Gager

Description

NV Cruising Guide

Navigation

The access to the port is through a buoyed but unfired channel (target depth 4m). Reduced depths due to silting must be expected.

Berths

Guests use free places at the west pier or the north pier. At the pier head, the berth for the passenger ship must remain free. At the south pier the two western jetties can be used. Mooring is at stern buoys on water depths over 4m.

In northwesterly winds, swell in the harbour is to be expected.

Surroundings

Directly at the harbour there are modern sanitary facilities, electricity, drinking water and a merchant.

NV Land Guide

The thatched houses of the village are scattered at the foot of the grassy mountains of the southern tip of Mönchgut on the island of Rügen. The gentle, largely treeless hills around the 66 m high Bakenberg are used as pasture land for flocks of sheep. Many of the houses present themselves in old building styles. Even the bus shelter of the small village is covered with reeds. Less uplifting is the camping site directly at the harbour and the fences drawn by fishermen. However, the campsite offers more sanitary facilities, drinking water and a shopkeeper.

On the former shipyard site is the posh holiday home development "Mönchgut Living & Spa". As a guest lounge, this now also includes the restaurant formerly popular with harbour berth holders, which is consequently no longer available.

Whether the princes of Putbus wanted to do something for their salvation around 1290 or were happy to get rid of the less fertile south-eastern tip of Rügen for a good price has not been handed down. In any case, the land at this time changed into the hands of the monks of the monastery Eldena (see: Greifswald Wieck). Among other things, the cowl bearers must have liked the fact that they could separate their territory from the "rest of the world" without much effort. A short but deep ditch at the narrow land connection north of Baabe was enough to keep them out. However, they had already proved that they were very much concerned with profane matters such as profit when they founded the market town of Greifswald.

For a long time they were isolated from the rest of the developments on the island, and the Mönchgut people came to be known as idiosyncratic, even backwoods. Their dialect and stubborn adherence to tradition were mocked. It was even said that they could never tell the time exactly, because they spoke so slowly that a minute always passed. This was especially true of the men. The pipe smoke is sometimes all that moves about them. Until the beginning of the 20th century they dressed traditionally with  their traditional costume, which can be seen in the Göhren Museum . A fashionably dressed Mönchgut woman also ran the risk of not being married, as it was possible to tell from the cap of the traditional costume whether she was still a virgin or already married. And with a population of just 700 in 1800, word of such extravagances had spread quickly.

Fixed dress codes for all sorts of occasions and conditions (marriage or mourning, for example) were as much a part of life as well-worn rites. The wedding feast, for example, was governed by a set of rules of conduct. A handshake of the bride and groom in the churchyard, a tearful farewell of the bride from the parental home (if this included leaving the village) and the separation of both sexes shortly after the wedding were part of the ceremony. In the company of the other women, the newlyweds first drank warm beer with raisins, before the common feast began - according to fixed verses and actions. The wedding could easily last ten days with all the preparations. This also meant that the invited fishermen had to catch the fish needed for the wedding feast, which they only did if they were given plenty of food and alcoholic drinks to take with them.

Despite the small number of peninsula inhabitants, Mönchgut remained for a long time a world of its own, consisting of only nine villages, made up entirely of acquaintances and relatives. People lived mainly from fishing, field work and pilotage on the ships that sailed between Pomerania and Rügen. The villages of Goehren, Thiessow and Lobbe shared the pilotage, which could be a hard job, because the pilots had to reach the ships even in heavy seas according to their strict laws.

The legend tells of a pilot who was fishing with his boat at night off the coast of Moenchgut. Then, as if from nowhere, a huge, dark ship appeared in front of him and a voice that brooked no argument ordered him to come aboard. Standing on deck, a tall dark figure said only one sentence: "Take us to the Sound", after which there was dead silence until the pilot had solved the extremely difficult task of sailing around the shoals of the Greifswald Bodden at night. The hunky figure took over the helm again and shortly after gave the order to anchor. Before daylight the pilot was brought ashore. When he looked into the leather sack that the tall man had placed in his hand and found a princely reward there, he knew who he had piloted: Störtebeker.

If you want to know more about the tales, traditions and ways of life of the Mönchgut people, you will probably have to make your way to the museum in Göhren. A beautiful hiking trail leads directly along the Hagenschen Wieck to the northeastern Middelhagen. From Middelhagen (school museum and Büttnerhaus) a hiking trail leads straight to the seaside resort Göhren. The beautiful detour along the beach from Lobber Ort is also a good option. At the foot of the Lobber Ort cliff lies an impressive boulder in a boulder field. Unlike other boulders on the coast, the 17 cubic metre stone protrudes 90 percent out of the water.

About Göhren, the well-known chronicler of the island of Rügen Johann Jacob Grümbke writes in his "Streifzügen durch das Rügenland", first published in 1805, that the village lies partly on a hill and partly in a depression. The village is quite large and mostly inhabited by pilots. The whole coastal region is called the Peerd because it looks like a horse shape to the skippers at sea.

The walk to Groß Zicker, the nearest port, is not far. It leads from Gager directly south up the Kahlen Berge and past the highest vantage point on Mönchgut (66 m high Bakenberg). Whether on foot or by boat, this over 800 year old village is definitely worth a visit. The "Pfarrwitwenhaus", built around 1720, is one of the oldest preserved buildings in the region and today houses a museum. On the way over the hills near Gager you pass the remains of a demolished mill, including two well-preserved millstones.

Also by foot (approx. 30 min in an easterly direction) you reach the seaward bathing beaches south of Lobbe on the east coast of the peninsula.

Marina Information

Contact

Surroundings

Electricity

Water

Toilet

Shower

Internet

Grocery

Ramp

Public Transport

Bikerental

Garbage