The sail to Borkum was interesting and fantastic. On the harbourmaster's advice we locked out from behind the polder at about 13:30 and headed off down the channel for the open sea. There was an opening road bridge after the lock and it is slightly nerve-wracking to see how close the mast rigging seemed to be to the hinged up bridge. That said, I am sure that even if you were on the wall, the rigging would not touch the bridge.

All the books say it and yet somehow you don't fully understand it until you get to the Fresian Islands. The problem is you are beholden to the tides and there are long channels into the harbours of refuge. Also, these channels are herring-boned out at an angle to the string of islands so on departure you have to head west a long way along 'the herring bone' and then do a reverse angle to head off down the 'herring's spine', going east. This is a bit frustrating because you have to go backwards before you can come forwards.

The outer part of the channel out of Lauwersoog was pretty hectic! It is only 4m deep in places and on either side of the boat there are waves breaking on a sand bank. It was a nasty short, and not so small, chop that was building against the out-going tide, added to a direct wind against tide situation. At one stage we had a breaking wave over the foredeck, a good test for how secure the sea kayak is. It survived with flying colours! We were quite relieved to turn into the deep water and then we had the most fantastic reach and broad reach down to the Ems river estuary.

The Ems is the border between Germany and Holland and quite busy with traffic. We headed down the main channel and it was surprisingly free of shipping on that evening. We hung a sharp left at the Borkum Island turn off and arrived in the harbour at about 8pm. It had been a great sail doing over 7 knots most of the time. First impressions of Borkum were not great as we came in we could see the main seafront town which looked a bit "Blackpool-ish" and the harbour was pretty industrial. The smaller yacht harbour only had 1.5 m draft. We could deal with that in our boat but we saw no other boats our size so we gave it a miss for fear of a tight-poled mooring too small for us. The yacht section in the main Harbour was chock-a-block but we saw 2 other yachts on a massive floating pontoon built for tugs, work boats etc, so we pulled in. We were exhausted! Veronica made a quick Moroccan chicken curry with aubergines,cabbage and garlic for supper. It was delicious!

Tuesday dawned and it was our day off. The previous night after much studying the tides and scribbling down the permutations of the schedule I had drawn up for the trip, we hooked on the idea of heading for the shinning lights of Helgoland. From what I can make out, it is not a very inspiring island but it is Germany's tax free haven overrun, I am told, by hundreds of tax free shopping types of the worst kind. It has an interesting history. It was a British island until 1890, when it was swapped with the Germans for Zanzibar. England occupied it again after WWII and it was used as an RAF bombing target until they gave it back to Germany in 1952. So you may well ask, why the hell are we going there then? The cheap booze and diesel is not the magnet, actually it is to do with the tides and the planning challenges it helps us overcome. We were going to go to Norderney, but that has an even shallower entrance bar and from there it is a long haul to Cuxhaven. The additional challenge is, as every book says, you have to go into the Elbe on the flood tide, don't attempt it on an ebb. If you are in any of the other Friesian islands you have to make their tidal gate to get out to sea and you then have to arrive on the flood for the Elbe. That does not work too well given the passage time in between, so we are heading for the apparently delightful Helgoland. Will report back later.

We had a very pleasant day off in Borkum. First impressions of the place were wrong. For the first time on the trip, we got both bikes out and took the 7km cycle track that winds through the vegetated dunes into town. Town was actually very quaint with lots of great nooks and crannies once you got off the beach front. There was also a very novel narrow-gauge railway with carriages that resembled those from the Wild West that take people and things from the harbour to town. We had a chilled time and prepared ourselves for the big sail tomorrow.

We were up at 04h30 as we had a long 74 nautical miler ahead of us. The honourable Germans that were rafted up to us, were too. They had told us that they too were heading for Helgoland and also wanted to leave to get the 12NM ride with the ebb out of the channel before taking the 'herringbone' right turn to head eastwards. They had however decided not to go: they had a smaller boat and had decided they did not want to deal with the predicted 25 knots in the late afternoon. It was honourable that they got up to let us out. Going was an excellent decision. The most wind we saw was about 22 knots and with the staysail and a single reef in the main we rollicked along at between 6.5 and 7 knots on a broad reach. We sailed out to the edge of the TSS (traffic separation scheme) and then sailed parallel with it for about 40 NM before hanging a left up to Helgolander Bucht. The TSS ends just at the entrance to the Jade estuary. The section up to Helgoland is where 3 TSS's converge on the Elbe Estuary and is a free for all. There was a lot of shipping but no issues, we had to layoff slightly for an outbound vessel called Frank. The sail had been brilliant. As we arrived in Hegoland, it started to spit and by the time we got into the harbour is was bucketing with rain and as windy as hell on a cold day. We were making an approach on a pontoon berth and got chased away by a gesticulating Dutchman. We could not understand what he was on about, something about 23m. Later we saw the magnificent 23m yacht come and take the place. We got another isolated floating pontoon with a hectic narrow ladder to climb to get out of the pit. No mains electricity and no WiFi, Veronica, not happy.

After supper we went in search of WiFi, despite being tired. We now have some days in hand so have decided to take a day off and gather ourselves before making our approach on the Elbe and the Kiel canal. It is now looking like Grania will join us in the middle of the Kiel canal in Rendsburg

We found WiFi.......in an odd little bar.....this Island is a seriously odd place but more about that after we have been here for a day. This morning we were greeted by some friendly South Africans peering down at our boat over the precipice, they work for one of the companies that does offshore wind farms. We were having a good chat, partly in Afrikaans when along came 2 rather hot blonde female customs officials. Veronica was still in bed. They asked for our passports. This is the first time this has happened on this trip. So, as they peered over the precipice, I asked if they were coming down to the boat or if I should come up. They took one look at the ladder and the 10m drop and said 'you come up!' Veronica was unimpressed as she had to get out of her duvet and make an appearance on deck so they could see she was the person on the passport. The girls were friendly and smiley and I wondered if they had ever needed to use the gun that was in the holster.

A complete aside, the customs hut has the word Zoll on it, which is German for Customs. It occurred to me rather randomly, whether it was someone with a sense of humour who had christened maijuana Zol as a tongue in cheek or is it just a coincidence?

More on Helgoland in the next episode