We leave Seedorf the next morning and motor out to the mouth of the river.

“I think that fisherman there is trying to tell us something”, says the First Mate as we reach the sea.

She points to a man standing up in his small rowing boat, waving his hands animatedly.

“He’s saying that we have just run over his nets”, translates the First Mate. “I won’t repeat the rest.”

I look back and see that we have just sailed between two flags. I had noticed one of them as we came out, and had steered clear of it, but had missed the other. Luckily the flags don’t seem to be following us, so our keel must have missed the net suspended below them.

“Just be more careful the next time”, shouts the fisherman.

“Perhaps you should be more careful next time not to place your nets right across a narrow entrance with a sandbank on one side”, I think to myself. Instead, I wave apologetically.

We pass the peculiar structure looking like a floating house that we had spotted on the way in.

“I found out what it was”, says the First Mate. “One of the men in the harbour said it was used in GDR days for demagnetising ships so that they wouldn’t set mines off. It was abandoned after Wiedervereinigung. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounds possible.”

Another relic of the Cold War, I think.

We have a nice gentle sail across the Greifswalder Bodden with the wind on our starboard quarter.

We eventually reach Greifswald Wieck, a small town on the edge of the Greifswalder Bodden. A lifting bridge spans the river Ryck that leads to Greifswald city, our destination. The bridge opens every hour to let boats through, and as luck would have it we have only ten minutes to wait. But even that isn’t easy – there is no waiting pontoon, and there is a stiff breeze with not much room to manoeuvre, particularly as a large expensive-looking motor boat decides to wait parallel to us.

It is brand new Hanse, and it turns out is being tested by a prospective buyer. The Hanse factory is in Greifswald.

“Did it perform well?”, shouts the First Mate from the bow.

“Perfectly”, comes the answer, in an American accent. “It’s the boat of my dreams.

The bridge eventually opens, and we pass through.

We wind our way up the river Ryck through fields of barley, until we come to Greifswald.

As we tie up, we spot Astarte, the boat belonging to Axel and Claudia, fellow sailors whom we had met originally in Dover in our first year of sailing, and had met again last year in the Danish archipelago. While we were in Seedorf, they had popped in and we had agreed to catch up in Greifswald. In the evening, we have drinks and snacks on their boat.

The conversation turns to the war in Ukraine. We all agree that it is terrible.

“I do feel sorry for the Russian people though”, says Axel. “They have no idea of what is going on because of the propaganda that they are fed. Their government has cut off all news outlets except the official ones, and people are being arrested if they speak out against the war.”

“True”, I say. “But how do you know what is propaganda and what is not? Many of the Russians, especially the older ones, don’t see their news as propaganda, they just believe it is true. They trust Putin, and think that if he says that a war is necessary, then it must be. And look at what we saw in Prora – propaganda sold as a wholesome healthy lifestyle. In the same way, how do you tell that what we are told in the west isn’t also propaganda?”

“The difference is that we have lots of sources of information”, he responds. “Different newspapers, radio, TV, the internet. People can read or listen to all these different viewpoints and make up their own minds, not what they are told to believe.”

“But it isn’t really like that, is it?”, I say. “Not in practice at least. Everyone has their favourite newspaper or social media feed because it reinforces their own worldview and they don’t have time to read other different points of view as they get about their daily business. So we all just end up in our own little echo chambers reading and listening to the things and people that fit in with our way of thinking. It’s only people with lots of time on their hands like us retirees that have the luxury of reading lots of different viewpoints. And even then, how many do? Unscrupulous politicians know this and bend the truth slightly and people will believe them if it is reported in their favourite newspaper.”

“I can see your point”, says Axel. “But at least we have the option of getting our information from different sources. In Russia, they don’t have that option.”

The next day we take the bikes and explore Greifswald. The city is another of the Hanseatic League cities, but manages to combine its wealthy trading past seamlessly with academia – it is also home to one of the oldest universities in the world, established in 1456. Like some of its sister Hansa cities, it became part of Sweden in the 1600s and remained so until 1815, when it became part of Prussia. Then in 1871, it was incorporated into Germany.

In GDR times, the medieval buildings were neglected, although much new housing was built in typical ‘no-frills’ communist style. Since the 1990s, there has been a massive effort to restore the city to its former medieval glory.

It is also now the home of boat-builders Hanse Yachts, although the hulls apparently are built in Poland where environmental regulations are not so strict.

“I’m getting a bit hungry”, says the First Mate. “Let’s get something to eat. Look, this stall is selling pea-and-ham soup. I wouldn’t mind some of that. You can have a fisch-brötchen.”

Just as we are waiting, a stork drops from the sky and pushes her way to the front of the queue. As they do.

“Unbelievable”, says the First Mate. “I have never seen anything like that before.”

“Perhaps she has just delivered a baby, and wants a quick snack to restore her strength”, I say. “At least she could have waited in the queue like everyone else.”

“I think that she is a regular”, the First Mate replies. “Look, the stall keeper is coming out and giving her some food.”

Sure enough, the stork is given her fill of herring to eat, then flies away as quickly as she appeared.

“I was talking to one of our neighbours today”, says the First Mate over dinner that evening. “She was born and bred in Greifswald. She is a paediatrician and was saying that in GDR times, she had lots of work as the culture was for everyone to have their kids early. Now, after reunification, they are adapting to western customs and are having their families later, so there is less demand for paediatricians.”

“She was also saying that her father was a scientist”, she continues, “and that because of his position, he was permitted by the GDR government to travel abroad to attend conferences and the like. Most people weren’t allowed to, of course. Then her sister met a Greek chap and wanted to marry him, but her father knew that this would mean the end of his travel, as he wouldn’t be trusted any more, what with a member of the family from the West. So they had a long family discussion about it that went through the whole night and well into the next day. The upshot of it was that the father decided to give up his privileges so that his daughter could marry the man that she loved and be happy.”

“Very poignant”, I say. “It’s hard to imagine how restrictive it must have been for ordinary people. Imagine not being able to travel to other countries and to see the world.”

“True”, says the First Mate. “But only if you like travelling. Even in the West, many people are quite happy just to stay in their own country for their whole lives. It wouldn’t bother them at all.”

We leave the next morning for Sassnitz on the east coast of Rügen. At first the wind is almost non-existent, and we drift along, the sails flapping uselessly.

“I think we’ll have to get a spinnaker”, says the First Mate. “Those other boats over there are making much better progress with theirs.”

“It’s on the wish list”, I say. “Perhaps we can get one this winter.”

As we round the point of Thiessower Haken, the wind changes around to the north-west and picks up considerably. We have an exhilarating sail close-hauled up the coast of Rügen, past all the places that we had visited on the land – Göhren, Baabe, Sellin, Binz, Prora.

“I should have kept my mouth shut”, says the First Mate. “There’s a bit too much wind now”.

“Well, if you take the average it’s just the right amount”, I say. “Nothing to complain about.”

Unfortunately the wind is coming directly from the Sassnitz direction, and we have to tack to get there. That slows us down. But we make it, and tie up in one of the box berths.

“You made three mistakes”, the next door neighbour tells the First Mate somewhat condescendingly after we finish mooring. “Firstly, you kept your fenders down as you came in, secondly, you should have got the windward side secured first, and thirdly, you focused too much on the bow, whereas it’s more important to get the stern sorted out first.”

“Pompous old git”, says the First Mate later. “Who does he think he is?”

“Not only that, he wasn’t entirely correct anyway”, I say. “It is true as a rule we should have lifted the fenders on the way in to stop them being squeezed by the poles, but it’s a wide berth and there was plenty of room. Secondly, the wind was directly from behind, so neither side was windward. And thirdly, we do need to get the stern sorted first, but that’s my job, so let me do that while you look after the bow.”

The Pompous Old Git leaves the next morning.

“I’m really glad he has gone”, says the First Mate. “I am not very good at giving people the cold shoulder when they are right next door.”

In the afternoon, we take the bus from Sassnitz up to Königsstühl, the King’s Chair, where there is a visitor’s centre for the Jasmund National Park. As we get off, another tourist bus draws up behind us.

“Quick”, says the First Mate. “Let’s get in before them, or else we will be all day before we get our tickets.”

We make it before the tourists, and spend an enjoyable couple of hours going through the exhibition on the national park.

A local legend has it that God was making the earth and had nearly finished it when he had completed Bornholm. He had a bit of building material left over, but was too tired to carry on, so he threw the remainder as far as he could into the sea. It ended up against the Pomeranian coast to become the island of Rügen, but he thought it looked too untidy so took some of his plaster and smeared it over to make the chalk cliffs we see today.

A nice little legend. The geological explanation is that the limestone was laid down during the Cretacious Period, about 70 million years ago, by small creatures whose shells contained calcium, which metamorphosed into the chalk we see today. During the glacial periods, this chalk was covered in debris brought by the advance of the ice sheets.

Either way, when the ice retreated 10,000 years ago, beech forests advanced from the south until most of Europe, including Rügen, was covered. Then, of course, came humans, who cleared much of the forest to grow crops and develop settlements. The Jasmund National Park, along with several other national parks throughout Europe, is a small intact remnant of that once-extensive beech forest.

”That was really interesting”, says the First Mate as we emerge. “I enjoyed that. Now let’s go and see the Königsstühl. Here’s the path, look.”

We follow the path to a viewing platform where we can see the chalk cliffs. They are impressive.

“One of the stories to explain why it is called Königstühl is that the Swedish king Charles XII sat here in 1715 to direct a battle out in the Baltic between his ships and the Danish fleet”, the guide book tells me. “However, as the first reference to Königstühl was way back in 1586, this can’t have been the case. It is more likely that it came from an ancient practice of aspiring rulers of the local tribe being required to race to climb the cliffs from the beach to sit on a chair at the top, with the one getting there first becoming the king.”

“You men”, says the First Mate. “Always trying to prove yourselves! Anyway, did you know that we are amongst the last to walk on this particular viewing platform? They are building a replacement that will be totally suspended. It is supposed to help stop the erosion of the cliffs.”

We wait in silence holding our breaths, listening to the muted throb of the German pocket battleship’s engines overhead. There is a crump as it fires its depth charges, and moments later the violent impact as the shock wave reaches us, shaking the submarine and knocking a few of us to our knees.

“Check any damage”, I order. “And make sure the crew maintain complete silence.”

“Aye aye, sir”, comes the reply.

The dull orange glow of the radar screen illuminates the tense faces of the men in the control room staring intently at their equipment.

“Water leaking into the torpedo room, sir”, comes back the report. “But it should hold. No serious damage.”

The sound of the battleship’s engines fade slowly into the distance. The danger has passed for now.

“Right”, I say. “Time for the hunted to become the hunter. Turn on the machine that goes ‘ping’, Number One”.

The machine that goes ‘ping’ goes ping.

“Arm torpedoes”, I order.

“Aye aye, sir”, comes the acknowledgement.

“Vent the tanks, Number One.”

We rise to just below the surface.

“Up periscope”.

I peer through the lens. About half a mile in front of us is the battlecruiser that had tried to depth-charge us.

“Fire One”, I shout. “Fire Two.”

In rapid succession the hiss of the two torpedoes leaving the submarine is heard, followed by the force of the recoil sending tremors through the boat.

“Entschuldigen Sie, bitte”, says a voice behind me. “Kann ich vorbeikommen? Can I get past?”

A woman is trying to squeeze past me.

“Ja, naturlich”, I say, moving to one side. “Es tut mir leid.”

For a fleeting moment, I wonder why I am speaking German to a woman in a British submarine torpedoing a German pocket battlecruiser. Then I remember where I am – in the British submarine HMS Otus tied up in Sassnitz harbour. Otus was a Royal Navy Oberon-class submarine launched in 1962 and decommissioned in the early 1990s. A German businessman bought her and converted her into a museum and opened her to the public.

“I am not sure that I could have coped on a submarine”, I tell the First Mate later. “Too claustrophobic. To think that there were 68 men on it. Many of them were just sleeping on bunks in the corridor. No privacy at all. Only the captain had his own cabin.”

“What does the machine that goes ‘ping’ actually do?”, she asks.

“I have no idea”, I say. “I just put that bit in to make it sound like a submarine. All the movies have it.”

We leave Stralsund the next morning in time for the 0820 opening of the Rügenbrücke, the bridge joining the island of Rügen to the mainland. We are one of the first through once it lifts. The wind is from the west and we have a pleasant broad reach down into the Greifswalder Bodden.

The First Mate’s phone pings. It’s a text from Bruderherz, her brother.

“You are going a bit slow”, it says. “That other boat has just passed you.”

He is watching us on MarineTraffic. Modern technology.

“It’s a bigger boat”, replies the First Mate. “And he’s got more sail area out than us.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me”, says Bruderherz.

We eventually arrive in Lauterbach. We tie up in the town harbour, and go and have a coffee.

“You know”, says the First Mate. “I think we should move from the harbour around to the marina. There isn’t any wifi here and I want to download some movies. Their brochure says they have good wifi.”

We untie the lines and reverse out of the berth. There is a strong crosswind, and we somehow manage to catch the flagpole in one of the stern poles and break it. The second in less than a year. We clearly haven’t got the hang of box berths yet. At least not in cross winds.

“You just need more practice”, says the First Mate. “Preferably without the flagpole attached. Anyway, at least we will have wifi tonight.”

(Did you notice the ‘you’ when a mistake has been made?)

We motor around to the marina. The wind is stronger now and we struggle to stay straight for entering the berth. I have to abort twice before finally managing to get in without damaging anything.

“I definitely need a beer after that”, I say, wiping the sweat from my brow.

Silence. Only a keyboard being tapped furiously.

“I don’t seem to be able to get any wifi here either”, says the First Mate shortly. “What’s wrong with this place?”

“Yes, it isn’t very strong”, agrees the lady in the marina office. “Most people come and sit outside the office to use it.”

The ensuing storm clouds weren’t in the forecast. The lady looks a little perplexed as the First Mate gives her a lesson in truthful advertising.

We rig up an internet link through our phones instead.

“Well, I’ve booked them”, says the First Mate that evening. “We can travel on the buses and trains free for a month now. All for €9 each. Not bad, eh?”

She’s talking about the tickets you can buy for €9 a month which entitle you to free travel for that month on local buses and trains in Germany.

“There’s a little steam train for tourists that leaves from here and goes over to Göhren on the east coast of Rügen”, she continues. “I have checked and the €9 ticket is valid for it. It’s called Rasender Roland, or ‘Raging Roland’. Let’s go on it tomorrow. We can take the bikes and cycle back.”

In the morning, we cycle round to the little railway station at Lauterbach Mole. Sure enough, Rasender Roland arrives a few minutes later, puffing his way pompously to the buffers at the end of the line. I wonder where the raging bit comes from. A cloud of hot steam and coal smoke engulfs us.

“Mmmmm” I say. “I love that smell. It reminds me of when I was a kid.”

“Me too”, says the First Mate.

The narrow-gauge line started in 1895 and was originally part of a larger network over the whole island of Rügen. Gradually it has been reduced so that nowadays the only stretch that still runs is from Lauterbach to Göhren.

Our bikes are loaded into the guard’s van at the rear, and we find a seat in one of the carriages. The guard passes through the carriage taking a cursory glance at passenger smartphones and crumpled bits of paper.

“Well, that wasn’t very thorough”, I say. “He didn’t even look at mine. I could have had any old thing on my screen. I am surprised they don’t have to scan each ticket, even if it is only to know how many people are using the scheme.”

“I think they just assume that everyone has one of the €9 tickets”, says the First Mate. “Germans love a bargain, and it is almost unbelievable that anyone wouldn’t have it.”

We puff our way through the Rügen countryside full of fields of ripening barley, stopping at each small village with the clanking of brakes and hissing of steam. We start to climb through a heavily forested area, the sunlight blocked out by the dense canopy of trees.

Eventually we reach the eastern coast of Rügen and a series of bathing resorts one after the other. The end of the line is at Göhren, the southernmost of these.

“Let’s get some lunch here, have a look around, then we can start cycling back”, says the First Mate.

Replenished, we follow the cycle route signs. They take us to Baabe, then turn inland to the Selliner See. We arrive at Möritzdorf, a small village at the southern end of the See where its brackish water drains into the Greifswalder Boddin. Here we find a small rowing boat that is used to ferry people and bicycles from one side of the outlet to the other.

“Come on, hurry”, says the First Mate. “It’s just reaching our side at the moment. We can catch it.”

We wait until the arriving passengers disembark, then pass the bikes over to the ferryman and clamber on ourselves. A small dog remains in the boat.

“That’s Jackson”, says the ferryman. “He’s the boss. You need to do as he tells you.”

The First Mate sits down.

“Move over”, says Jackson gruffly. “That’s my side.”

The First Mate moves over. It occurs to me that she is never that obedient with me. Perhaps I need to bark more.

We reach the other side, clamber out, and unload the bikes.

“Zwei personen”, says the ferryman. “Zwei euros, bitte.”

We pedal our way along a small lane through rolling farmland to the top of a steep hill, then down again. At the bottom is a small village called Seedorf. We decide to stop for a drink of coffee and an ice-cream.

“This is a lovely little place”, says the First Mate. “So peaceful and quiet. Even a small harbour. Why don’t we bring Ruby Tuesday around here and chill out for a few days?”

“Sounds like a good idea”, I say.

We continue on, passing through lush green woods, and delightful picturesque villages. Old ladies tend their gardens, old men their cows and sheep. It’s as if time has stood still.

“Look there’s a Trabant”, says the First Mate. “Do you remember that time we went to East Germany after the Wall came down? We were driving along a motorway and passed a Trabant that was struggling up a hill. I’ll never forget it – it had the mum and dad in the front, and two children in the back, all quite large people. The dad was hunched over the wheel urging it on as he was too tall to sit straight!”

“I remember it well”, I say.

The Trabant was another of the cars built in GDR times a bit like the IFA we had seen in Stralsund. It too had a two-stroke engine ranging from 500 cc up to 1100 cc, and was front-wheel drive. The body was made from a plastic derived from cotton waste. It was first manufactured in 1957 and remained pretty much the same until it was discontinued in the 1990s. Reliability was not one of its selling points.

“We used to say that it was a spark-plug with a roof”, says the First Mate.

“Do you know why they had heated rear windows?”, I ask, not to be outdone. “To keep the hands warm of the people pushing it to start it in winter.”

The old ones are the best ones.

The forest gives way to a coastal track before we arrive back in Lauterbach. A yacht is passing through the gap between Rügen and the small island of Vilm.

“We’ll be passing through there on the way to Seedorf in a couple of days”, I say.

The next morning, we catch Rasender Roland  again, and get off at Binz. From there, we cycle north to Prora, where there are the remains of a vast sprawling complex built in Nazi times around the concept of Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy), or KdF.

Stretching 4.5 km along a beautiful sandy beach, and designed to cater for 20,000 people at a time, the complex was supposed to be part of the Nazi plan to prepare the workers’ mindset for war through judicious use of ideological indoctrination and unconditional belief in the Führer. As it turned out, WW2 interrupted its construction and it was never used for that purpose. But this didn’t stop KdF being highly influential in other areas of national life.

We spend a fascinating couple of hours browsing the exhibition in the Dokumentations Zentrum on the history of the complex and of Nazi Germany in general.

“I didn’t realise that the Nazis believed the island Rügen to be the spiritual home of the Germans”, says the First Mate. “The Germania that Tacitus wrote about.”

“It was all part of their propaganda”, I say. “They were really into ‘blut und boden’, the idea of a people being inextricably tied to the land, so they had to create a myth that the German people as a whole had an original homeland where they worshipped gods and goddesses in sacred groves and practised pagan rituals.”

“It is interesting how the whole KdF thing was all packaged up as ‘wholesome’ things – health, fitness, relaxation, community, patriotism and so on”, says the First Mate. “Boys were supposed to be strong and forceful, girls to be caring German mothers. I find it amazing how much people were influenced by it. I wonder if it could happen these days?”

It is happening these days, I think. We are all influenced by the media, politicians, our families, our peers, one way or another. We are told that leaving the EU would lead to sunlit uplands, the Americans are told that the election was stolen from the Republicans, the Russians are told that a war is necessary to ‘denazify’ a neighbouring country wanting to attack them. And a large number of people in the respective countries believe these things, despite all the evidence to the contrary, even to the point of taking pride in ignorance of the truth. Is there any such thing as truth anyway? You make your choice of a particular way of looking at the world, and you pick and choose the evidence that supports that narrative and ignore anything that doesn’t. We all do it. Are we really living in ‘post-truth’ times or has it always been like that?

“You are daydreaming again”, says the First Mate. ”Come on, let’s have some lunch. There’s supposed to be a café here somewhere.”

The next day we sail around to Seedorf, the picturesque little village we had cycled through earlier. It is very shallow, and there is a small sandbank at the entrance which we somehow manage to graze. In the evening, we have some drinks and listen to the prolific birdsong around the small harbour. A cuckoo calls.

“Did you know that Störtebeker was a famous pirate?”, says the First Mate, noticing my beer bottle. “It was one of the stories we had when we were growing up. He lived a way back in the 14^th century and preyed on rich Hanseatic merchant ships, and became very rich. His name means ‘empty a mug of beer in one gulp’. Quite an impressive feat given that mugs were four litres in those days.”

“In the end, he was betrayed, captured, taken to Hamburg and beheaded. The story goes that he made a deal with the mayor of Hamburg that he should spare as many of his men as he could walk past after he was beheaded. Apparently he managed to walk headless past eleven of his men before falling over, but the mayor wasn’t impressed and beheaded them anyway.”

“That was quite an achievement of Störtebeker’s”, I say. “But a bit dishonourable on the part of the mayor. Well, I’ve finished my beer, but not in one gulp though. And not four litres either.”

“Don’t apply for a job as a pirate then”, says the First Mate.

In the morning, we sit in the cockpit and have our breakfast, listening to the cuckoo.

“I think I would like to see the Jagdschloss today”, I say. “Since we have been here, I have been intrigued by that tower up there poking out of the forest. Fancy coming?”

“You won’t be happy until you have been up to see it”, says the First Mate. “Why don’t you cycle up there this morning? I think I might take the bus up to Bergen in the centre of the island and do some browsing. You can tell me all about it tonight.”

It is a pleasant cycle ride around a brackish lagoon and barley fields until the last bit, a steep hill where the road is cobblestones and potholes. I push the bike up that last bit to protect the wheels. At least that’s what I tell myself. In reality it is my knees.

The Jagdschloss is an old hunting lodge built by the local Prince Wilhelm Malte I of Putbus back in the mid-1800s. By all accounts he was pretty well connected, and all sorts of the Prussian nobility attended hunts at the castle and the banquets afterwards. Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia and Otto von Bismark were amongst the guests.

In 1865, the Prince’s main palace at Putbus had been badly damaged by a fire, despite desperate attempts by the villagers to save it. While it was being rebuilt, he and his family moved into the hunting lodge, and lived there for 17 years. It must have been tough for them. The Palace itself was eventually blown up by the GDR regime who saw it is a relic of decadent Prussian imperialism.

In 1944, ownership of the hunting lodge was taken over by the Nazis for the Prince of Putbus’s alleged involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Nowadays it is still owned by the state, but is used as a museum.

Two hunting dogs guard the entrance. Inside, the walls are adorned with antlers and other trophies, and photographs of hunting. Although most of the original furnishings disappeared during GDR times, a restoration in 2014 gives a flavour of aristocratic life in those times. Prussian aristocracy certainly knew how to live.

The stairs to the tower are cantilevered, entirely supported by its walls. I was getting used to climbing towers by this stage, and after the 90 m tower of St Mary’s church in Stralsund, this one is a doddle. Once again, though, the view was superb, from Sassnitz in the north of Rügen right down to Usedom. Below me lie the forests of Granitz.

“Well, Bergen wasn’t that interesting”, says the First Mate that evening. “How was the Jagdschloss?”

I tell her.

“What a shame the GDR people destroyed the palace!”, she exclaims when I get to that bit. “Vandals.”

It chimes with the current debate about whether monuments from a previous era should be destroyed if they don’t match current ideology. The Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 because they weren’t the right religion. Statues of people benefiting from the slave trade have been pulled down. This Putbus palace was blown up because it didn’t fit with communist ideology. But destruction doesn’t seem to be the answer. We somehow need to find a way of preserving works of art and culture without offending living people’s sensitivities.

“Have you noticed that the water here tastes a bit strange?”, I say the next morning. “My Earl Grey this morning was almost undrinkable. Sort of an acidic taste.”

“Oh, no”, says the First Mate. “I put some vinegar in the kettle last night to descale it and forgot to mention it to you. I am so sorry.”

“Cuck-oo, Cuck-oo”, says the cuckoo.

We leave Timmendorf at 0800. The wind is from the south-west, but it is only a few knots, and we move slowly. We follow the buoyed channel through the shallows to the north of Poel Island, and eventually emerge into deeper water.

The wind is now directly behind us, so we ‘goose-wing’ with the genoa poled out to one side and the mainsail rigged with a preventer to guard against an accidental gybe. We round the Trollegrund Spit, and with the wind now more on our starboard, we have a nice broad reach sail along the coast.

“This is my type of sailing”, says the First Mate, going down to make tea. “At least we don’t have to worry about things flying around everywhere.”

My mind turns to the book I am reading at the moment, Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea from Ancient Athens to Our World, by James Miller. In it he describes the development of democracy, from its first airing in ancient Athens, then much later the French Revolution espousing freedom and equality, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, through to modern liberal democracy. For a long stretch of history, democracy was thought to be an inferior form of government, and a monarch and aristocratic hierarchy much better with every one knowing their place.

“All very interesting”, says Spencer, from the coaming behind me. “But the big drawback with democracy is that most people don’t have time to practice it directly – they are far too busy making a living, raising a family, developing careers, saving for their retirement, and so on. Therefore, they elect representatives to do their democracy for them.”

“Well, well, well”, I say. “Nice to see you. How was the winter?”

“Great”, he responds. “It was nice and warm in the anchor locker, but I thought I needed to get out and stretch my legs now.”

He stretches each one in turn. It takes quite a while.

“Anyway, as I was saying”, he continues, “The danger is that these representatives become a new elite – they do what they want for the duration of their terms, make lots of money from themselves and their friends, control the media to influence the way people think about them, and get themselves re-elected. And so it goes on. Over time, these representatives get richer and more powerful, make laws for the small people but not themselves, and before you know it you have a new elite. Then the small people may get fed up and decide to have a revolution to make people more equal, and the whole cycle starts again. Democracy is an inherently unstable system that contains the seeds of its own destruction.”

“That all sounds a bit nihilistic”, I say. “Here was me thinking that the human race progresses, rather than going round and round in circles. I remember reading a book called The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama, in which he argues that modern liberal democracies are the pinnacle of human political organisation.”

“Complete cobblers!”, says Spencer. “I’ve read it too. He comes up with this idea that the human psyche is composed of three parts – basic animal desires for food and shelter, intellectual reason, and the desire to be recognised as a human being of some worth. He then manages to deduce somehow that only liberal democracies provide satisfaction of all three desires, particularly the third one. Once a society gets to be a liberal democracy, there is no driving force left for it to develop any further politically as all its citizens are free to develop to their potential and be someone of worth.”

“It sounds like there could be something in it”, I say.

“No, it is all about power”, he responds. “Trying to gain it, then trying to keep it. Nothing else explains the flow of human history. The political systems that you come up with are just expendible structures that you build for certain elements of your societies to maintain power. Look at what is happening in America at the moment with the storming of Capitol Hill, preventing peaceful transition of power, voter suppression, gerrymandering and so on. And the UK is not much better, with its prorogation of Parliament, Downing Street parties and the like. The elite don’t give a hoot about democracy as such, it’s all about maintaining their power.”

We are approaching Warnemünde, and I need to concentrate. We break off the conversation. The First Mate appears.

“Look at that weird ship”, she shouts, as we approach the entrance to the harbour. “It looks like it has a huge funnel on it. I wonder what that is for?”

“Ah, I was reading about that last night in those brochures you got”, I say. “It’s a rotor sail. It works by rotating and creating lower pressure on the front side of it and higher pressure on the stern side, a bit like a sail. The difference in pressure helps to pull the ship along and reduce fuel consumption. It’s made by a company called NorsePower and has been fitted to some of the ferries between Germany and Denmark.”

“That’s very clever”, says the First Mate. “I wonder why more ships don’t have it?”

“It’s a help”, I say. “But the problem is that it really only works when the wind is blowing at right angles to the direction of travel. It works well here in the Baltic as many ferry journeys are north-south and the predominant wind direction is west-east. They claim it reduces fuel consumption by between 5 and 20%.”

“That’s worth having”, says the First Mate. “But why don’t they just put giant sails on the ferries and be done with it? They could have them computer-controlled to adjust them to the right angle.”

It’s a good question.

We furl our own sails and motor the last little bit into Warnemünde. We have decided to stay in the Alter Strom, the old harbour near the town centre, if there is space, rather than in the brand new spanking marina on the eastern bank. There is something attractive about being near a city centre and being able to watch life going by rather than in a parking lot for boats that most marinas seem to be. The only thing is that we have to tie up against piles where fenders don’t work properly, so we need to use our boards.

As we arrive, out of the corner of my eye I spot a British flag on one of the boats already tied up. Later, we are invited for a cup of tea with the owners, Jim and Marjorie. It turns out they are also from Scotland, from Inverness, not all that far from us.

“We saw your Scottish flag, and wondered if you were from there”, says Marjorie. “You don’t see many boats from the UK these days, let alone from Scotland.”

When they retired, they bought an old wooden motor boat, did her up, and now they are exploring the waterways of Europe. They have a relatively shallow draft, so are able to tackle most of the rivers and canals. They had overwintered their boat on Fehmarn, and were heading into the canal system at Rostock.

“The problem we have at the moment is that she dried out over the winter”, says Jim. “She was in a shed, but was near the corrugated iron wall, and when the sun shone, it would heat the air inside quite a bit. The wood has contracted, and even though we have been back in the water for about a month now, it still hasn’t expanded back again completely and is still leaking a lot.”

“And that’s not all”, says Marjorie. “The bilge pump is playing up too. The float switch gets stuck and sometimes won’t turn either on or off again. But if we give it a tap with a stick, it seems to free it up. In fact, if you will excuse me, it’s time to tap it again. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She disappears down below. We hear some tapping, and a pump motor starts somewhere. I look around for the lifejackets, and drink my tea a bit faster.

“Don’t worry”, says Jim. “She’ll be OK in a couple of weeks once the wood has expanded again. The boat, that is.”

I am not sure I want to stretch my tea out that long, but I have to say that I admire their sang froid. To be travelling around Europe in a leaky boat with a dodgy bilge pump is not everyone’s cup of tea, so to speak.

As we leave, I notice a steady stream of water coming out of one of the outlets on the side of the boat. The pump is doing its job at the moment, I think.

In the morning, we explore Warnemünde. The town was originally a fishing village, but developed as the seaside resort town of Rostock in the 19^th century, and nowadays is an important harbour for the cruise industry. Expensive shops and restaurants line the other side of the Alter Strom from where we are tied up, while floating fast-food cafes offer quick snacks of fischbrötchen, fisch and schipps, and filled rolls. A paddle steamer splashes past.

We eventually arrive at the lighthouse. Built in 1897, it is still in use, and for €2 even allows tourists to climb the narrow stone stairs 37 m to the platform near the top. The view from the top over the Baltic Sea to the north and the town to the south is superb.

At its base is the so-called Teepott restaurant, rebuilt from an earlier building destroyed by fire in the 1960s in GDR days.

“Why do you think they called it the Teepott?”, I ask. “It doesn’t look much like a teapot. I can’t see either a spout or a handle.”

“There is a passing resemblance to one of those tea cosies that you use to keep the teapot warm”, says the First Mate. “Perhaps that’s the reason. The curved roof is supposed to be a good example of East German architecture, by the way.”

West of the lighthouse and the Teepott stretches the long sandy beach and its ubiquitous strandkörbe that makes the town attractive as a resort.

In another street, we come across the Edvard Munch house, a former fisherman’s cottage. Seeking peace and quiet, the Norwegian painter of The Scream had come to Warnemünde in 1907 to escape his demons, and had painted and sketched many scenes in the area. However, despite being well-liked by the inhabitants, he abruptly left without reason only 18 months later, never to return.

“We have to go and see Rostock while we are here”, says the First Mate over breakfast the next morning. “Apparently you can get the train down there for a day. It’s only about five minutes’ walk to the station from here.”

We catch the S-Bahn to Holbein Platz on the outskirts of Rostok and change to the Straßenbahn to reach the city centre. We get off at the Kröpeliner Tor, the westernmost gate of the old centre.

From there, we wander along the old city walls, passing the Kloster St Katharinen, a former Franciscan monastery. Now it is the Academy of Music and Theatre in Rostock.

“It’s certainly very peaceful in here”, says the First Mate as we wait for a group of school pupils to take photos of each other against the buildings. “I think I wouldn’t have minded being a monk in those days.”

We eventually reach the Universitätsplatz in front of the imposing University main buildings.

“Very impressive”, says the First Mate.

“What on earth do you think is going on here?”, I ask further on. “I am not sure my delicate constitution can cope with this.”

We are standing in front of a series of nude sculptures clustered around a fountain in the centre of the square.

“It says it is called Brunnen der Lebensfreude”, says the First Mate. “The Fountain of the Zest for Life. But apparently the locals call it Pornobrunnen. I am not sure why.”

“I think I can guess”, I say, as I try and work out which limb belongs to whom in a writhing couple. The two dogs expressing their love for each other ignore me.

We wander down Kröpelinerstrasse until we come to the Neuer Marktplatz in front of the Rathaus, the Town Hall. In the centre is the Möwenbrunnen, a sculpture of a seagull surrounded by Poseidon, Triton, Nereus, and Proteus, four Greek gods of the sea. A market is in progress, so we have a little browse.

On the other side of the square are picturesque houses of wealthy Hanseatic merchants.

Just off the Neuer Marktplatz is the Marienkirche, a massive structure in North German Gothic brick style.

“We’d better go and see this one”, says the First Mate. “There is supposed to be an astronomical clock in it. Apparently it still works. You’ll probably want to see that.”

“Did you know that senior citizens can have a 30% reduction?”, says the lady at the ticket desk.

I don’t know whether to be pleased to have the reduction, or to be annoyed at being identified as a senior citizen. I decide on the former. The latter is reality I suppose.

We find the astronomical clock at the rear of the church. Apparently it still has all its original clockwork and has not stopped working since it was built in 1472, being wound every day and greased regularly down through the ages.

It’s a thing of beauty. I stand for a time in front of it, taking in its intricacies and the peculiar mix of religion and science in its construction. Not only does it give the time, but also the phases of the moon and the solar year. Apparently at noon each day the twelve apostles rotate around to obtain God’s blessing in turn – I glance at my watch, but unfortunately we have missed that.

It is fascinating to think that it was built around the beginning of the modern scientific revolution, just as people were starting to realise that the world wasn’t just a series of random occurrences caused by the whim of some capricious god or gods, but instead ran according to well-defined rules that could be used to predict the future. The dawn of the modern mind.

“It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?”, says the lady at the ticket desk on the way out. “When it was built, Christopher Columbus hadn’t even discovered America. Where are you from?”

We tell her.

“Ah, my brother is over in Scotland at the moment”, she says. “He’s sailing as well. He’s trying to retrace some of the voyages of St Brendan the Navigator on the west coast of Scotland. Sort of a pilgrimage. Just last week he was on Eileach nan Naoimh.”

“The Island of the Saint”, I say. “Where Brendan set up a monastery. Reputed to be the mysterious Hinba, where Columba came from his monastery on Iona to contemplate. We’ve been there too.”

We had anchored in the small bay of Eileach nan Naoimh, the southernmost of the Garvellachs in the Inner Hebrides, a few years ago when we had been exploring the west coast. Although we had not gone ashore, we could see the small beehive huts and the other monastic buildings that the monks had constructed on the lonely, windswept island.

We chat for a few minutes on St Brendan, sailing, and how we come to be in Rostock.

“Amazing”, says the First Mate, as we leave. “Fancy coming across a connection with an island in Scotland while in a medieval church in Germany.”

That evening, we huddle inside Ruby Tuesday as a thunderstorm rages around us.

“Wow, that one was close”, says the First Mate. “It must have been just overhead. I just hope that we are not the tallest mast here.”