Home...

So, we're home and I've been lazy enough. Time for this post. It's been so long now so I probably won't remember the details... Also, I seem to have lost all the pictures from enkhuizen and onwards so this will be a text only post. Will try to keep it brief so you don't get bored with me :)

We sailed from Enkhuizen to Amsterdam. We left Ijsselmeer and went through the locks just outside Enkhuizen to enter Markermeer. It was quite windy, around 26 knots. Since the depth of the lake, is no ore than 3 meters (10ft) the seas become quite choppy with a high frequency. It was a long day and we arrived in Amsterdam at night, just before dark. Strangely enough Amsterdam has quite few marinas, at least if you want to stay near the centre. We choose Sixhaven, a marina on the opposite side of the city center. Prices seemed quite high at first, compared to the rest of Holland, but for €25 everything was included, water, electricity, internet, showers and even soap for your laundry.

Since we were separated from the city center by the channel, we had to go by ferry to get there. This was not a problem though. The ferries were only five minutes from the marina, they departed every five minutes and were free. Five minutes after the ferry departed you stepped of at the Amserdam Central station. Seven minutes walk from there and you are right smack in the middle of Amsterdam. I've been to Amsterdam quite a few times before with the old job and I have to say that of all the cities I've visited, Amsterdam is my favourite. It's a very international city, you hear more english than dutch in the streets and it's got this special atmosphere that is hard to describe. It's also very liberal with the Red Light District, which is actually a beautiful part of the city to just walk through, and all the little coffee shops. The smell of weed is like a lid over the entire city. There's also a very long shopping street which is "great" if someone in the crew likes to go shopping (not naming names but pointing fingers). Someone bought, among other things, a very nice leather jacket.

We stayed in Amsterdam for almost a week. When we finally left it was quite windy again. If we had known just how windy, we would have waited. It didn't seem to bad at first and we were quite sheltered as we went up the Nordhollandkanaal towards Alkmaar. About half way to Alkmaar we had to pass a small lake and the landscape was almost completely flat and open. The first part of the lake we motored against the wind doing around 2 knots with full power. As we turned starboard we had the wind from port and the landscape opened up even more. We heeled over 10-15 degrees under the rig only, no sails up. I estimate that the gusts hit 50 knots and the air was full of water!

It felt good to finally creep back into a shelterd channel and the final part up to Alkmaar was pretty calm. Alkmaar is a very nice and coasy little town but still has enough shops for you to buy pretty much anything you might need. They also have a cheese market where you can buy local cheese, some up to 400 years old! I bet they'll hav a very special odor!

From Alkmaar we went on to Den Helder. Not much to say about that, the place was a dump, a real disappointment. We're usually not easily scared but it was frightening walking around in Den Helder after dark.

In Den Helder we invented a new way of going through a lock. We decided to go on the "outside" from Den Helder and thus had to go through the lock. There was aboat in front of us as we entered the lock and instead of just tying up just inside the gates we continued to moor just behind the onther boat, which was stupid as there was no need to be so tight. Anyway, the other boat went for the åprt side of the lock, but ran into problems and had to go for our side. We had to move and as the lock master started filling water we only had one line tied up. The water got hold of the boat and we ended up sideways in the lock. It was OK though, Ingeborg is 15 meters LOA and the lock must have been at least 15.01 metres wide. No harm done!

From here we went on to Vlieland, which is one of the West Frisian islands. A very nice island bur expensive. As bad weather was approaching we descided to go back into the channels and thus once again sailed to Lawersoog. We arrived at night and rushed in with the tide doing 9 knots over ground.

We went through the lock the next morning and Lotta made pancakes. As I was eating pancakes and generally enjoying myself at the helm I suddenly noticed that we were slowing down. We had hit a mudbank IN the fairway and had to be pulled out by the duych rescue society. For free though. Excellent service! We continued to Groningen where we met a very nice dutch couple who we spent the night with. We stayed in Groningen for two days as it was a very nice place, full of students. We aslo had to find a new filter holder for one of the fuel filters and hve the mizzen repaired, we shred it on our way to Vlieland.

From Groningen we went on to Delfzijl where we stayed over night by the locks, waiting for morning. We had one incident on the way. I was switching fue tanks and got the valves confused. In other words, I closed the tnk we were using before I opened the other one and the engine, ofcaurse died... I rushed upstairs and we got fenders and lines out. Fortunately the shore of the channel wasn't rocky but clad in wood and quite low. Lotta steered closer and I jumped ashore just to find out that there was nothing to tie our lines to, only small rocks. As I stood there holding the line a riverbarge passed by and sucked Ingeborg out. I was flat on my back on the rocky shore trying to hold her back. As I too was about to get sucked into the channel, the stream changed direction and Ingeborg came back. We scarfed the lines and managed to tie them up to a couple of trees on the other side of a bike track. 30 minutes of work, bleeding the engine and we were on our way again.

From Delfijl we motored down the river Ems, with Holland on our port side and Germany on our starboard side to Borkum, a german island. The marina, Port Henry was a dump with pontoons full of holes, no light at night and although the chart said it was supposed to be 1.9 metres deep, it was only 0.5 metres at low tide. We lay safely in the mud though. The marina is about 7 kilometres from the town on the island but there are buses. The town is really nice and that was lucky since we gad to spend four days on Borkum with an easterly gale howling through the rig. We used to go into town and we sat at a hotel by the beachwalk and watch the waves getting thrown 15 metres into the air as they hit the reef outside of the island. We'd had occasional problems with the engine during the previous week. Sometimes we couldn't get more than 1500 RPM. As we were about to leave Borkum, the engine wouldn't start at all. It tured out that the stop lever on the engine had got stuck. Nothing serious, I jsut poked it back with a screwdriver. It turned out though that the lever can get stuck BETWEEN open and closed and this was the cause of our problems with not reaching full power.

We left Borkum and sailed the 100 miles to Cuxhaven. Two incidents. Just before dawn we had an override of the sheet on one of the winches. Since we had the genua sheeted hard we couldn't release preassure from the sail by going into the wind and we had to cut the sheet. I was tired and just cut the sheet by the winch which was kind of dumb. I should of course have cut it close to the sail... The othe incident was with the engine. Just before dawn we had started the engine to motor up the Elbe. Suddenly the engine died and we found ourself drifting between ships going in and out. 15 minutes later the engine was bled and ran again. I never knew why it stopped but it would take several days before I trusted it again. I hate motoring!

From Cuxhacen we went into the Kiel canal again and stayed over night in Brunnsbüttel. From there we went to Rendsburg where Lotta´s mother with boyfriend came aboard. The next day we went on to Kiel where we spent a nice night out. The next day we sailed on and shred our mizzen again. It's just so old and thin like toilet paper. Luckily it was shred below the first reef and we could still use it reefed. It was quite windy and choppy. We sailed to Heiligenhafen, where we stayed for three days due to bad weather. It was nice hving company, almost like vacation.

From Heilgenhafen we had a great sail up to Hesnaes in Denmark. We were on a broad reach under full sails and for a couple of hours we averaged 7.5 knots! From Hesnaes we had a nice sail under a grey sky to Skanör in Sweden where my parents came with dinner. The next day we sailed the last 18 miles back to Malmö, home and work.

Its been two great months, I mean really good! The boat has been shaken down and we've got a few things to fix, but generally she works really good. We also found out that we get along really well confined to 12x3.6 metres for two months. We never once got homesick, missed the TV or missed work. In fact, it actually felt a bit sad coming home again and we immediately wanted to get back out there again. Plans are forming though but more about that in the next post...

/Hampus, back in the so called real world.

Oh, the bells, the bells!

Meeting in the canal.


We're in Enkhuizen in Holland. Been here for three nights now, and there will be a fourth. A southwesterly force 7 is howling through the rig, even though we are birthed in the middle of the town center with lots of shelter. We are sailing on a lake, but force 7 is still a lot. Tomorrow we'll have W force 5, which will be excellent for the 26M sail to Amsterdam, where I suspect we'll stay for at least 4 days. The plan after that is to go through the North sea canal to Ijmuiden and then around the Dutch north sea coast on our way home. We still want to visit the West and East Frisian islands which we skipped on our way here.

Every town in Holland with the least bit of self respect has bells, church bells, but not the kind that goes DING DONG DING DONG. They all go klingkedidonk klang diiiiiiing etc.
They all play tunes. We've noticed it in every dutch town we stopped in, Dokkum, Harlingen, Medemblik and now Enkhuizen. Enkhuizen is the "worst", the day we got here they played for an hour straight without interruption. They have at least three towers within a mile that all play a tune every 15 minutes. Apart from the fact that we wake up to Greensleves at 3 am each morning, we still havn't found a system for when they play what. I guess it's a complicated system.














They are not only crazy about bells, they are also quite fanatic about old boats. Usually they live aboard them and they are kept in mint condition. This old steamer had a nice sound in it's whistle!

The trip to enkhuizen has been somewhat eventful. We set out from Cuxhafen in Germany at midnight to go with the tide and reach or destination in the evening, the following day. The destination was Lauwersoog in Holland some 90M west. There was absolutetly no wind whatsoever as we left the harbour and the night was clear and without a moon, so the Milky Way was incredibly bright. On our way out the Elbe river we stayed just outside the fairway, but apparantly not far enough as the german "Wassershutzpolizei" pulled us over and told us to move further away. They were very polite and friendly though. Just as we reached the Elbe estuary at around 3 am, winds picked up from S and increased to force 4-5 and we set sail. Cuxhafen had been crowded with dutch boats waiting for better weather before going home and as dawn broke I could count almost 30 sails around the horizon, but I know there were more under it. Ingeborg is by no means a fast boat, but comfortable. With force 4-5 we sailed almost upright, doing 6-6.5 knots and almost everyone past us. The only boat that we managed to put behind us was a Tayana 42, HA! At 3 pm the wind died and we motored the rest of the way. At 7.05 pm we reached Lauwerssog, 5 minutes too late for getting into the channels through the lock. It didn't matter though, as we got company from two dutch couples on the boats "Calypso" and "La Touche". Very nice people and we were to keep in touch until we reached Harlingen, where we went separate ways. The next morning we went through the lock and started our "sail" by motoring on the channels, the standing mast route through the dutch inland waterways. We went to Dokkum, a small and very charming town. Just before Dokkum we had to turn around, waiting for a bridge to open and in the narrow channel (a little bit wider than the length of Ingeborg) we got stuck in the mud and had to wait for a friendly motor boat to pull us out. We spent the night in Dokkum, as a heavy thunderstorm passed overhead. The next day we set out for Harlingen, which is on the Waddenzee, outside the channels but inside the westfrisian islands. In Leuwarden, between Dokkum and Harlingen, just as we were to pass under a bridge, the motor died and we were left drifting on the channel in strong winds. It would have been worse if it had happend after the bridge and if it was closed, but it would have been better if it had happened in the middle of the channel as we could have just put her in the mud. Now we drifted towards a rather nasty quay with large mooring poles for river barges. We were lucky though hit one of the poles amidships but managed to get a few fenders in between first. We could then jump ashore and after some hard work pulling lines to trees she was safely moored and we as well as Ingeborg were unharmed. We also got company from Calypso and La Touche. When they saw that we were in trouble they asked the bridgkeeper to keep the bridge open so they could turn back for us. It felt really good not being alone! 30 minutes work had the motor running again, air in the system and when we changed diesel filters in Harlingen we got the explanation. A nut blinding the unused intake (there are 2 intakes on each filter, but only one is used) on one of the filters had come loose and the filter was sucking air.

I have no idea why the Italians are so proud of their leaning tower. In Holland every building leans and they all lean in different directions. Most hoses arte very old. A house built in the 19th or even 18th century is considered to be "new". It's not rare to see houses from early 17th century, or even 16th century. As the boats, the hoses are kept in mint condition and are preserved very well. It really isn't hard to imagine what it must have looked like here a couple of centuries ago.

Harlingen is a nice town on the coast, inside the islands on the Waddensee. The Waddensee is shallow and always changing so you need the very latest charts and navigational warnings. During low tide a lot of the Waddensee is dry and even the fairway is only 1-2 feet deep, so you need to cross during high tide. Harlingen is not tide free and there are no pontoons, so you need to use long lines. It was a really nice place though. We stayed two nights before crossing the Waddensee to the locks at Kornwerderzand before entering into Ijsselmeer. We then sailed to Medemblik, a very, very nice and charming town on the western side of Ijsselmeer. Ijsselmeer is by the way a lake, a man made lake with a dam separating it from Waddenzee in the northern end and another dam separating it from another manmade lake in the south. From there we sailed on to Enkhuizen, another charming but rather big city.

We've been here for 3 nights now, working a bit on the boat. We installed a new holding tank among other things. We've also been listening to Joshua Slocums "Sailing alone around the world" on CD and taken turns reading "Slumdog millionaire" by Vikas Swarup out loud to eachother. Really nice! Tomorrow, hopefully, Amsterdam is waiting!

We've got to get out of this place...

We've been here for... almost five days now. In Cuxhafen that is. Unless the water is crystal clear with dolphins jumping across the bow and barebreasted mermaids serve you breakfast every morning, five days is too long!

We sailed from Spodsbjerg in Denmark to Holtenau in Kiel. Holtenau is a nice little harbour in a calm area with buatiful old houses, and it's just next to the Kiel canal locks. We had absolutely no wind on the way over and the 60M we're done by engine. We arrived in the middle of a thunder squall and rushed below like drowned kittens.

The next day we went through the locks, it was uneventful and over before we knew it started, a bit of an anticlimax. We continued on to Rendsburg, a nice little town about 1/3 of the way through the Kiel canal. Again, motoring, as sailing is prohibited in the canal. In Rendsburg we found Ingeborg's sad looking sister.
She's aparently been laying there for ten years and looks like she's in a bad shape, although not beyond rescue, yet.

The next day we continued to Brunsbüttel, which is in the other end, the Elbe, or North sea end of the canal. On our way there we broke the traffic regulations of the canal! There meeting places or "exchange areas" as the germans call them, along the way, with signals indicating if it's OK to enter and leave, or to only enter but not leave etc. As we aproached one of them, there was a red flshing light, which means danger, enter but don't leave. We had two large sailing boats in front of us, a large german river barge and a german SAR boat and they all ignored the signal. We thought; when in germany, do as the germans. We would soon get the explanation to the signal though. On the other side of the meeting place there was a large railway bridge. Just as we went under the bridge, five police helicopters crossed the canal at low altitude and disappeared behind the forest on our right side. A few minutes later they appeared again, behind us and lined up over the channel. They then sped up and all of them flew under the bridge before disappearing around a bend in the canal... After all this excitement, the rest of the day was wonderfully boring. We didn't have high hopes for Brunsbüttel, but it was a pleasent surprise and quite coasy. We spent two days there, waiting for better weather, before leaving for Cuxhafen, a trip of 17M. Finally, the weather improved enough and we continued with the tide out the river Elbe, again by engine in headwind of force 5. With the wind against us and the tide, creating choppy seas, we were almost dead in the water at times but still did between five and eight knots over ground. We arrived in Cuxhafen just before lunch. That was thursday last week and we've been here since then. We've had westerly winds of between force 5 and 6 and during the weekend it peaked at force 9. Not good for us, as we are heading west. We're waiting here together with a whole bunch of dutch sailors on their way home. Tonight though, we'll leave. The winds have dropped and during the afternoon today they'll veer to south or southeast. Perfect! We'll leave tonight for Norderney, one of the westmost of the East Frisian Islands. Distance from here, around 70M The reason we'll leave tonight is that the appraoch is difficult in darkness, so we'll have to arrive during day. We also have the tide to consider. I guess the first part will be by engine again, as they have thretened with very light winds during the early night. Winds will pick up after midnight though, so it looks like it'll be a lovely night of sailing.

And now, a few words about Cuxhafen. It's not a bad place really. It's an old resort with lovely old hoses and nice beaches that keep disappearing and coming back as the tide changes. The town is quite big and it's divided into two parts. The center is quite modern with lots of shops and you can find everything you need. The older parts, the resort and beachfront are lined with beatiful old and large houses, small hotels and restaurants. There seems to be a lot of tourists here, but most are germans. There is no information in english anywhere! It's expensive here though. They charge you €2.80 to enter the beach. €20 per night in the marina and then nothing's included, you pay extra for electricity, water, showers etc. The only thing that's reasonably cheap is restaurants. Prices are about 10-30% cheaper than home, and you get served twice as much food. The day before yesterday we visited the yacht club's own restaurant and had a fishplate for two. It was a mountain of food and we could barely finnish half of it. We got a doggy bag and had lunch for the next day. This made our extravagant dinner quite cheap after all.

There are two main marinas here, the SVC (Sergler Vereinung Cuxhafen) which we're in. It's just a marina, all services but quite boring. Very sheltered though. Then there's Cuxhafen city marina, almost in the center and it looks really coasy. Max length over all for entering is 20 metres and you have to pass under a bridge that opens between 6.00 and 21.00. Both marinas have pontoons so you don't have to worry about the tide during your stay.



A typical Cuxhafen house with one of the churces in the background.























/Hampus, aboard S/Y Ingeborg in Cuxhafen, Germany. Waiting anxiously to leave.

I'm sitting in bed drinking tea and eating cookies. We're off! It's friday today and we've been on our way since monday. Last week was a bitch, we finnished the mast, installed a new calorifier, a new VHF, packed, shopped, stepped the mast, bought a million little things that we needed for the boat and came out a lot poorer. I don't think I was in bed before 1 am any night last week. And we're just going for a two month trip, Imagine if we were going to be away for five years!





Anyway, we're on our way now. What a relief! We left Malmö five days ago in nice winds but with a grey sky and rain threatening to break out any minute. Lotta's family came along for the short trip to Falsterbokanalen, the place where I first started to sail dinghies. With just an hour to go the sky opened up and we moored alongside the pontoon looking like drowned cats. We stayed there the entire tuesday. We had to buy a new winch for the genoa halyard and mount it on the mast. That night we had dinner with my parents who live nearby. Falsterbokanalen is a man made channel and it saves you around 13M if you're going south, or north. At 1100 on wednsday, as the bridge opened, we passed through and we were on our way! The 33M sail to Klintholm on Mön in Denmark took 9 hours in very light winds but beautiful sunny weather with a sea that looked like mercury. We motored the last 15M. Klintholm was expensive, 34€ for one night and then we spent another 250€ on 200 liter diesel and the "hafenmeister" (harbourmaster) only spoke german!


The captain!




At thursday we were off again, this time through Smålandsfarvandet to the small island of Femö, also in Denmark. Again, hardly any wind and it took all day to sail the 30M. The small marina was full and we anchored just 100 metres off the beach, together with 13 other boats. The night was very calm and we took the dinghy ashore and went for a walk. Friday (today), we set sail for Spodsbjerg on Langeland (long land), another danish island. It probably got it's name from it's shape, the danes are predictable. A lot cheaper than Klintholm and plenty of room. The sail today was in force 4-5 winds and we made good speed under mizzen and genoa on a broad reach. We got a head current as we aproached Langeland and the seas we're quite choppy. I cut my hand, knocked my head on the main boom and we spilled sauce from the lunch stew all over the cockpit. On top of this, some (probably the previous owner) had removed the vent hose to one of the diesel tanks from the deck vent and we had filled the cabinet where we keep all our drinking glasses with diesel. We didn't notice this until I handed Lotta a glass mixed with lemonade and diesel. She had an extra mouth full before noticing that something was wrong. She still tastes like diesel when I kiss her... All the glasses are in a bucket of water in the cockpit and it seems like they'll be odor free. The locker is worse off though, but that's a project for tomorrow.


Oh yeah! Tjis is how the mast turned out, varnished and ready. More details later.

We motored down to Limhamn a week and a half ago (sunday) to unstep the mast. It was kind of exciting as we have never done it on this boat before. One single bolt gave us trouble for two hours before we beat it, litterally. Apart from that all went well and the mast came down in slow and controlled manner. We put it on the dock over night and motored back to Malmö.
The rot is clearly visible here.











A truck was supposed to pick it up on monday, but it broke down. I think Murphy hates sailors! We were able to arrange transportation through friends though, after scrapping the idea of transporting the 15 meter mast on the roof of our 3 meter Lada (that's a car, although Lotta only gives it credit for being a really nice tractor).
This is a very sophisticated transportation device.











This is a slightly less sophisticated transportation device. We thought it might be easier to handle sharp turns if we put the barrow under the base of the mast but it was too heavy and we had to put it under the spreaders where it balanced better. Then it was "easy" to push it into the barn where the surgery will take place.





Working with chisels and a wooden club I remove the rotten material. It's very easy as it's so wet you can squeeze water from it. The VHF cable visible in the center of the mast is run in a plastic pipe which was broken, so all the water coming along he cable just ended up inside the mast instead of on the outside.


















A pile of rotten wood. It's so wet it wouldn't even make a decent fire.




Here's the good wood... Still working with chisels I cut the scarf. Normally it would be 12 times the thickness of the wood, which is rwo inches. However, we found that the mast is pretty much made solid from the base and two meters up, so there will be plenty of good wood for the epoxy to work it's magic on. This scarf is only five times the thickness of the wood. The mast is built from spruce, which is pretty much impossible to come by over here, so we're scarfing in pieces of siberian larch. There will be a slight difference in color, but the larch is a lot more resistant to rot than spruce.

Working with 20th century tools now, I sanded the scarf. It's now completely even and smooth as a babies butt. I used a coarse paper to give the epoxy a slightly larger surface. When this was done I gor ambitios and started sanding the entire mast. I figured I might as well do it now... I've got about 1/3 of the mast sanded down and I've still got to make three more scarfs, glue them together, sand the remaining 2/3 and put at least five coats of varnish on the mast before the start of august. That's aside from all the other projects we have...

Oh! We also had the time to install the new gimblled cooker with oven. It's a wonder of stainless steel and glass. Now Lotta can cook in rough weather! Nest I will give her a gimballed zink so she can do the dishes too...

More pictures will follow as the work progresses.

/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