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.

Back

Just back from some weeks of summer sailing in Sweden and Åland. Lot’s of interesting experiences and even some images to be published.

New video: Sailing from the inside

It’s not that tidy. But here is a small video from the interior of Linnea. While sailing. As you can see, the final finish of the inside is not there yet. But it works fine for some weeks of summer sailing. The reefed sail is badly set. We will try to do something about it.

Now, we are here

View Larger Map

About.

Gone sailing

It was a bit nervous. The first sail of the year is bound to be bad. I remember one special year with an old boat of ours. Disaster. Rosehip soup all over the brand new main sheet. That stain does not go away! So the first sail, you want the wind to be perfect, everything double checked, some strong people on board. The kids stay on the jetty. Let’s just say we did the opposite this year. A bunch of relatives joined us, we were eleven people on board, some with quite dubious sailing experience.

So, what happened? Shipwreck? Disaster? Wounded limbs? No. The whole event was… uneventful in a good way. The only demanding maneuver was dropping two people off at the steam ship quay with a lot of swell involved.

So, here are the pictures:

Sailing

Ida in her berth. No mattress yet.

Interior, cleaned a bit.

Steering station from the inside. Impossible to get a good camera view.

Starboard view.

Navigation table.

Ida at the bow.

Idas new favorite spot.

(R. I have the goods.)

Fenix in the Summer Isles

A picture of Fenix, a junk rigged boat we met in the Summer Isles, west of Ullapool some years ago with our old boat. We were heading north up around the Orkney islands and Ben was coming south from the Faroes. Funny thing is that he lent out a cruising guide for Orkney to my parents earlier that summer when they met him, so we could return it, since we made some copies. Anyway, the boat seemed to sail real well. When we got to Ullapool some kind of border police interviewed us for quite some time about if we met some other boat in the Summer Isles. We didn’t give you away Ben!

Junk rigged Fenix