Making our way to Ale’s Stones

We have made our longest passage so far in this boat. With an average of 4 knots we crossed the Hano-bay in about ten hours. The voyage was totally great and we had great conditions. I will admit that the last hour was one of the harder type. Mostly due to pitch-dark, fog with subtle rain and meter-high waves from the side and wind in an awkward direction. But our skill set is building quickly and we pulled through and found a safe harbour 3 nautical miles north of Simrishamn. We spent the night in this small village and got some good rest. The next day we only completed the journey southward to Simrishamn and found a dock to tie the boat safely enough to stay the two days of forecasted gale passing through the area. 

Simrishamn is a beautiful little town. They obviously have a high-rise ban because all the houses are small and tightly packed together only separated by brick-laid streets. It’s history go back to the year 1123 and was in the hundreds of years after an important city for the connection between the mainland and the island of Bornholm which is today governed by Denmark. At the time, up until 1658 the mainland was also part of Denmark – but this changed with the visit of Frederik the 3rd the year ahead.

We spent the days mostly onboard. There is plenty of stuff to take care of in the boat. We are battling things like moist and ways to stay warm on cold nights. The last not being a big problem since we are often connected to shore-power. Condensation is however becoming a bit of a fight. We are looking to keep mold away, but since we are often tightly packed it has become a job to air out the areas and then especially under mattresses and pillows. This have forced Captain Simen to start the everlasting job of drilling hundreds of holes in the bed-boards. Not an easy task when what we have to work with is a manual hand-drill. We have also installed netting in the ceiling to store all of our vegetables and secure other fresh food.

When the winds calmed down we could safely journey on. We made our way 20 miles down the coast to the harbour of Kåseberga. This is the mystical and historic site of Ale’s Stones. This being a powerful symbol of power and faith. The rocks on top of the cliffs was probably raised somewhere between of 1000 and 1500 years ago and was described by travelers in the 1600’s. Today the formation called a stone ship consist of 58 standing stones and one horizontal block. The formation represent a type of grave built during the late Iron age. It is the largest known Swedish stone ship, measuring 67 meters long and 19 meters wide.

Ale’s Stones may have been a cult-center for sun-worshipers and we had the joy of having the best sun in weeks upon our visit. At midsummer the sun sets at the north-western apex and and at midwinter the opposite. Why and how it has gotten it’s name is unknown. There is no record of anyone named Ale, and many researchers claim that Ale is an ancient word for temple or sacred place.

We are setting course for the southernmost point of Sweden today. It is a bit of a milestone for me. By the end of the week we are will with all luck be crossing over to the Kingdom of Denmark. We are also getting ready for some live-streaming and did our first test-run yesterday! Until next time, have a safe ride!

Captain Jack

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In the path of a dragon

Many years ago, a dragon lived on Hanö, the island we are currently located. The story tell that the dragon every day flew between this island and another one placed about 20 kilometers away, just about where we started this morning. This was a short distance for the dragon and it only had to swing his enormous wings twice in order to make the trip. Then one day the humans had build a lighthouse and the dragon was blended by the strong light and crashed into the hard rock on the east side of the island. Today the same lighthouse has the strongest light of all lighthouse in the Baltic sea and is raging 74 meters above sea-level.

Our voyage from Hasselö to Karlshamn was a great one. We enjoyed setting off in the morning with a perfect breeze and almost no waves to rock us around. This presented a great opportunity to get some scrubbing done in the cockpit. The old teak is going to take a while to get in perfect shape, but we have started the process and is so far very happy with the result. With time it shall look good as new and the value of the whole boat will have changed drastically. The cockpit is now pretty much scrubbed clean of all algae and moss and is ready to be sanded down before we coat it with a couple of nice coats with oil.

It was pitch dark as we made our way the last hour into the harbour of Karlshamn, but we arrived just in time to search out a large supermarket for us to do some necessary shopping to restock. You’ll be amazed of how many potatoes a hungry sailor can eat after a long day at sea. We’ve had no luck with fishing and I’ll be the first to admit that this is mostly due to our lack of trying. But to fish in the Baltic has been no fun at all. The fish won’t bite, at least not where ever we are passing through. This is something we’ll have to pick up, but there is always so much else to do and take care of that when the evenings come we are either too tired, cold or in the middle of a marina where it’s strictly speaking not allowed to fish. Our diet have therefore been a bit differently than we had originally planned. For now we are sticking to pasta and stew.

Karlshamn was not my favorite town. It’s fairly small and the whole city area is brick-laid, grey, pretty square and a bit dull. I suppose there is nothing wrong with the place, but it didn’t offer me any good vibes. My favorite part was the one street that had four or five second hand stores next to each other. My view on the city may be colored by the fact that the guest harbour sucked. The showers were dirty and the heat was turned off, it was expensive and the only other amenity offered was a free washing-machine with a broken handle and a dryer that spewed dust all around the room when you turned it on. On top of this the boat was rocking constantly because they had placed the births at the run-out from the river so the stream constantly got hold of our keel. Oh, did I forget to mention that the harbor’s closest neighbor was the main gate of a huge factory that smelled bad and had trucks coming and leaving without breaks? I guess we can’t like all the places we visit of course and hopefully other travelers have a better experience than us.

Despite all of this we decided to stay an extra night to make sure we had some good wind the next few days. It has become a huge part of our week to plan ahead according to the weather. If we stayed an extra night in Karlshamn this would in theory give us the best winds for the coming four days so it was an easy choice in order for us to save on diesel and get the most out of our sails.

Today has been much better. I got up early in order to catch the morning breeze out of town. The plan was simply to re position ourselves by sailing to Hanö and be ready for tomorrows wind to take us all across the Hanö Bay. It was a fairly short sail of only 10 nautical miles and it took about two and a half hour.

The island is beautiful. Surrounding the harbour is the little village where now only 8 people have their permanent addresses, according to the internet. The village is fenced in to keep out the hundreds of deer living here. We went for a pretty good walk and could enjoy both forests and open landscape. The lighthouse was a treat and so were the many colors of the leafs preparing for winter.

Back in the boat I had to sew the foresail again, the poor old sail is living a hard life in retirement but it still have lots of life left in it. Later we both could settle in for a relaxing evening of Swedish meatballs and finally a boat that enjoy not being tossed around by a river twenty-four seven. Tonight we’ll sleep great, cause that’s what potatoes and gravy does to a man. I’m sure the dragon would agree.

Captain Jack

Harry’s Shop is online!

It seem we might have landed in ‘the bay of silent weather’, also used for a huge military exercise these days. Since the last post we have only moved about 30 nautical miles. We cut the first day short due to a certain Captain Simen being a bit hungover as we happened to be invited to ‘Sail Inn’ – the local waterhole in Sandhamn the night before. We are not the ones to say no to free drinks and happily joined the party. But the next day was a hard one to deal with the waves created in 10 meter wind coming in from Poland. After a nice bumpy day we settled in at a ferry-stop on Drottningskar only 25 nautical miles from Sandhamn.

The next morning woke me up with no wind at all. It was as quiet as it can get and super-foggy. The day before we noticed that we might be in the middle of a huge military thing as well, I mean, signs were pretty clear. There was scatter on the VHF of ships setting off explosives and a variation of camouflage vessels of all sorts and sizes surrounding us at any time. As basically the only boat still on the water at this time of the year, I suppose we were quite visible. But we are sailing a Norwegian flag, we’re friends of the enemy.

Since the weather wasn’t supposed to clear up we decided it was no point in just basically wasting diesel for a whole day and settled in for a quiet day in the boat. But after a long day with no real good opportunity to enjoy the outside we had emptied our batteries using the laptop, and besides having no fresh water left we figured out it would be better to move over to the next islands guest-harbour so we could get a bit charged up and maybe even some heat. The journey over to Hasselø took only about half an hour, and we passed no less than 17 different military speedboats and ships on the way.

Despite the rain we went for a walk on the island. It is connected to land by a bridge so for once we found an island where people are actually living all year around. I believe it is a nice little place to visit for anyone traveling around these parts of the world, but since we were basically already swallowed by the darkness there was not much to see and we returned to the warm safety of our floating home. Of course also here, in the harbour, we were accompanied by 6 military boats.

It was during this slow day that we decided to finally go through with one of our plans. I am proud to inform that we have now launched our own online store! Harry’s Shop is open for business and you are free to start shopping! This of course come at an extremely convenient time for you since you of course are about to get some christmas presents going!

In Harry’s Shop you can find a fine assortment of clothing and accessories that is of great quality and serve multiple purposes. You get clothing in all shapes or sizes, either you are of any gender or age. Our catalog may change in the future, but for now you’ll find plenty of good stuff for your whole crew and yourself! Please take a look at our store, it may just be the best store online. You don’t have to worry, it is not all pirate and sailor-stuff we have some pretty cute motives, even suited for toddlers and office workers. For the next two weeks you get 15% off on everything in the store!

Sorry to say, but it seems that our beloved American followers will have to wait a bit to access these very fine pieces of merch, but for all of Europe you should be good to go! Just make sure you pick your country so you don’t pay for international shipping. Follow this link or use the one in the menu and get your stuff today!

Well, I’m off to prepare today’s sail. Hopefully we’ll get a bit further today and put some nautical miles behind us. We only have two months left to get to Norway, at this speed we better get moving.

Captain Jack

A Captain’s reflections

Sailing these waters at this time of year offer some exciting problems for our journey to the south of Sweden. We studied the same winds on our previous attempt last year and it’s a hard route to sail due to wind directions on days where it’s no rain or strong winds. For these reasons we ended up using the engine for an entire day down from Kristianopel to Sandhamn, the first small village on the mainland for boats going north toward Kalmar. Our plan was to get to Sandhamn before the rain came in from southeast, and although Captain Simen got soaking wet on his shift – we’ve made it to shore. 

Sailing in rain is not the most pleasurable experience in October. We therefore decided to stand our grounds for two nights before proceeding. In a way this is great, since the guest-harbour here offer showers and free bikes. It was also time for us to clean up the ship again. A couple of miscalculations on the waves have tossed things around a bit, this is not the first time this happens, but we have not figured out all the solutions for where to put everything onboard yet. I suppose I’ve learned now, and will consequently pack stuff away before going out sailing in the future.

A stop like this also give some time to reflect and drink tons of coffee. We are basically sailing through three of the Scandinavian capital areas; Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo. Without all the tacking and jibing this calculates to about 1300 kilometers or 700 nautical miles. In other measurements that’s about the same distance as vertically sailing USA on it’s slimmest or a little shorter than the Sahara desert. Of course, we are enjoying our time and is really starting to get back into living on a boat again. That said; this wonderful boat is a whole different story than our previous ones. Here we can actually keep warm, dry and store all our belongings safely, unlike our previous I can now drink my morning coffee in my boxers.

We don’t have to work everyday to make sure we don’t sink or actually have a functioning engine. Before we purchased this adventure of an home, we had some beautiful boats in wood, but life was more a struggle and the upkeep of an old wooden boat would no doubt eat our entire non-existing budget. Having steel presents its own set of tasks to take care of but none of these have so far been critical. I must applaud Kaj who built this boat for his excellent care and craftsmanship.

Our adventures doesn’t come free and we are always looking for ways to make some quick cash. We are extremely flexible and will be searching out small jobs around, let me know if you need a fence painted or your boat washed. We can do just about anything! If you want to support us, there is plenty of ways to do this. Take a look at our support-page in the menu or click here. 

We are very lucky to be able to be able to live our lives as free as we are. Having you read and follow our journey is making me feel proud of the choices we have made. There is nothing I’ve experienced that have offered me this kind of peace with myself. Maybe only backpacking, but then you always have to carry your stuff around and you know that it eventually have to come to an end. Slow-traveling by water, with sails and without an end-date, offer the most unique ways to see and have time to experience the world around us.

If I’m to be totally honest – my mental health need this freedom. It need to be experiencing new things and to be moving in order to be healthy. I don’t mind being ‘stuck’ somewhere for a while or even take a job, but in the long run and talking from experience my happiness and love for life disintegrate over time when I feel locked in. I’m sure people probably have thousands of ways to deal with these feelings, this is just the one that works for me at this point in time. Some people ask if this is about running away, and not take responsibility and I can assure you it is not. It’s about the freedom I personally need to do in order to make myself feel that life is valuable.

Freedom is relative, of course. We have things we need to do onboard a boat as well. But when it comes down to it; Being your own Captain, almost always being able to make the choices that shape your day and at the same time being able to do absolutely nothing is the best life-enhancing recipe I’ve ever know. I will not speak for Captain Simen, but I suppose there is a reason to why we stick together. Having someone like him to share these experiences and this life with make life at the moment just perfect.

When we are ready to leave this place, I hope we can get a good run down the coast. The bay-area ahead of us could get us a long way if the winds are with us. There is also a chance that we might have to back down and turn north, but so far the forecast for tomorrow is very promising.

Captain Jack

Sailing in fog to Kristianopel

We might have stayed a couple of extra days in Kalmar. It really is the first good city we have visited in quite some time. Besides being a clean and interesting place to promenade yourself away in, it offered us a safe harbor through some rougher wind and not to forget a place to relax our untrained sailing bodies. Taking this time to charge up and just get living in our boat – now also fully paid and insured (!) was just great. Bunkering diesel was also one of our main-tasks in Kalmar and we should in theory, if the winds are in our favor, now be set all the way to the Norwegian border.

As mentioned Kalmar was our first big port of call, the next is Copenhagen. On the way we hope to find many great places and I’m looking forward to visit the southern point of Sweden in a few days. It’s supposed to be a bit unruly weather for the coming week, so we’ll take it slow and just enjoy the journey. The last few days in town we could really notice how the many trees are turning their colors, we are heading for winter fast. It is of course very beautiful and seeing all the colors as we are sailing South is amazing. So far the temperatures haven’t gotten to us, but then again we have been lucky with our shore power.

Our first day from Kalmar we started out with a pretty good wind from northeast and held about 4,5 knots at 190 degrees south. However, our perfect conditions changed a bit as the breeze decided to slow down considerably. When our peak speed was about 1,4 knots we decided to motor in to closest shore. But this area is known to be extremely rocky. Also, since our dept is 1,6 meters there is many places we can’t really go to close to land. Since the forecast was fog and cold wind from north throughout the night we decided to cut our day short after only 15 nautical miles. We found our harbor in Ekernäs. I think this just might be the only place in the area where a small guest harbor was actually possible.

Captain Simen spent some time searching the local coastline for gold. But it seemed some other pirates had been here before us, back from the hunt he had dug up a tent plug, some scrap metal and an 1-krone coin from 1977. Having a laptop back in our life is great. It does use a bit of electricity, so we better figure something out. We can’t just as well run the engine every time we need a bit of power, it might have to go into storage on certain passages.

The next morning the fog was thick and it stayed thick throughout the day. Lucky for us the wind was pretty steady at about 4 meters a second, which in return provide us an average speed of 3-4 knots. Since Captain Simen doesn’t do well with mornings I took the  the first shift as he took care of some stuff in another world. Maneuvering in fog take a bit more effort, since you have to be alert all the time and can only use your maps and GPS to see where you’re actually going. A bit scary when a huge tanker pass by only 100 meters away, but we have an AIS reader onboard and can see all ships over 45 meters long on a screen – that helps a lot.

After a long day of 9 hours without seeing a thing except a couple of birds, the lights from Kristianopel was a welcoming sight. The town is old, but currently only house about 88 people. It has been found evidence of people living here all the way back to the stone-age. As it was dark when we arrived we didn’t explore too much, but took instead advantage of the electricity provided to dry our clothes and get some heat in the boat.

Captain Jack

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Port of call: Kalmar

We are in preparations of a longer sail. It should take about 13-18 hours depending on the wind. Since it’s still a couple of days from now and the weather this time of year is a bit unpredictable we are finding ourselves awaiting the right time. For avid sailors this do probably not sound like a big thing, and it probably won’t be, but since this will be our first night-sail with our new ship we are pretty excited. For now we are enjoying the great city of Kalmar, which I would like to highly recommend a visit. 

Kalmar have been on our list on ports of call since before we arrived in Sweden about a month ago. In the year 1397 the Kalmar Union was approved in Kalmar castle, and effectively unified all of Scandinavia as one union under the rule of one queen – Margrete I. This era lasted until it collapsed on 1523 and by that time this election-monarchy included the Scandinavian countries, Shetland, Greenland, Faeroe Islands and Iceland, counting about 3 million people.

Today Kalmar is a big city with about 40 thousand people. It is very flat, making the bikes you can borrow for free at the tourist office an absolute pleasure. The whole city have a good vibe to it and offer a mix of old-town, modern buildings and great history. It is today, as of 2010, a university-city.

Rich on it’s history it has also provided us with a whole lot of things we needed on board. We have proudly added another battery, a huge one of 120 amp hours, and finally, the best thing so far, and a year overdue – a new laptop. I don’t ever have to write blogs on my phone again. This of course have dug deep into our treasure-chest but we live on 2019, a laptop is a necessity.

The guest harbor in town is one of the higher priced one, but it also offer all the amenities we were looking for. We had our first good shower since Valdemarsvik and could do laundry. The tourist office had bikes we could use and of course the location is perfectly situated next to a shopping center and the old town. I finally got the foresail down to mend five minor holes in it. It took forever, so it better hold. I guess that new sails probably wouldn’t hurt, but we’ve got to work with what we have for now.

The only things left on our list for our stay is to bunker diesel and stock up on some food items. A cleanup is also necessary, thinking back I have no idea how we fitted everything we own in our previous boats. It’s true what I’ve heard – you can never get enough storage in a boat. For now we will enjoy this sunny Saturday in town before we set sail tomorrow morning.

One more thing, we have finally got a flag. This will be the first time we sail a Norwegian flag since the Swedish sea rescue crashed into us and broke ours off – pretty much exactly one year ago.

Captain Jack

Alongside Öland

My mother is correct, we are moving slowly. There is plenty of reasons for this, mainly because we have the time. Other factors are incorporating winds, blasphemic rain and a mix of these reasons in order to save valuable diesel. Just today we have sailed for eight hours. Having had a pretty good speed averaging about four knots we still didn’t get that far. The reason being a headwind that we just can’t seem to shake off. Not to worry, it’s a great way to sharpen our sailing-skills. But it is also hard on our poor old foresail and one of these evenings when it’s not raining I’ll have to patch it up on a couple of places.

Of course, all of these breaks give us a lot of time to enjoy being back in a boat. We have had some great evenings, had time to read books and cook awesome boat-food. We also have time to go sightseeing, find all the half price offers in the stores, write, contemplate, talk, discover and rediscover ourselves. The most important thing I have found personally is how time slow down, everything move in a different pace. It’s a great feeling to be able to live your own time to the fullest. All the time.

After leaving Oskarshamn we actually made it all the way to Öland with our mainsail holding just fine this time. Captain Simen had a couple of days with bad sleep and a bit of a fever. Just not being at a hundred percent, but he’s not one for complaining – that’s my job. We arrived in Sandvik just as the sun said good night and the moon came flying with rain. Sandvik is a small place. Not many house and I couldn’t really find any people either, except an crooked old couple in the store. I guess this is one of these places where old Swedish humans thrive and a nice place for every one else to visit in the summer.

They do have this awesome windmill though! It can be seen miles away and is truly beautiful. It’s also the world’s largest mill-museum if I read the poster correctly. Otherwise it looked like a place where they do like to celebrate their October, they had some kind of happening last week and the village center had plenty of pumpkins spread around.

Today I woke up as early as nine and after tree mugs of coffee, reading a chapter in my book, doing some writing and had breakfast the only thing to do was to get the boat working and us out sailing. Simen woke up a bit later, but didn’t miss much since by that time I had tacked twice and was still at the same latitude due to the beloved winds. At some point we passer from 57 to 56 degrees North, wuhoo! The winds luckily turned a bit and we were able to complete the 8 hours described above. But it didn’t matter. The weather was the best we’ve had since we started. With good speed and a warming sun on basically flat water you can deal with anything.

We sailed well into the darkness and docked in Borgholm just as today’s only rain touched base and effectively stopped my plan of patching the sail.

Captain Jack

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First nights below zero

Upon leaving our safe harbor in Kråkelund we started the last bit of the eastern Swedish archipelago. It is an amazing piece of the world but in a sailboat sometimes a bit too much to maneuver through. It would probably be easier to sail on the outside but the weather have told us to stay on the recommended tracks inside the outer islands. We had a long trip in between hundreds of red and and green boyes and barely managed not to hit any hidden rocks. Kind of fun of course, but since the total fail with the day before we decided to ride safe.

It seems that the cold weather and constant activity we are in make us in need of more and longer rests. It has not been unusual for us to sleep ten hour nights a couple of times a week. And at least once a week we’ve had to take an extra night to catch up with ourselves. We still have about two and a half month to get to my mother before x-mas so we should have plenty of time, but it also get clear er for every day passing that we will have to consider the weather very carefully to get there.

I would like to give you a tip on how to passively make money out of your pictures. You know the hundreds of pictures you take but never really use again. Easy, sell them as stock-photo! I have done this for 5 years now and have made quite a lot throughout. My most selling picture was of a monarch butterfly and it sold for $170! It’s worth taking a look at dear reader. Follow this link to check it out. They have recently made an app. Making everything super-much more easy then when I got started!

Putting down a carpet to keep our feets warm and happy

We actually ended up staying three nights in Oskarshamn. It is a good place to catch your breath and to divert some electrical energy from the dock. I tell you, this was very much needed as we had some really cold nights. I read – 4 degrees Celsius, but with the cold breeze down by the water it is good to be well protected from strong winds too. We are working on finding ways to stay even warmer whenever we are not connected to shorepower, but this will probably be a work in progress for the coming weeks. For now we are doing just fine, but we feel that getting prepared for the coming cold is a vice choice. This said, we’ve lived in colder conditions before without the protection the ship already offer. So this should be piece of cake, it’s all about making it comfortable and who ever liked to wake up cold?

Drying the duvets we found in a dumpster

We had visitors! One of the Germans to whom we sold pirate brew and other goods last summer came around with her buddy to finish off their Scandinavian road trip of the year. Although a short visit it was nice to catch up a bit.

Other than that we have been preparing the boat for another jump South. The wind are supposed to be pretty calm, but since we are now protected by the island of Öland we are not expecting the hardest of days anyway. All I got to do before we set off, besides to finish my cup of coffee, is to fill the water-tank and possibly get Captain Simen out of bed.

Captain Jack

Our sail broke in open water

Västervik is a cozy small city. It is home to about twenty thousands citizens and in the summer there is hundreds of boats visiting every day. It is also home and birthplace to both men from the a famous little group called ABBA. We were told by an old sailor, that is now retired from sailing for sixteen years in a boat much like ours, that one of them have basically bought the whole harbor-area and with this have build a floating hotel in town.

In other news, we’ve got diesel! With some good winds we are now fully able to reach the southernmost point of Sweden without too much hassle. We’ll take our time, no worry and according to our logs we had just put our last boat in the water up in Spillersboda this time last year, so in a way we are way ahead of schedule. Except this time, of course, we are not really heading for the Mediterranean this time around. It’s too damn hot down there.

Speaking of hot. It’s not. The weatherman have promised us nights averaging about 5 degrees Celsius. It’s getting close to that time where we need to buy covers for our beds. We made a great hot vegetable-soup for dinner after the two trips to the gas-station. It was a great day of exercise and for the first time in along time I walked twenty thousands steps in one day.

 

The next morning, at about eleven, as I was enjoying my coffee our old retired sailor from the day before pulled up next to our boat on the dock and asked what we thought about some food. And food it was. He took us to a great restaurant serving real Swedish food, buffé-style. It was great and he told us some good stores from his time at sea. After the meal he showed us around town a bit before returning us to our sweet darling home.

 

 

We the proceed ed with our plan, refiled the tank and motored out of the bay. Byebye Västervik. It was a wonderful day and we had a jolly time going 2,8 knots out toward the open sea. We wanted to find a well protected anchorage where we would be ready to ride the wind from north the next morning.

On the way out we had the time to make a pit-stop on one of the small Islands we passe. From distance we could see that the good old swedes had made an lighthouse there back in the 1777’s. Earlier too, but the building now triumphing the landscape was build only 246 years ago. They used to hang cages with burning coal for ships to make somewhat safer passages.

We proceeded to find ourselves a good place to anchor up for the night. With a forecast of 10ms cold wind from north we found a good place on the south side of an Island called Händelöp, which was locate perfect ly for our coming passage to Öland the next day. We went on a walk around the island to fin a great little summer town that was now basically closed for the season. Only a couple of houses had light in them but I’m sure whoever lived there did it happily.

We woke up bright and early at 10 in the morning and lighted some candles to heat up the boat a bit before breakfast. Without hanging around too much we sat course for today destinations at Öland. Faith wanted today to be another hard-ass day for the pirates onboard. We got about half an hour out before the foresail ripped in the seem. Not a big danger – this can easily be sowed in less than an hour. Our problem didn’t start until half an hour later as in when the old mainsail ripped all the way over. We had no choice but to motor back into shore. No Öland for us today. Instead we was kind of washed in by what the weather-people said would be 1,5 meter waves but in reality was 4, to a small bay with a settlement called Kråkelund.

There really wasn’t too many places we could go ashore but one dock that was deep enough for our beloved troublesome ship of the day. We were met by a girl named Olivia and Lucky for us she was not hard to ask when we explained our troubles. She invited us in for coffee an later for dinner as we were figuring out what sails we had available in our collection. We learned that instead of being equipped with two mainsail and two genoas, we had three genoas and only our ripped main. In horror we discussed our options until the solution appeared to us. All we had to do was cut away the bottom reef of the sail and tie it down. We are now officially sailing a much smaller sail. But we are coming into the wind season, so it’s probably for the better anyways.

For dinner Olivia also invited her twin-sister Lisa and we had a great conversation and a vegetarian meal. Both of us struggled a bit with the land-sickness but survived perfectly. We are very Lucky when all comes to all. There is really great people everywhere and we are very happy that our broken sail was kind of fixable. Tonight we get to stay in a warm boat since the sisters happily helped out with land-power for the night. What a day..

Captain Jack