WSG Kaufbeuren

Read the important part first: WSG Kaufbeuren is an inland sailing club, and there is no navigable way to reach it. The club is named after Kaufbeuren, where it was founded, but its clubhouse and harbour lie thirty-three kilometres further south, on the west shore of the Forggensee near Füssen in the Allgäu. The Forggensee is a reservoir on the river Lech, dammed in the 1950s, with no connection to any other water. Boats arrive on a trailer and go in down the club's asphalt slipway.

The lake is also only a lake for part of the year. From 16 October to 30 May the dam operator may draw it down at will — by as much as sixteen metres — and during that period neither the water police nor the rescue service is on the water. Full pool normally runs from 1 June to 15 October. Sailing in the 15–30 May window is permitted only as a delivery passage to your berth and requires a signed liability waiver. Boats with an auxiliary engine, or with built-in berths, galley or heads, additionally need a permit from the Landratsamt Ostallgäu.

The facility itself is small and clearly defined: a floating dock with thirty-one berths, about twenty places ashore, a slipway, a generous car park, a clubhouse with kitchen and sanitary facilities, and a barbecue area. The club does take guests and publishes rates for dinghies, catamarans and dock berths.

The setting, though, is something else. The clubhouse looks across the water to the Alpine massif and Neuschwanstein, and WSG is one of nine sailing clubs on the Forggensee. Mornings are typically light, with thermal wind building through the day, and in fresh conditions strong gusts come down off the mountains.