rigging. When not in use, they are triced up out of the water and sit there well out of the way.
Now, looking forward a bit, our heroes are going to be in Kiel shortly and so will you be in October. I don’t know if it still exists, but if it does, a very good source of information about sailing the Baltic and the Kiel Canal would be the British Army Sailing Club, which is situated on the Kiel fijord. They welcome visitors and we stayed there on our Danish trip. We had a thoroughly good time and they were very helpful. The Army owned then a number of sailing yachts which were used for sail training and other sporting purposes and kept there. The Club might have fallen victim to the armed forces cutbacks of recent years, but you might be able to link up with someone who knows about them.
While the Kiel/Nordzee Canal occupies only a small part of the plot, it is very interesting and Childers describes it accurately. As an important waterway, it is very highly regulated and every vessel using it has to obey the rules and the light signals (given by great light towers on the entry/exit locks and at various points along the canal itself). One of Davies’s reasons for carrying the Nautical Almanac mentioned in the podcast might well have been because (in the edition we had, at least), the Nordzee Canal rules and regulations were set out in it. That is also the reason why all the sailing vessels – including Bartels’s smack and the “Dulcibella” – none of which had motors, were all required to be towed up the canal by a steam launch. Motorised yachts may transit the canal under their own steam and may even hoist their sails, but they must keep the motor on at all times.
Finally, let me congratulate you both on what you are doing. It is a splendid endeavour and a great wheeze. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun!
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Should have looked it up first! Here’s the URL for the British Army Yacht Club at Kiel – looks as if they are still going strong, so you would do well to contact them.
http://www.bkyc.de/
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Yes, the BKYC is an excellent stopover with lots of facilities. The army sailors will demonstrate the technique of mooring Baltic style, stern to the quay, under sail, and later, in the bar, a method of getting seriously drunk by throwing dice and nominating the loser’s drink for him. A cocktail of gin, rum, sherry and beer will do the job quite quickly.
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