The weight of towing FF Harry was a bit too much for poor Harry Louella. The engine overheated and stopped about fifty meters from a guest harbour, the winds slowly took us the rest of the way and in a mysterious way FF Harry found his own little pocket by crashing gently into his own space right next to our new ship. We decided that this would have to be his last stop on our journey with him and took a walk to see if we could find someone who wanted him for free. We had just given up and had decided to just let him rest in his place when a father with two kids parked next to us. After a few minutes of convincing we signed a contract of giving it to him for free and took off before he would change his mind. Besides, we left them a case of chocolate sticks under the bed.
Not having a tow made our new ship behave in a totally different way. We made a pleasant sailing rehearsal by rising the sails for the first time ever – a first for all of us! Learning by doing has gotten a whole new meaning so far on this journey. Once again we have found ourselves in a position of a steep learning-curve. At the end of the day we found ourselves in a very nice marina where we got to have dinner and rest out for a while. According to the weather the next day should be some piece of work for all of us.
The lines and cables from the hundreds of sailboats around us in the marina were smashing and singing through the night and as we woke up I could swear they were singing to us about storms and hard weather to come. We packed our stuff and set out to sea with our heads high and ready for anything.
When the winds hit 15 meters a second and the waves are trying to reach higher than my own hight, there is no better feeling of being alive. Harry Louella is squeaking and dancing over every top and smacking down flushing water – taking care of the ship-cleaning we were planning to do the same night. This is also of course a bit hard for our mind and body to take like this the first day in rough sea. We therefore made it short day and found our own little nature harbour where we spent about half an hour figuring how the freaking anchor actually works.
Since we took to harbour early in the day, we made time to make a nice big fire to grill our giant marshmallows and have both lunch and dinner. We also made an attempt on fishing but weren’t lucky cause there was this sea-lion that superswam into the bay and scared away all the fishy’s.
Today when we woke up, we decided to get an early start, packed everything and waited for Simen to top off the hydraulic oil. As we got ready we tried to start the engine, it snarled for a second and went dead. We were all out of power. Battery: Dead. We tried everything and we do of course have our solar panels, but there was no way the sun was going to show up anytime soon. Besides, our ship is still taking in water and we need power to run the pumps. Of course, somehow the exhaust-pipe had burned a hole or five in the pipe for the hand pump (explaining the smoke we’ve had in the cockpit the last few days)… In other words, we needed help as we were kind of stranded out in nowhere.
We somehow got a hold of the sea rescue and they promised to send a boat within a few hours. And so they did! We spent the time trying to fix the hand-pump in case the power went all out. It was of course quick-fix for the guys who had the right equipment and we were leaving within minutes of them taking of into the horizon.
The seas were good, only a few waves splashing over deck as we navigated perfectly in direction of our first actually planned port of call, Nyneshamn. We didn’t get that far. About an hour before we could reach our destination, after having had a great lunch of potatoes and macaronis with herring, just as the wind was starting to peak – the engined stopped.
Drifting toward a reef and with only forty meters to go before crashing badly, the anchor finally got hold to something down at the bottom. We were safe for the time being. But as we saw no way out and with the chain being the most rusty pile of shit I’ve seen in a long time we made use of our VHF and called out our first Mayday. The four crew members onboard worked as best as we could as the sea rescue sent out not only one ship, but two, and then another military vessel from further south. Ten minute later we could see they come toward us and without too much trouble got a rope tied too our slightly non-cooperative ship. Problem was, the anchor was stuck. Problems seldom come alone I guess, we had of course in the middle of everything got ourselves stuck to one of those cables you are not supposed to anchor close to. Only option was to lose the anchor and in the try of giving us the tool needed their ship crashed into our ship cracking our handrail and breaking the Norwegian flag, we all watched it disappear into nothing in the waves.
But we were at least free and they took us into the guest harbour to fix our engine and sleep through the little storm that was building. Little did they know that we were about to start a fire in our boat creating another crisis when first at it. But since great teamwork was already established this day – we ended the fire within minutes and spent half an hour airing out smoke and cleaning up the crap from the fire-extinguisher.
That’s all. I don’t remember where we are, but we are connected to land-power and will not need help to get started tomorrow.
Captain Jack
Harry Floats 