abstecher

From now-obsolete Dutch een afsteker maken (“to go by one of the boats of a ship”) (compare modern Dutch afsteken (“to set sail”)), synchronically analyzable as abstechen (“to cut out”) + -er; the German verb means in some contexts “to contrast, to diverge” and possibly also “to branch off” (compare Stichstraße (“small dead-end street branching off from a road”)), hence the further semantic development.