Svendborg Havn

Svendborg Havn is not one facility but a whole port area: the municipality runs thirteen harbours, marinas and jetties in and around Svendborg Sund. Arriving by sea and aiming for "Svendborg Havn" puts you in the guest harbour — the blue-marked leisure quays along Jessens Mole, right inside the town harbour opposite Frederiksø, with around 400 visitor berths.

It is an unusually lively place to lie. Island ferries to Skarø, Drejø, Hjortø and Ærø leave from the quays around you, the veteran ferry M/S Helge works the sound, commercial traffic carries on, and in the middle of it all Ring-Andersen's wooden shipyard repairs and rigs traditional sailing vessels. The harbour office is on the houseboat Eleonora — by the municipality's own account the country's only floating harbour office.

Frederiksø, the island in the harbour, began as a sandbank enlarged with ship ballast and dredged mud, and was named in the 1840s after King Frederik VII. More than 400 ships were launched here from two yards; shipbuilding ended for good in 2001 and the old yard buildings now hold artists, craftspeople and cultural organisations. Ring-Andersen's yard, founded in 1867, is still family-owned and working.

The approach runs through Svendborg Sund, where a police regulation limits motor vessels — including yachts under engine — to five knots. The current can run hard, particularly in the narrows, and the harbour publishes its own current table. The Svendborgsund bridge gives 33 metres of clearance over a 90-metre span. Ashore, everything is within a few hundred metres: Frederiksø at a hundred, the pedestrian street at five hundred, the railway station under three hundred.