S/Y Linnea

Some more pics

The new halyard winch from above…

… and from below.

And an image on our flag. Shame on us! We didn’t take it down all winter, now the Swedish flag looks like a Finnish one with no yellow. We actually bought a new one after this, so all you royalists out there can sit down again.

Sailing soon!

Hopefully we will be out sailing on monday. Just need a lot of work-work finished and some boat work. In the meantime enjoy this picture from spring, on the painted transom:

Short update

Today I fastened the boiler. Will give us 15 lt of hot water after running the engine. It sits under the sole in the head.
I also fixed some new limber holes between the engine room and the rest of the boat. This is an example of the numerous things that are easier to do right from the beginning. Cutting limber holes in floors is easy. But not if you have to stand on your head and use an angle-thing, since the drill is too wide to fit between two floors.
Thing is, I first thought it was a good idea to isolate the engine room from the rest of the bilge, since we wouldn’t want to pump out oil spills into the sea. The problem with this thought is that we would need to pump out four different compartments, including the forpeak. Just too complicated. We will use a loose hoose for the outlet of the pump instead, so any oil spills can be pumped out in a bucket and delt with properly.
I also fited a ventilation grill for the compressor for the fridge. Yes, we have a small (41 l) top loading fridge. It will be great, since we also have two large solar panels that will be lashed on the bottom of the dinghy. Fridge without power is not a good idea. BTW we put a lot of extra insulation oround the box.
My mother painted and fastened some trim.

The perfect table

Sorry about the crappy pictures. I really like my Iphone but it has a really crappy camera. Maybe I will shop around for a digital camera in the future.

Above you can see the saloon table as designed by Tom. While folded like above, it has high rails around that can make Lego pieces stay put when the boat heels. It also makes it easy to put dishes on the table on the way up on deck. When unfoldet it is flat.

Updated webpage - beware!

So, finally came around to upgrading Wordpress to a non hackable version. Things to do before I start updating with new posts. Like, what happened to the JayCut videos? And some fixes to the new theme.

Same video - now with music!

Stuart let me use his music here. (Check out more of his work here: http://www.youtube.com/user/KeltwegianKiwi ) What is next? A Coin Collection theme song?

And I also have to say that we experimented with some new sheeting this day, so there is some funny creases at the aft end of the sail.

Breaking the law

Some people and some countries take flags a bit too serious. Not Finland, at least not Åland. We didn’t actually plan to sail there this summer but since the winds were blowing south we did anyway. But we didn’t bring a guest flag. We didn’t even have a Swedish nationality flag.

And as we came closer to Åland after a windy crossing, I remembered another incident, in Greece. We came sailing in a Turkish charter boat. “This Greek island is too small to have a police force,” we though. “Let’s put up a small Swedish flag, instead of the Turkish one.”

For some reason, we didn’t understand that this was a really bad idea. Not even after a Greek RIB full with marines with black painted faces came out to greet us by crossing our cource just two meeters in front of our bow and then return. Now I know they tried to tell us something.

Just as we had tied up and started to prepare an octopus we had cought earlier, the harbor master appeared. He didn’t look harmful. He had a white uniform with hat and gold buttons and epaulettes. The uniform wasn’t really large enough for his roundness but he had buttoned up anyway. The operetta actor told us in a high pitched voice that we had broken, not only Greek law, but also international regulations. And for that we had to pay… eh… let’s see… 10,000 Deutsche marks, or they would seize the boat.

I have no idea why he didn’t prefer to get this huge amount of money in Greek drachmae, or even Swedish crowns; this was before the euro. Fortunately the skipper of another boat, we were sailing three boats together, talked Greek, and was able to bargain down the price to 300 Deutche marks. I am pretty sure the money didn’t go into the operetta heroes pocket since we got a receipt. He also helped us to “hide” the boats name with fenders, so nobody should get upset.

So should we really go into Åland without any flags? As we came closer, I called up the passport police, just in case, to tell them we “lost” the flag. No problem whatsoever. Even though we had some miles left, they said: “Are you the junk rigged boat?” (Obviously they keep good lookout.) “Welcome to Åland!”

Then we found a really small Swedish flag in a gift shop. And also bought a guest flag that we seized to the lazy jacks.

Sorry excuse for a flag.

Görans Video

Found a CD in my mailbox from Göran today. (Thanks!) So I made one more video. Enjoy! (Wish I were able to add some music to it, but that is probably totally illegal.)

I have been using JayCut to edit and publish the video instead of Youtube. Works great.

Edit: as of today, Tuesday, august 5, Jaycut is down. Will be up in a couple of days. Too bad, as I even got a soundtrack from Stuart now!

New video: Sailing from the inside 2

Sorry about the crappy quality. It’s my mobile phone…

As you can see we had both light and not so light winds.

Don’t try this at home

Nice weather. No tides in the Baltic. Reasonable depth. And two anchors out.