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.

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.

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!

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

About.

Lyth compass

As you also can see, dust and disorder collects quickly.

We also worked on the head tank.

I mounted the discharge pump upside down three times. Did I say today was slow?

Head tank in the aft cabin

Also mounted the VHF and the aft navigation light.

(I got the new video. I don’t know if I have the tiime to upload it before going to Skåne tomorrow…)

This is what they look like:

Lopolight navigation lights

And this is how the sidelights will be mounted:

Lopolight mount.

Tomorrow we will connect the electrics to see if they work.

We also mounted the compass today:

Compass.

We mounted it on the port side, instead of the more comme il faut place at the starboard side. I suppose that you mount compasses on the starboard side because you sit on the starboard side while on a starboard tack. And that is, of cource, the right way to go. But on a chinese junk rig,  all the lines comes down on the starboard side as well, since it is comme il faut to let the sail fly the port side of the mast. And since the Chinese invented the compass, we let the Chinese decide thist time.

We made some ugly scratches in the polycarbonate windows today… Guess that happens quite easily. Is it possible to polish the windows? Ordinary boat polish?