Mikołajki

From the memoirs of Konrad Tarasiewicz, a close acquaintance of Danuta and Witold Lutosławski from the war years:

‘We went on two sailing trips, on which Witek was the main leader of the expedition. Their boat was called DAWI (DAnuta – WItek). I don’t remember if it was Mikołajki or Giżycko, but in any case on one occasion there were many people there from the yacht club in which Witek took his first steps as a mariner. When they saw us, they called through a megaphone: “Welcome to the Lutosławskis’ boat, DAWI”. That was the greeting which met us as we sailed into port. They were friends with an outstanding sportsman and sailor, the engineer Tadeusz Szuch. It was very nice of him to join the first expedition in order to look after Witek, who was a novice. Thanks to that, somehow we crossed all those Masurian lakes, which were completely new to us.

He was a perfectionist. Everything was done according to the maritime rules. He always took care to avoid the places where stones lay beneath the surface of the water. You had to avoid them, so as not to damage the boat. Fortunately, they were marked on a map. It was all quite charming. In the evening, when we went to bed – they in the boat and my wife and I in a tent on dry land – we could make out their whispered conversations, from which it emerged that they were conferring over how to deal with some technical detail the following day. If in the night a radio was playing in a nearby boat or tent, which for Witek was unbearable, then Danusia would boldly make her way to that tent and ask: “My husband is a composer. Do you think you could turn the radio down a bit, because it no so much annoys my husband as prevents him from composing and is injurious to his health”.’