No longer unbearably cold! And thoughts on economy.

I think that spring might be here! We've been able to work on Ingeborg this weekend. We ripped out the old autopilot anno 1979 and installed a "new" one. I bet it's no older than 15 years! It's an Autohelm 6000 and we got it for free! We hooked it up to the old Robertson hydraulic pump and it worked. Of course, I got the cables wrong, there were two ways of connecting them and Murphy, as usual, couldn't mind his own business. I wasn't sure wich side was wich on the pump so now it steers to port when it should go to starboard, but it's an easy fix. The reason we changed pilots is that the old Robertson had a broken compass and since we got this one for free it was clearly cheaper than buying a new compass. Comparing the two, the Robertson is a Rolls Royce and the Autohelm is a Volvo, but a newer Volvo. We're also making a new instrument board and with half the stuff ripped out of the old one and all the tools lying around down below Ingeborg looks like a war zone.

We've had no luck in selling the apartment. We'll give it a few more weeks then we'll try to sub let it. I hope the the entire project doesn't fall with the apartment... I'm a bit worried.

We also have to order a new mizzen and it won't be delivered until the end of June and we had hoped to be away by the beginning of that month. Doesn't matter though, there's no rush, we're just eager.

With all the things we hadn't forseen, but should have, costs are piling up. There's the mizzen, the new standing rig and a bunch of other things. We had hoped to leave with at least 200.000 SEK ($27.000) on the bank account and live off it for at least 18 months. I actually don't know how we're going to reach that amount but we'll go with what we've got and see how far we get. Maybe working along the way is an option? I work with marine electronics and navigation equipment so it might not be impossible... Any advice, short of selling organs on e-bay, on how to put an extra $ in the wallet while sailing is apreciated.

/Hampus

A new adventure

So this is us, after a rough sailing in a hailstorm (40 knots) but ending in a beautiful dark grey sky with magic beams of sun.

I´m not a sailor at heart, like Hampus. I´m more of a traveller, a vagabond who happens to go by salingboat, happy to reach the next port. It´s not that I don´t like sailing, I do, it´s just that I prefer to visit new places, make new acquaintances and explore the culture of a foreign town, country or continent. And now I´m somehow on my way to the Caribbean - sailing?! But after all, I do like seeing new places and people and I do like sailing. But things change, and maybe by the time we reach our destination I´ll become more of a sailor and less of a traveller?

As I embark on Ingeborg and on this journey I also bring a lot of fears with me. Most of them concern my bad back. Since a carcrash, 18 years ago I've got a bad back and I´ve gone through a arthrodesis and just about a year ago I got hit from behind and got a whiplash. It scares me to be this fragile if it ever would come down to "man against nature" and the fact that I´m in a lot more pain out at sea. The good side of it is of course that there´s no cars on the sea...

So this is me. Looking forward to a new big adventure in my life and to be a part of Hampus' lifelong dream, but a little uneasy because of the fact that I sometimes feel like I´m in the shape of someone twice my age.

The photo summarizes a lot of my feelings about sailing, it can be beautiful, breathtaking or scary - but it´s always nice to make landfall and have gained a new experience. It´s freedom.

Lotta

Where to draw the line?

Well, where do you draw the line? How much stuff do you buy and how many spares do you bring? Every little thing we buy will shorten our potential time away. It's easy to focus on all the things that you need, instead of trying to focus on how little you need. Do we really need all the things that we think we need now? Isn't it better to leave with less than you think you need and buy it along the way if you find that you miss it? A lot of the stuff that is on the wish/need/want list are things that I've done well without for many years and 1000's of miles. I think I'll post the list here some time...

And regarding spare parts. What really sucks about them is that you always need the one thing that you didn't get. So why get any at all?

We just get scared looking at the sum at the bottom of our list. Of course the boat has to be in a sound condition. But apart from that what do we actually need, to sailg away? I guess that's a question to you readers. All 7 of you :)

/Me in my most optimistic and cheerful mood

Just a short update of present plans.

In december we suddenly decided to leave. The date is set to... well some time between may and july this year. Only a few months left and there's so much to do. Ingeborg needs new standing rigging, new thru hulls, new anti fouling, something to sort out our charging needs, we need to mount the windvane, install the "new" used and completely free autopilot and a thousand other little things. On top of that we also need to pack up our regular lifes.

When all is done we just hope that there'll be enough money left to buy ketchup for the rice and beans to keep our teeth from falling out.

But boy are we looking forward to it!

Yeah, the destination. We don't have one really. Or we do, but we won't tell you just in case we end up somewhere else. A clue though; I've heard that they are really big on pina coladas and coconuts...

/Hampus

Preparation

The kerosene lamps on the forward bulkhead are burning with a coasy yellow light and the shadows are dancing around the saloon as the northerly gale that howls through the rig makes Ingeborg rock back and forth. Lotta is asleep in the aft cabin, she's working tomorrow, I'm not. Well, I'll be working on Ingeborg. We're only going to be away for 9 weeks, but there's so much to be done. I wonder what it would be like if we were going away for a couple of years? I hope I'll find out some day... This whole mini cruise is partly a way of getting away from work and the daily routines of living a "normal" life. It's also test to see if Lotta finds the cruising lifestyle appealing or not. If she does, then who knows where we'll end up eventually? For now, we are still at our marina in Malmö, Sweden and we won't set off until august. This weekend we're unstepping the main mast. Ingeborg has wooden masts and there's rot around the base of the forward mast. We had a hard time finding a shipyard that could fix it for us and it turned out to be quite expensive, so we'll do it ourselves. We'll cut off around 2 metres of the mast and replace it with fresh wood. It'll probably take little more than a week as the epoxy needs 48 hors before I dare turn the mast over. Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Beleive me, we've considered everything from just shortening the mast to turning it upside down... Maybe we should just move the mizzen forward and be done with it! Who needs two masts anyway?

I guess you'll be seing the progress, or lack thereof, in this blog. If I keep udating it and you keep reading it that is...

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be changing the instrument panel in the cockpit and remove some old instruments. I'll also clean up among all the cables. If I still have some time left I'll install the "new" autopilot. It'll be nice! We'll have a slightly used 15 year old pilot instead of a heavily used 30 year old pilot. Couldn't get any better! I'm worried about everything that needs to be done before we leave. Not so much because of the time it takes but because of the $$ it'll cost. We're hard pressed to make the budget anyway and we absolutely need a new propane stove. The one that's mounted now has no gimbals and no way of fixing the pots. We really don't want spaghetti and tomato sauce all over the galley and ourselves! We also need at least one new holding tank. Then ofcaurse, there's the "I want I want I want I want!!!" list which is pretty much never ending... It would feel a lot better if someone would buy our old boat, a 31 ft double ender. An excellent blue water pocket cruiser. Any takers!?

Ingeborg is a 1979 Transworld 41. She's probably derived from the original William Garden design and was built in Taiwan. The Transworld is a center cockpit version of the CT 41, Formosa 41, Island trader 41 etc. Ingeborg is 41 feet long (almost 50 feet with bow sprit and davits) and she weighs around 14.5 tons. She has a full keel and a ketch rig. These boats are often referred to as "Leaky teaky" and "Taiwan turkey". Mostly by really evil people who never sat their foot aboard one in their lifes, but sometimes also by their owners. Keeping this in mind, on this blog we are the only ones allowed to call Ingebord a "Leaky teaky" or "Taiwan turkey" and you should take care to remember that!

We bought Ingeborg in Germany in april and sailed her the 140 or so miles home in early may. I'm not really sure how we came to buy her, we were'nt really looking for another boat. I'll try to sort it out though... I guess we talked about long term cruising and Lotta mentioned that in the future, if we were to go do some serious cruising, she'd want a bigger boat. It should have at least two separate cabins so she could either get away from me, or lock me in (she didn't say which one) when she got tired of my company. Eger as I am to go cruising, I sat down in front of the computer and started scanning the internet. I wanted to show Lotta what kind of baots you could get for very little money if you turned your eyes towards west and the USA. As it turned out though, the brittish pound had taken a pounding (pun intended) and was very weak compared to the swedish crown, so there was a whole world of cheap... ish boats just around the corner. As we turned our eyes towards the brittish market, we found a few interesting ones but none fell to Lotta's liking, not until I stumbled upon a Formosa Sea Tiger in the med. It was cheap and required a lot of work but was sold before we had a chance to look at it. Anyway, after this Lotta was sold on the Formosa/CT/whatever and I think I might have been too. There were none for sale in Sweden and I didn't even know if they existed here. I talked about it with a friend at work and it turned out that not only had he sailed one, but it was (still is) owned by his friend and for sale. A CT 41 and only an hour drive from home! We went looking at it as soon as possible but Lotta wasn't too fond of the interior layout. A week earlier I had been in touch with a german selling a CT 41 center cockpit. At almost €80.000 it was way over our bugdget, but I e-mailed him for more pictures, which I got. She was just gorgeous and seemed to be in excellent condition, but the price tag was out of our reach. For two days I didn't respond to the e-mail and then I got another one. If we bought the boat before the end of march, we could have her for €55.000, which was just within our limits. I guess it might have been meant to be? Anyway, to make a long story short, she was just as beautiful as she semmed to be and here I am in the saloon of Ingeborg, typing away. Not only am I typing, I'm blogging! Something I thought was way too mainstream and that I once promised myself never to do... That's the definition of "lack of character"...

A few more pictures:












I guess we'll see where this blog, and we, end up in the future, but for now we'll try to keep it updated. First with the progress of work, then with the fun stuff :)

/Hampus aboard S/Y Ingeborg, Malmö