Wilfried Erdmann: Last anchorage on the Schlei

Outside, behind the stone-built St Andrew's Church, the boats head north towards the open water. It's a picture-perfect day: the sun and easterly wind gradually clear the morning clouds from the sky, whose blue makes the otherwise grey-green Schlei glow.

Impossible not to see a sign in it.

Emperor weather for someone who braved so many storms on his journeys. He also had to endure a difficult ordeal when doctors diagnosed him with stomach cancer last summer.

On 8 May, 55 years and one day after returning from his first solo circumnavigation, Wilfried Erdmann was no longer able or willing to continue. He died at the age of 83. On Friday afternoon, he was laid to rest in the cemetery in Brodersby.

If there is such a thing as consolation after such a loss, which still moves people today, then you could find it here, on the hill above the Schlei and in the simple but wonderful church, which was filled as it usually is only on public holidays.

Around one hundred mourners came to say goodbye, including family members, friends, neighbours, colleagues and former companions such as Burkhard Pieske and Achill Moser.

Wilfried would have liked the pine coffin just as much as the weather. His son Kym had lovingly modified it together with a carpenter. The graphic designer replaced the handles with woven sheets, three on each side: green - red - green on the starboard side, red - green - red on the port side. At the top, above the lid, there was a natural-coloured end.

Wilfried's grave faces east, towards the Schlei, at the edge of the idyllic cemetery. From here, it is only a few hundred metres to the water, which can be seen through the branches and twigs of the hornbeams. And when the wind blows from the east, you can sometimes hear the rattling of the sails when a boat comes into the narrow fairway.

Wilfried Erdmann had always loved this area so much, said Pastor Tanja Lammert in her funeral sermon, "because you can set sail from here and sail as far as Cape Horn".

There have always been many good reasons to set course for the Schlei. At 54 degrees 53 minutes north and 9 degrees 7 minutes east, there has been one more since Friday.