The exit from Texel is irritating – I seem to be stuck in the water! Fuel consumption is like 50 km/h, but the ArgoFram doesn’t run more than 40. It is really noticeable that she is struggling against the rising tide, so much are the water masses pressing against the strait between the North Sea islands. But I want to get out. And I experience exactly the opposite of what I experienced a few days ago when I left the Elbe and entered the North Sea with the outflowing water at low tide; at that time the ArgoFram really flew.
The crossing to England is tingly in that I’ve never been this far out before: no more land within 100 km, at least – but it doesn’t matter anyway if the engines fail five or 50 or even more kilometres from land (so much for the fear that still resonates; that even if the engines fail completely, the boat floats and simply rocks along if it stops on the surface of the water, so the situation wouldn’t be particularly dramatic, I’ve already grasped that, actually). And indeed, the engines do go on strike from time to time, be it because a tank is empty (I always run a tank to the maximum before switching to another), or because something is wrong when sucking in the petrol and some kind of vacuum is created, which manifests itself at the hand pump (where simply nothing passes through). An unsolved problem since the beginning… But I have learned to deal with it.
In Waddenhaven I was still thinking about going straight to Whitby in northern England, a little over 400 km across the North Sea. But I decided on the ‘short distance’ of around 230 km, also because I wanted to experience something of England’s east coast, especially Lowestoft, England’s most easterly town. – When I arrive, I park at the Royal Yacht Club. I need petrol. And I am confronted by the harbour master with the not very pleasant-sounding question of whether I have already completed the ‘paperwork’ (the extensive entry formalities)? – What I didn’t know is that the latest announcements by the British Prime Minister that all restrictions because of Corona have now been lifted sound good, but are not entirely true, or rather apply to his own public: Only Britons do not have to carry certificates, masks or anything else, but foreigners or people entering the country would still have to be quarantined, even PCR-tested people, even vaccinated people! So I have to wait at the harbour quay until I am personally welcomed by four (!) Border Force officers who have travelled from Felixstowe especially for me…
No one is interested in whether I have contraband on board or whether there are other people on the boat; neither my passport nor the boat are looked at. Instead, we struggle for three hours with the app of the British immigration authorities, and with apps for testing – only the sun shines unimpressed and gives the officials present in their formally correct T-shirts a very pleasant afternoon in the fresh summer air.
My case is new territory for everyone here, far from the usual travel traffic and immediately after the latest Corona loosenings. And I am very impressed by how the officials, regardless of rank, debate this virus and its effects (and the announcement policy of a Boris Johnson) very openly, even controversially and unabashedly. The whole procedure is not only absolutely correct, but in a way humorous; the officials even help me fill in the app entries (the language is very formally and aristo-bureaucratically drafted, not only for me).
Later, two Dutchmen arrive in the harbour, who started with their sailboat a day before me, and who also have a negative test with them (but it is also not accepted). They are faced with the same question as me: a) turn around and go back, b) quarantine in a hotel of their own choice at their own expense or c) quarantine in the ship… Straight away and despite being obviously overtired, they turn around (although no one knows where they are really going) – I, on the other hand, prefer quarantine on my ArgoFram. Because my direction is clear: I want to go further, north and around the islands!
I spend the first night at the Royal Yacht Club in Lowestoft, very snobbish. Then I am asked to go to the ‘secular’ marina (of the British Sailing Association) inland. I gladly do, and find my place there, and also open ears for an expedient interpretation of the quarantine rules. – Unfortunately, the tests do not work as promised; the company ‘Eurofin’ neither manages to deliver my tests on time, nor to evaluate them on schedule – and the Border Force does not dare to take a concrete position on this problem, after all, I am responsible to them for the correct execution of the tests, not Eurofin… [Addendum: So I completed Test Day2 on day four, followed by ‘Test to Release’ on day five (but the result arrived on day seven). The procedure was completed with Test Day8, long after I had left quarantine behind. No one needs to understand this].
Well, this quarantine in the harbour, this prison without walls, requires special responses for my self-management: suddenly everything is different, there is no routine any more, from here to now I experience a break; some people around me actually consider me a danger, or someone to be treated with caution. Hysteria is latently palpable, even if it remains hidden behind ‘correct posture’ (which is probably why they wanted me away from the Royal Yacht Club). That’s why I’m now also trying to shape and enhance my new legal living space, the boat and the jetty in front of it, in my own sense; that’s why it’s important for me to immediately establish my own clear daily structure! Staying fit is the top goal, keeping the body and thus my mindset in swing is almost essential for survival. And doing all the things that should have been done a long time ago (cleaning the boat, finishing blogs). And eat well and sleep a lot, sleep some more… It’s probably the many, really many conversations I’ve had day after day over the past weeks that have put additional demands on me, even drained me. I feel that now. As valuable as these contacts and encounters were and will be in the future, they require presence and cost energy. – And yes, I don’t let myself miss out on giving myself a little holiday spirit during these quarantine days (so my ArgoFram becomes a cosy home cinema in the evening).
As you know, I am not someone who asks himself or ‘the universe’ whether this delay in progress could also have something good. On the contrary: the situation is what it is – only what I make of it turns the situation into one that is in my favour. There is always something to do; letting myself go and waiting to see what ‘the universe’ might have planned for me would (have been) disastrous in view of my discharged batteries. Just like frantically tampering with the unchangeable. So: I enjoy the beautiful weather and make the best of it.
With so much time left, I take the opportunity to educate myself as well. With the help of various internet courses on seafaring, I finally understand more about the wind and its influence on the upstream conditions (nota bene, only after I have already got to know their characteristics in the Baltic and North Sea) and finally understand what the difference between ‘waves’ and ‘swell’ is… Here in the North Sea, the waves follow each other with an interval of five to seven seconds, are clearly ‘softer’ than those in the Baltic Sea, but come with noticeably greater force (in the Baltic Sea the interval is two to three seconds and the waves are rather ‘sharp’ and jagged). The swell, which I only felt so clearly in the North Sea, meets me with long subliminal rises in the water. In consequence, this means that even waves twice as high as in the Baltic Sea can be navigated ‘without problems’ in the North Sea. Since this realisation, looking at the wave forecast no longer drives my pulse to exorbitant heights. The whole complex interplay with wind and current (ebb-tide) is also only now slowly becoming comprehensible to me; only after studying it again do the coins start to fall and I begin to understand how to interpret the wind and weather charts. It’s about time.
Besides the people here in the port of Lowestoft, for whom I am a potential danger with my unclear status, there are also those people who dismiss the whole Corona fuss of politics as theatre and demonstratively oppose it. That’s why during this unfortunate quarantine there are also extremely pleasant moments: I get remarkably frequent visits from people who know-not-how have heard about my fate or project or existence and come to visit me (I’m not allowed – or only under certain medical conditions – to come ashore from the pier, but it’s not forbidden at all to come from the land to me on the pier or even on the boat!), and either talk to me or want to look at the ArgoFram. Even a Youtube blogger has come by and made a post (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKdyOFphR2I) – and kindly supplies me with fresh fruit and food! The biggest surprise, however, is Johanna, who – to cheer me up from far away Basel – has a stylish Afternoon Tea delivered to the jetty on Sunday afternoon! It tasted twice as good.
Well, my life of relative (local) celebrity also has its advantages: The people in charge at the harbour have an understanding that quarantine on an inflatable boat is not necessarily favourable to hygiene – so they let me take a shower under the table or wash clothes when harbour operations are suspended and no one is looking. Just as cryptically, I manage to get more fuel cans, a new hand pump, 360 litres of petrol and fresh food during the quarantine. Quite legally. – Isolation makes you resourceful 😉
On the day of my premature ‘liberation’ I didn’t set off straight away – that wasn’t possible due to the waves. Instead, I strolled through Lowestoft and saw how life really works here. And I can tell you that if the whole of England functions like this spot, then good night: the infrastructure is more than damaged, it’s at the bottom; houses, even whole neighbourhoods, are crumbling, roads are hardly maintained, and when something is just about to be repaired, workmen without the right tools work, patch up rudimentary patches, keep a temporary bad condition temporarily bad, clean facades with paint, paint over the dilapidated underground instead of renovating. The result is a permanently crumbling high gloss – just trash.
In Lowestoft’s city centre, almost every second shop is empty. Instead, there are as many mobile phone repair shops as we once had video rental shops or kebab stands today. They can’t be profitable. So the question is whether they were founded for the same purpose… And then there are the many people with excess time that I meet here by the metre: Overweight or morbidly thin, with overweight being massively overrepresented and put in a decidedly benevolent way – am I the only one who finds these bloated bodies to be sex killers? Obviously, because those I meet take it as a joke, find themselves – adorned with tattoos or make-up or accessories or all of the above – quite funny. And the little children are obviously tumbling, nevertheless. Children who, as a result, already at a very young age are in no way inferior to their parents in terms of abundance. A time bomb (an actual one, not like this virus; the virus just cannibalises it).
And I ask myself: England is a successful sporting nation, one that knows how to integrate migrants into society through sport. – But where is this spirit here in Lowestoft? Where are these self-disciplined upstarts who don’t let the trash slow them down; where are the people who like to move, who step on the gas with confidence?
In summary, I am stunned at how run down this spot is. – No, I am not negative about the imposed waiting time. I’m just gobsmacked at how neglected an area and the people in it are. Sure, there will be the others who work hard and make up for this malaise. But I haven’t seen them, neither directly on the street nor indirectly in the condition of the buildings and infrastructure. On the other hand, I can say that hardly any other community seems to be so tolerant, able to let the other person next door be who he or she is, in all their inadequacies. (Or is this pronounced tolerance just another way of saying that you don’t care in the least what others do, what your neighbour does?) – Conclusion: My experiences on the island of Bornholm could not be more different from my encounters here in Lowestoft! I find both extreme, the caring control in Danish Bornholm just as much as this unconcerned tolerance in Lowestoft.