Pictures of the new wind vane

The Coin Collection boats all are designed to be used with a wind vane. Here are some pictures of our new one. We are going to balance it a bit better and also make a new vane as soon as we have found the right size with the scrap plywood. So far it works fine though!

Wind vane steering

Wind vane steering

This year we have enough fresh herbs!

New picture from sailing Linnéa

Here is a new picture from three days ago. Currently we are sailing in the archipelago south of Stockholm.

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

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