Peter Willemoes

It was around +25C, end of August, most likely the last warm summer days this year.

I had a flight a week before, but it felt like it was long time ago. I got used to more frequent flying during the summer flying vacation.

Flemming joined me for the flight. We also wanted to make a small repair to my Aeroprakt, and to go swimming, therefore it was going to be just a local flight. Nykøbing Sjælland town with around 5,000 inhabitants, a cozy town to visit during summer time, with nice sea side and a very expensive supermarket:

Nykøbing Sjælland is also a location of the infamous Brainless Cemetery, I once described in one of my blogposts.

Skansehagen, a promontory that stretches south into Isefjord and is approx. 800 meters long, it was formed within the last 400 years:

Hagen has this shaped Skansehage Bay, which is a favorite place for bathing, windsurfing and kitesurfing.

Flemming and I flew to the Sjællands Odde, the 15 km long peninsula on the northwest coast of Zealand:

We made a round over the Odden Church where Peter Willemoes, a Danish naval officer, who fell in the Battle of Zealand Point, is buried:

Peter Willemoes was born in 1783 and sent to the Naval Academy in Copenhagen at the age of 12. He was given command of a naval battery when he was 18. On 22nd March 1808, Peter Willemoes was on board the liner Prinds Christian Frederik with 68 guns and a crew of 576 men, on his way to the Great Belt from Norway. In the Kattegat off Sjællands Odde they met an English naval unit consisting of two ships of the line, a frigate and two smaller ships. After a few hours of fighting, they had to give up when their ship ran aground. On board there were 132 injured and 69 killed, and among those killed was 24-year-old Peter Willemoes.

The body of Peter Willemoes was later found on a beach at Sjællands Odde. The King Frederik the Sixth decided that Peter Willemoes, considering his displayed courage and bravery, should be buried with a ceremony. Riders had been ordered to carry Willemoes’ coffin over hills and cliffs to the Odden Church. A memorial was erected later at the hero’s grave.

Korevlerne, a beautiful place at any time of the year:

One of our neighbourgs near my flying club made a nice grass drawing on their field – a bicycle:

At home, Flemming made a repair – fixed a small crack on the fairing. When we in Siofok, Hungary, were tracking our wet OY-9797 under the rain, preparing for a flight, Flemming’s hand slided down from the strut and the fairing cracked.