Tur fra Gdansk til Middelhavet ============================== Thursday 2022-07-07 - Gdansk -> Władysławowo -------------------------------------------- Departure from Gdansk, in the afternoon. Boat has been in for maintenance for half a year, it's many weeks delayed, and still there are lots of details remaining, things I would have expected the workers to fix. And some unresolved problems as well. We spent quite some time fixing the autopilot ram just before departure, but ... no luck, it lasted for a day or two. Grey weather, good winds. Went critically low on battery voltage and had to run the engine for a while. Pass Hel, the wind was almost perfect, but a bit too strong and a tiny bit in the wrong direction - but at least coming more or less from land making the waves bearable. Crew already starting to become seasick and demanded a stop in Władysławowo. Arrived there perhaps at 02. Stayed for two days as the wind became much worse. One of the things that was done during the maintenance stay was to lift out the engine and fix all leakages. Oh well. There are still lots of sea water leaking and a bit of oil as well. Very annoying to pay that much for taking the engine to a repair shop and then it's still leaking. Sunday 2022-07-10 - Władysławowo -> Leba ---------------------------------------- Got up around 5, spent an hour cleaning the boat before departure - but not good enough, still lots of things ended up on the floor as waves and keeling made an impact. The wind was stronger than predicted and in a different direction than predicted, so we spent most of the time tacking, and we had some problems getting a good angle towards the wind. Only by the end of the day we could manage to go more or less parallel to the land. When passing Leba, the wind direction was good, and wind speed as well, but the decision had already been made to go to Leba. We arrived by sunset. Despite good forecasts we spent an extra full day in Leba, resting, fixing things, and getting a visit from a mechanic. He said that the sea water pump axis needs to be replaced, he could do it, but it would take several days to order the parts. Eventually I ended up ordering it to Swinemunde. In retro-perspective, we should rather have waited some few more days in Leba - it was a stroke of luck finding a mechanic that had time and skills to fix such things in the high season. Tuesday 2022-07-12 Leba -> Kolobrzeg ------------------------------------ Forgot to make notes, probably headwind and tacking, and using the engine the last way towards port. Arrived late, perhaps past midnight. Spent the full Wednesday in Kolobrzeg and met up with my chess friend from BeWelcome, Stanislav. Torsdag 2022-07-14 - Kolobrzeg -> Dziwnow, 1/2 ---------------------------------------------- Vi skulle dra "tidlig morgen" fra Kolobrzeg. Etter å ha stått opp, drukket litt te, gjort noen innkjøp (inkludert blokk for å rigge stormseil - det var en mellomstor båtutstyrsbutikk i Kolobrzeg, men i rulleskøyteavstand fra sjøen) og ryddet båt var klokken allerede rundt 16. Og da hadde vi ikke spist skikkelig frokost engang ... Vi forsøkte oss litt med stormseilet (som kanskje har ligget under benken ubrukt siden båten ble sjøsatt i år 2000). Det er ikke rulleseil, man må ut på dekk ... så det var en fuktig opplevelse å få opp seilet - og det ble mange forsøk før riggingen var god. Ved bruk sammen med en flik med genoa blir det lett konflikt mellom genoaskjøte og stormseil, og på første forsøk fikk vi en voldsomt flappende genoa som igjen fikk de andre seilene til å flappe. Det ble ikke så god fart, men jeg føler meg mer komfortabel med stormseilet og noen fliker av de vanlige seilene, i stedet for vanlige seil som er alt for godt rullet inn og som burde vært rullet enda mer inn. Det kompliserte ting ganske mye å ha babord skjøtetau til genoaen via trinse i akter og uten taubrems. Dessuten, alt for mye kraft på tauguide som holdt tauet unna skutesiden - den løsnet plutselig. Jeg ut på dekk igjen og fjernet storseilskjøtet. Vi får kjøpe enda en trinse og bruke til å holde storseilskjøtet unna skutesiden, samt føre storseilskjøtet via trinsen bak. (noen dager senere fant Max "fasit" - storseilskjøtet ble ført inn i cockpit en helt annen vei, og stormseilskjøte ble lagt der hvor storseilskjøtet hadde vært). Motvind, litt på skrått mot land, vindstyrker mellom 25 og 33 knop og bølger deretter. Fredag 2022-07-15 - Kolobrzeg -> Dziwnow, 2/2 --------------------------------------------- På nattskiftet hadde jeg 6 knop med kurs fra land, alt var tipp-topp, og jeg hadde planlagt å seile slik i flere timer. Så kom det plutselig et vindskifte, jeg bautet mot babord - og det var mulig å seile i riktig retning i en stund. I mørket fikk jeg kanskje ikke satt seilene skikkelig, jeg endte opp med en fart på 3 knop, pluss/minus - skjønner ikke hvorfor det var slik, vi burde hatt mer fart med den vinden. Noe lyn, men langt unna. Plutselig krøp vindfarten ned til 15 knop, og vi fikk svært lite fart. Var det bare stille før stormen? Jeg ventet en stund før jeg ble utålmodig og rullet ut noe mer genoa. Det skulle jeg ikke ha gjort! Minutter etter at genoa var ute økte vinden på til 32 knop - og det ila et par sekunder! Inn med alt av seil bortsett fra stormseilet. Vinden gikk etterhvert tilbake til gammel vindretning og fart (20-30 knop) og noe ustabilt. Siden det var natt og jeg var alene i cockpit ble det stående slik - minst mulig seil å forholde seg til, selv om farta tidvis ble laber. Etterhvert som jeg ble trøttere og trøttere (og med autopilot som ikke fungerte) ble det vanskeligere og vanskeligere å holde stabil kurs - så etter å ha krysset gikk ny kurs nesten parallellt med gammel kurs - vi kom oss altså nesten ikke av flekken! (autopiloten fungerte i et par minutter - som jeg benyttet på å ta inn seil da vindhastigheten plutselig økte på til 32 knop). Etterhvert som Katja våknet og kunne ta over satte jeg ut en flik med genoa og storseil. Det later til å hjelpe for å få bedre fart - i allefall dersom man sørger for tilstrekkelig vinkel mot vinden. Et par ganger håpet vi å ha unnagjort "siste bauting", men fortsatt endte vi opp et par nautiske mil unna elvemunningen. Siste etappe ble unnagjort med motor mot vinden. Jeg har opplevd større vindhastigheter, og jeg har opplevd mer sjøgang, men har aldri prøvd å krysse i lengre tid under slike forhold, og aldri hatt såpass mye vær over så lang tid og uten fungerende autopilot samt uten ekstra mannskap til å stå til rors. Det var en ganske tøff tur - men denne gangen var det ingen som ble mye sjøsyk, lite som gikk galt, ingen følelse av at vi mátte komme oss inn i nærmeste havn fortest mulig for å "slikke våre sår" (vi passerte én havn torsdags kveld), men vi holdt ikke ut til Świnoujście og var temmelig utslitt da vi kom frem til Dziwnow. Avgang rundt kl 16 torsdag og ankomst rundt kl 12:30 neste dag. Rundt 30.5 nm på rundt 20 timer gir effektiv "velocity made good" på 1.5 knop. 17 nm gjenværende etappe til Swinemunde. "Lite som gikk galt" - men noe var det jo: en planke fra baugplattform forsvunnet, samt en bolt på ankerrulle. Tauguiden som ble revet av, og så hørte jeg lyden av lensepumper, må sjekke om det er mye vann som kommer inn gjennom rorgjennomføring. Sunday 2022-07-17 - Dziwnow -> Swinoujscie ------------------------------------------ Nice conditions, except wrong wind direction and except pretty bad swell exactly when exiting the river. Lost the rest of the planks on the bow platform, it must have happened during those waves. Sailing very nicely with three sails most of the way, though after one of the tackings the genoa started flapping. Gave up the tacking and went by engine the last stretch to Swinoujscie. Tuesday 2022-07-19, Swinoujscie -> Gedser, 1/2 ---------------------------------------------- Max joined us from Swinemunde. Planned to take the inland Peene route, but we did not get out early enough to catch bridges. I guess it was 14 when leaving. Found and fixed a leakage at the hot water tank, rearranged rigging ropes. Not much wind, went by engine first part of the journey, sometimes ventilating the sails a bit. Main sail stayed up most of the journey. Anchored up around 23 and stayed by anchor some ~12 NM from Stralsund Wednesday 2022-07-20, Swinoujscie -> Gedser, 2/2 ------------------------------------------------ Got up 06 and started 06.30. Continued by engine towards Stralsund, ventilating the genoa a bit. Got a bit stressed up by other ships having bigger speed than me, so I speeded up a bit myself - but in the end we all had to wait by the bridge. Engine + sails after getting out on the open sea, due to appointments we had to keep 6 knots+. Had around 8 knots at the best. Eventually we turned off the engine and realized the speed was still above 6 knots, so we did waste some diesel. Arrived around 17. Thursday 2022-07-21, Gedster -> Wendtorf ---------------------------------------- My plan was to leave very early, but it was a total failure. I think it was after 12 that we left. Engine all the way, and relatively high RPM due to an appointment. Did an attempt to ventilate the sails. Less wind than expected, and wrong direction. Arrived around 23 at Wendtorf, met up with my oldest son Sebastian. When approaching the Kiel fjord there were two mayday relays by the Danish radio. I dismissed both, after all we were close to the German coast, it would take us hours to go closer to Danish waters. However, Max had managed to catch the GPS coordinates for the second mayday call (man over board) and realized it was just right nearby. So Max took the radio and asked if we could be of any help, though we learned that the situation was already under control. Arrived in Wendtorf pretty late in the evening. Sebastian said he identified us by my caughing. Friday 2022-07-22, Wendtorf -> Holtenau --------------------------------------- Access code for toilets and showers stopped working already at 17, that was slightly frustrating. Left from Wendtorf towards Brunbuttel late evening. Engine, calm conditions. The idea was to stay by the Brunbuttel siding for the night and continue by the channel early morning. The siding is supposed to be included in the channel due when waiting for daylight. At the Brunbuttel siding, it was quite full, so we stayed at the big Tissenquay instead. Saturday 2022-07-23, Holtenau -> Brunbuttel ------------------------------------------- I sat the alarm on 07 to avoid paying harbour fees, but snoozed the alarm. At 07.30 we got woken up by knocking on the boat and had to pay 52 euros. Then I may at least sleep a bit longer, I thought and went back to bed. Got woken up again 10 minutes later and was told to move the boat a bit to give space for our big neighbor to get out at 8 (it didn't). Katja demanded that we should continue into the channel at once, so we did. Whole big lock just for small boats this time, and quick locking. Channel went fairly quickly and without incidents. Headwind. Worked on the broken anchor roller. We stopped at Brunbuttel at the siding there, it was already quite full of boats. Found out that the boat equipment store in Cuxhaven was closed both Sunday and Monday, so what now? Made a temporary fix for the anchor roller, need more screws for a more proper fix. Some harbour guy came and demanded 10 EUR in harbour fee. Shortly afterwards the police came and told that we could not stay over the night because we were staying by the waiting siding for the channel lock. We did a quick decision to go to Helgoland by night. The locking out of the channel was really slow this time. Shared lock with bigger ships. One of them had the propellor running all the time. I was probably a bit too quick to get into the lock, the other bigger ship was not even moored up completely, so I got pushed around by the propellor wash, and we left with a big gap to the boat in front of us. I was concerned that the big catamaran two boats behind us wouldn't fit into the lock due to that. Sunday 2022-07-24, Brunbuttel -> Helgioland ------------------------------------------- It was getting dark while we were in the lock. Had the current with us most of the journey, we "won" a knot or three due to that. Engine first part of the journey. The wind picked up and we went by sail, nice direction and speed, but it got a bit rough in the end. Highlights: * I was complaining several times before departure that we needed to clean up the boat, Katja responded it could be done quickly. Many hours later me and Katja was in bed while Max was navigating, and Katja wakes up - waves! She was complaining that everything is going to fall, and finally she went to do some cleaning. * I was sitting in the cockpit waiting for the sunrise. Wondering when it would be, I googled for it - and Max photographed the sky. The answer was 05.28. I checked the time - and it was 05.28. I checked the sky - and there was the sun! I informed Max, and he was also surprised and took another photo. * I don't remember it, but Max says I was sitting in the cockpit sleeping, so he suggested I should go to bed. I didn't go into the bed - I went down in the small gap beside the bed, not to be thrown about by waves and keeling - though, it looked uncomfortable, so I thought I would not be able to sleep like that. Anyway the next I remember was Max knocking for me, and my first thought was "oh no, I have to pay more harbour fees". * When rolling in the genoa, it got stuck (probably due to silly rope at the top of the mast). Max said it was due to the sheet and released it, from there things happened fast, genoa flapping like crazy, one of the sheets ran away and ended up in the water. Max had to go out in the worst waves just before entering the harbour to pick it up, so it wouldn't go into the propellor We had a full day at Helgioland. I paid harbour fee and went for a walk around the middle land. Then some hours sleeping. We went to a restaurant to eat. I went skating with Sonja. We had a long walk around the island. Spent time on the beach and the playgrounds. Long day, but nice day. The children liked Helgoland, particularly Sonja. Katja thinks that Sylt was nicer - well, she's probably right on that. She also said that the "tax free prices" on Helgioland is higher than the prices on Sylt. Sebastian could easily identify that Kvikk-Lunsj costed less on Helgioland than in Norway, but that some other Norwegian chocolate was more expensive than in Norway. Monday 2022-07-25, Helgioland -> Cuxhaven ----------------------------------------- Our new plan was to go back to Cuxhaven. We forgot that our time planning with the current was for going in the direction of the Netherlands - so we had to struggle against the current. Started by engine, went by sail as the wind picked up. Side wind in the start, turned into running. At the best we had 5.5 knots over ground and 8 in the water doing butterfly. I estimate that the current was 4-5 knots against us, though the navionics app only reported 3. Eventually we had more waves and more variable readings from the systems, down a wave I observed 10.9 knots through the water! And seconds later the GPS speed over ground showed less than 2 knots (and speed in water above 7 knots). Arrived to Cuxhaven around 17:45, going to the city marina. I had totally forgotten that there were a bridge in the way. I was quite stressed, wanted to check the details about the bridge, call the bridge by VHF, but also some people in the Ali Baba sail boat wanted to tell us something. I was surprised that they communicated in Norwegian - it was a Norwegian boat. Bridge would open by 18:00, so we just had to hang around for 15 minutes. While trying to moor on the outside of a bigger ship, Sebastian was to jump over to it, but got entangled in the fence and fell into the water. Friday 2022-07-29, Cuxhaven -> Ijmunde, 1/3 ------------------------------------------- I arrived (after a trip to Oslo) at Cuxhaven at 19. Ideal time to leave would probably be around 01.30, but it was promised good winds a bit earlier and the latest time for bridge opening was at 23, so we left with the bridge opening at 23. Quite much stress the last hour to get into ship shape, and particularly the last ten minutes as Sonja was the only person helping when leaving the marina - and she frequently needs help with the helping. But she is enthusiastic on it, perhaps in some few years she can handle everything alone. It was dark and windy, so it was not so trivial to release all the ropes in the right order. After passing the bridge, another ship wanted to exit the port, coming from behind. First it used the search light and later it was even honking, obviously it was not satisfied with our low speed out of the port. Or perhaps because the radio was still on channel 69 and not 16. Or maybe one is supposed to honk to warn other traffic when leaving port. I thought, let's cross the shipping lane now while there is no traffic - but I forgot both to look good enough and to zoom out the radar. We got in front of the traffic from the port, but then we had to take sharp port and follow the very middle of the shipping lane to let some huge thing pass from the starboard. I managed to get out to the edge of the shipping lane and handed the rudder to Katja. She managed to change the course slightly, causing us to get into the shipping lane again, and again we ended up in the search light of traffic from behind. Got decent speed through the water (but quite bad over ground) on relatively calm wind, first side wind and later tail wind. Since it was dark and I was alone in cockpit, I decided to roll in the main sail when the genoa came in the shadow of the main. Maintenance log: Research into water leakages. It's still needed to remove water under small stairs, and now it appears to be most on the starboard side - but I can't see any signs of leakages on the starboard water tanks. All blinding plugs on the water tanks have been sealed with hemp and tape now. One of the electric plugs for the solar panel was completely stuck and I had to destroy it to disconnect. Procrastinated doing something with stupid bilge pumps, but removed the water there. Saturday 2022-07-30, Cuxhaven -> Ijmunde, 2/3 --------------------------------------------- As the wind calmed down, the waves caused the genoa to flap. For a while I could counter it by altering the course, getting the wind more from the side, but eventually I gave it up, rolled in the sail and started the engine. Due to little wind and eventually headwind, the engine kept going throughout the night and day. Very hard to stay awake during the night. Relatively calm conditions. Maintenance and problems log: Another check-up on the starboard water tank. Verified that the water leaking wasn't salty. Temp fix for the electricity cabling to the solar panels, though parts of it should be redone with soldered contacts and thicker cable. Installed the media player (and it was working for some few hours). Engine RPM seems to go down every now and then. Should check the fuel filters. Changed from port to starboard filter, but if the problem is due to biologic goo on the tank, this is a very short term "fix" Sunday 2022-07-31, Cuxhaven -> Ijmunde, 3/3 ------------------------------------------- Rundt midnatt var vinden slik at det endelig var mulig å gå for seil. Jeg rullet ut genoa og vurderte storseil - men lot være, etter litt finjustering av ror lå båten dønn stabilt 60 grader mot vinden. Jeg rørte ikke roret på et par timer, da var det på tide å rulle inn seil og gå for motor mot vinden igjen ... I woke up in the middle of the day, we were going by engine, but the wind was at 25 knots and 60 degrees from starboard. Up with the storm sail. Conditions got worse quite quickly. One broken glass, guard rail on the port broke, sea sick crew and bad mood on board. Eventually we had to beat a bit against the wind, but at least we had the current with us. It turned before we got to Ijmunde, though. Last 5 miles we went by engine, with 2-4 knots. Arrived around 19. Very tired. Monday 2022-08-01, Ijmunde -> Haringvietdam ------------------------------------------- Engine parts of the way as the wind was too weak and the waves made sailing difficult. Wind picked up, and on the best we had 8-9 knots over ground. Passing Rotterdam night time was crazy, so much traffic, huge traffic. Wind direction got worse during the night, and we got blown away from land. When the wind speed was a bit lower I decided to beat, and soon later I took down the sail and went the last part by engine. Arrived at Haringvietdam in the middle of the night. It's allowed to dock for 24 hours (or 3x24h?) without paying anything before the lock - and we stayed there for two nights. I discovered later that on the other side of the lock it was perfect anchorages ... Maintenance/problems: Full bucket under the engine and lots of water in the engine room. Looked a bit into water tanks. Cleaned the O-rings at the bottom of the port bottom tanks. The tank to the left appeared to be well sealed, and the O-rings looked good. For the tank to the right, I applied some stuff, but I doubt it has any effect. When filling the tank at least one leakage got very obvious, apparently I've tightened the hose clamp on the filling tube too hard, causing a hole in the hose. Cutted away the broken tube. Applied some hemp to make it less likely to leak. While filling water tanks one hose without a clamp failed and the bottom of the boat got flushed with some 250l with water - so we had to return to port to clean up the mess and fix the leakage. Tuesday 2022-08-02, break day ----------------------------- Relaxing, working and fixing things. Maintenance/problems: It never gets dry in the bottom of the boat, hence I'm suspecting the water tanks are still leaking . Manual bildge pump stopped working, it allowed the air to get out the wrong way. First tried to replace it, but the local marine supply store didn't have a replacement - saved a lot of money on that. Dismantled the pump, found half of a pencil stuck in it. Perhaps that's the reason why the water I clean up at the starboard side has gone blue. Good luck this didn't happen during an emergency ... this is what one gets for always having a mess in the boat. Purchased and replaced bobbins for life wests. Fixed bilge pumps behind, at least partially. Prior to the maintenance I had some solution ... the plumbing work there was very ugly, but it worked. On the service they removed my "crap", connected the bilge pumps together and the tube was going straight up to a new hole on the starboard side - relatively low on the hull (and I later noticed that they have used a very ugly and very visible white plastic hull fitting through the brown mahogany). Luckily I figured out before departure - otherwise the sea water would have been running directly in as soon as we were keeling. But still, those two bilge pumps would stand there, one pumping the water one way and then the other the other way ... just not out of the boat. I've made some swan necks now, the starboard bilge pump under the floor will perhaps pump the water into the storage rather than out of the boat, but never the other way - the bilge pump in the storage will always pump the water out of the boat. Fixed loose connection on tent rods. Solar panels had stopped yielding electricity, did another temp fix. Partially installed rope break for main sail sheet (should replace the screws - one of them is too long, the other one a bit too short) Wednesday 2022-08-03, Haringvietdam -> Hellevoitsluis ------------------------------------------------------ Short trip, like 45 minutes. Lots of boats sailing and perfect sailing conditions - but I was too lazy to roll the sail in and out. Went with fenders out as well. Spent some time in the village. Went grilling by a very nice sunset with view of the lake/dam and lots of boats anchoring there (well, the food arrived by the grill only after sunset) Harbour master was not on work, we had to leave money in an envelope. Only 2 EUR for electricity, but since the sockets were locked we opted out. Maintenance log: don't remember. Perhaps this was the day when Sonja was helping soldering XT90-contacts in the late night. The thick cord was almost impossible, the solder simply wouldn't stick to it. Spoiled a lot of solder, now we're out of solder (and almost out of XT90-contacts), and there are still both partly destroyed old contacts and wago-clips in use out on deck. Thursday 2022-08-04, Hellevoitsluis -> Zeebrugge ------------------------------------------------ Got out from the marina around 14. As the day before, too lazy to raise sails or clean away fenders when crossing the dam. Tried to get in contact with the lock at an early stage to get advice on weather we should speed down or slow down, but the handheld didn't receive anything and the radio on the mast received only noise. With port side fenders we had to turn around to wait for the lock opening - and turn around again before entering the lock. Luckily Katja was smart enough to comment that it would be smart to turn around before the boats went out of the lock. Inside the gate we stopped too early, only the last part of the lock would be used. The last part was with high walls. My strategy was to attach the front first due to the headwind, but in the end of the lock there were of course no headwind, so we lost control of the stern, almost crashed with another boat, banged the anchor into the lock side, had to move fenders to the starboard side and had to go out stern first. And then I tried to turn around a bit too early and a bit too fast, almost colliding with a boat entering the lock. Oh, the dignity! But I hope we learn from it. Headwind and weak outbound current when going out the channel by engine, then bidewind turning towards a running wind. Tailwind is tricky on a Bermuda rig, we should probably invest in a boom for the genoa. Next mistake was when crossing the shipping lane to Antwerpen. I failed slightly to figure out where the shipping lane was, and I also failed spotting the two inbound ships coming in fast and side by side, on my collision course as I was on the narrowest part of the channel - and at last I failed to understand their direction (even though the red light did indeed look more red than green, and even though it ought to be obvious - though there were a lot of different bouys). It was a bit too close for comfort. Ankomst før kl 4. Maintenance log: probably didn't do any maintenance Friday 2022-08-05, Zeebrugge ---------------------------- We went by train to Brugge, but it was already quite late ... and very late when we got back, we were totally exhausted. Plan was to leave in the very early morning to avoid paying harbor fee for two "days". Maintenance log: don't remember if I did any maintenance work. Saturday 2022-08-06, Zeebrugge -> Calais ---------------------------------------- I don't remember the details, but I think we had tailwind, and arrived around 19. AFAIR, engine used only for getting out and in of port, but still lots of seawater to pump out. We got assigned a spot in the very innermost of the harbour. When entering the harbor we first had to wait for ferry traffic, and then we got told to enter the port _quickly_. A lot of people were fishing from the molo. I thought I kept just about good enough distance. It was quite stressful, one of the fishermen seemed to really aim towards the boat, someone said something on the radio, Katja said something, and in addition there were three sailboats coming out from the marina - I turned hard starboard to make a port-to-port passing of the oncoming traffic ... and then someone had a very tight fishing line pointing directly towards my propellor, and lots of cursing from above. Not a good first impression of France ... Maintenance log: don't remember ... at least we worked on pumping out water while waiting for the bridge to open. And the engine almost died as soon as we got into the harbour, out of diesel or clogged diesel filter? I went very quickly in to "change diesel filter", Katja envisioned half an hour of dirty work and said we should make a temporarily mooring first, turned the handles in some few seconds and everything was working normally again. Sunday 2022-08-07, Calais ------------------------- Maintenance log: Did some varnishing, gluing and other work. Chair had more or less fallen apart, now it's reinforced with glass fibre. The silly holes for the ventilation in the lower saloon has now been filled with some sikaflex (teak nate glue), and reapplied glue where the rope guide had been teared off. Put the first layer of varnish on name plate, feet well and some other spots. I think I did some more maintenance, but can't remember. Monday 2022-08-08, Calais ------------------------- Spent the full day in Calais, leaving in the late evening. Maintenance/problems log: Fixed the left gas burner (which had a missing heat sensor, as I was unable to source spare parts for a long time). Did layer two of varnishing. Forgot the shower cabinet the other day, so the shower cabinet got the layer 1 of varnishing. I think I did some more maintenance as well ... Tried to fill the water tanks ... carefully and monitored. No leakages, no leakages, lots of water ... so we had to pump out and empty the tank quickly. Appeared that it was one more connection missing a hose clamp on the port side. Added the hose clamp, and also replaced the tube with a slightly longer tube Tuesday 2022-08-09, Calais -> Dieppe ------------------------------------ We got going only after midnight, on the last bridge opening. Was confused when leaving and managed to stay inside the shipping lane for a while (and with the radio on channel 71 rather than 16), but managed to get out of it in time. Started with side wind, but eventually turned into tailwind. Direction changing a bit. During the night, the autopilot did work for quite long. I let it run for 5-10 minutes before I switched to standby and gave it a 5-10 minutes pause, not sure if that helped extending the workable time. Managed to make tea and pump out some water while on autopilot. When it got daylight and everyone was up we did butterfly and was blwoing directly towards Dieppe. Some distance before Dieppe the heading got a bit wrong, I removed the genoa. The wind was also increasing. Arrived at Dieppe maybe at 16.30, don't remember the details. Harbour fee was almost 50 EUR, one of the highest I've paid so far. At 05:00 in the morning before our arrival, a 70m ship on the main guest pier had caught fire and sunk - so we got assigned a very tight place in the marina. And it was quite windy. We managed, but it was very much out of my comfort zone. Maintenance log: I hoped to get time to do research on the autopilot, but prioritized to sleep. At least I got confirmed that the autopilot is "hard" when it stops working - meaning that it most likely gets electric power (but either disregards the control signal or doesn't get the control signal). Since I've also been measuring twice earlier and concluding it has sufficient voltage when it stops working, I feel quite confident that this is the case. When I was sitting by the rudder on butterfly with big waves on the approach, I was working very hard to keep the course. An old problem that I (for the second time) hoped had been fixed reappeared - in severe conditions the rudder seems to get completely stuck a bit before the maximum rudder, impossible to move the rudder further for a while, until waves or other environmental changes suddenly allows it again. In Dieppe they required documents from the boat. First time I'm asked for that! Wednesday 2022-08-10, Dieppe ----------------------------- Plan was to leave at 12 - but the neighbour had the same leakage problem as us and had managed to book a mechanic for the next day. We decided to piggyback and have the mechanic look into our engine as well - meaning that we had to stay one more night. Managed to do quite some office work. I probably did some maintenance work as well, don't remember. Thursday 2022-08-11, Dieppe --------------------------- Didn't do much office work, but spent some 4-5 hours cleaning the boat. Filled the port tanks up to the brim and a bit on the starboard tanks (plan was to fill only the lower port tanks, but first I had forgotten that it should be only port side, then I got side tracked as Katja brought food to the boat). Maintenance/problem log: * Gas doesn't work - very little gas trickling through. Spent many hours attempting to boil tea water without luck. I'm quite sure we have gas on the tank, so it must be the regulator (eventually we will need a new regulator for European camping gas bottles) * Did a new round with varnishing. So we're on the second layer now. (well, actually third layer except for the shower cabinet - but the varnish was quite much dilluted) * Engine repair - mechanics have been here and taken the salt water pump with them. Hopefully I'll get it back, fixed and not leaking tomorrow ... * Water tank leakage research - port side now seems not to be leaking. All the time there seems to be some more water coming on the starboard side. I did not measure, but the flux seems greater the more water there is in the upper starboard tanks. Though, when checking those tanks, I can't see any indications of any leakages anywhere. Friday 2022-08-12, Dieppe (maintenance morning) ----------------------------------------------- Vannpumpeaksel byttet ut Lekkasjer vanntanker styrbord side. Equalized diesel tanks Fylt kanskje 106l diesel for 1.89/l, 200 EUR. So we've spent more than 200l since Gdansk. Visited 5 shops to get new gas bottle with connections. Just to discover that the problem was with the safety switch. Well, now we don't have to worry about running out of gas for a while. Friday 2022-08-12, Dieppe -> Port du Cap Levi, 1/2 -------------------------------------------------- Left Dieppe around 15/16 probably No wind at all when we left the harbor. We had one period of nice sailing, but most of the time it was relatively weak tail wind and too much waves to set the sails properly Saturday 2022-08-13, Dieppe -> Port du Cap Levi, 2/2 -------------------------------------------------- Went against the current but with wind (too little for sailing) by engine with around 0 knots VMG WP a bit North East of Cap Levi. Gave up and put the course towards south, going in between the skerries by the cape. The water was very turbulent by the cape (but calm enough not to rock the boat too much) and very quiet behind. It was a success, less current nearby land and almost nothing at the other side of the skerries. Went into the bay and threw anchor in the early morning. We could have continued at around 13 or 14, but I vetoed it. We did some bathing, and went grilling by the harbour. Visited the fortress as well. Almost lost the dingy because someone had decided to untie it to go to the ship again - and left it untied as the tide was rising. Coming back to the ship, the anchor was far behind and a bit to the starboard of the ship, and it was stable like that. I did some research into it, concluded we were not stuck on ground and that the rope was not stuck to the keel or propellor. Weird. Later it occurred to me that it could have been we were stuck in some fishing equipment, I ought to have done more research. It was just due to current and wind being in opposite directions ... but I still find it weird that the boat can stay stable with the anchoring rope stretching backwards from the bow. Sunday 2022-08-14, Port du Cap Levi -> Cherbourg ------------------------------------------------- Boat oriented more towards the current than the wind, but not as weirly as the day before. Plan was to continue around 4 in the night, but in addition to the boat being a total mess with dishwash and whatever and even an empty beer bottle standing on the table, the rope for the dingy had also gotten stuck around the rudder and propellor, requiring diving to fix, for sure not something I could fix in the darkness. Fixed it in the daytime, but lost the diving mask in the sea while doing so. We left around 13, and went to the sea museum in Cherbourg. Met up with the Norwegian boat Ali Baba again and had a chat with the captain - she was currently alone on the boat for one or two weeks and was stuck in Cherbourg while being without crew (that sounds expensive - I would have thrown anchor instead, but she was not comfortable with that she said). They were for a two year trip, going to the Pacific and Australia. Monday 2022-08-15, Cherbourg -> Guernsey, 1/2 ------------------------------------------------ We left from Cherbourg around 16:15, and threw anchor in the bay before Cape Hag. Genoa, wind against us, started up the engine when getting closer to the bay. Crazy current, turned 90 degrees to the port, nose pointing far left of some skerries, landscape in front of the boat passing from right to left - all until we were inside the bay. Tuesday 2022-08-16, Cherbourg -> Guernsey, 2/2 ----------------------------------------------- Lightning and lots of rain during the night Continued towards Guernsey around 14:30. Went partly by sail and partly by engine towards Guernsey. Probably didn't find exactly the right time and passage, because the current was moderate, not as strong as expected - but in the sound it was really strong. Briefly said "hi" to our neighbours from Dieppe, for some few hours they were our neighbours in the outer harbour in Peters Port Harbour as well. Wednesday 2022-08-17, Saint Peter Port Harbour ----------------------------------------------- Saint Peter Port Harbour ... listen to that, isn't it slightly redundant? I can imagine that the name of the harbour once was Saint Peter Port ... and then the town grew, and the town itself got the name "Saint Peter Port" ... and then they had to add "harbour" to it when refering to the harbour and not the town. Got slightly shocked that it was difficult with Internet. My telephone provider wanted 40 NOK/MB for data, that's insane. Lots of open/free wifis, but difficult to connect and difficult to find a combination of suitable working conditions and stable internet. The harbour wifi didn't work at all. And I had no money (only EUR cash, lost my credit cards in Poland), so it was difficult tovisit a coffee place. Water in the food storages, in front of the mast. I found the culprit to be lots of standing water under the tea drawer - probably leftovers from previous large fresh water spillage. Cleaned up and took out the drawer to let it dry. The two main missions in Guernsey was to receive the autopilot ram and to see the dentist. The dentist only had time to take an x-ray and give a consultion, not to actually deal with the problem - so it was a bit of a waste of time. Received the new autopilot ram. Thursday 2022-08-18, Peters Port Harbour ---------------------------------------- * Installed new autopilot ram. The new ram has a bit different dimensions than the old one so it was quite some work to get it installed. I'm also not happy with the physical installation, it's needed with a special drill for drilling in small spaces to drill holes, and it's needed to adjust the inclination/height of the support beam a bit. But it works very well. * Water tanks and leakages. Turned the 200l tank around so that the outlet is indeed on the bottom. Tried to replace the O-ring with a slightly thicker one and tightened as good as I could. Filled it up, doing my best to not fill the upper tank. Noticed a small leakage by the connection for the filling tube. * New leakage problem. The grey water tank had gotten filled up and overflowed. Lots of dirty water in the bottom of the boat, and some had spilled over to the newly varnished shower, so the varnish there had gotten white. Found the culprit to be the physical floating device in the tank. Fixed the problem. Left in the evening, went "right around the corner" and anchored up for a few hours waiting for the current to be in the right direction I would love to see more of Guernsey - we should definitively spend more time there on the return. Friday 2022-08-19, roaming around in the bay, meeting Shtandart --------------------------------------------------------------- My initial plan was to go southwest to get out of the channel island bay, but Katja insisted we were to see Shtandart, so we went right south. Sailed by the wind wane, I was sleeping while Katja was "on watch". Due to the changing wind and current we ended up quite far east again. Used the engine to get west again, later sails. Managed to meet Shtandard by sails, it was out for a trip with some paying VIP customers, we agreed to revendouz during the night at anchorage. Anchored up nearby Saint Michel island/chapel. Saturday 2022-08-20, Saint Michel ---------------------------------- Nice day with a visit to Shtandart and then a visit to the beach, to a pancake resturant and then walking out to the chapel. I decided to skip the chapel to save time. Mistake: we thought we came at rising sea, so we dragged the dhingy quite high up on the beach before we checked the tide - it was already on the highest. I disregarded the cost of dragging the dhingy the other way - it would be downhill, so it would be easy. It wasn't - and it was very far to the sea. The tender has wheels, so it was easy enough to roll it on hard sand, but there were parts with hard sand, parts with soft sand and some uphills and downhills. Another mistake - taking the laptop with me in an ordinary rucksack - I should use the watertight bag when going with the dhingy. Breaking waves made everything in the dhingy wet - luckily I managed to save the laptop. Third mistake - I had opened the tap at the bottom of the dhingy to release water when pulling it up on land, but forgot to close it - and didn't realize until I had quite some extra water in the dhingy. Managed to pick up my family exactly at sunset. Maintenance: fourth layer of varnish now. Looked a bit on the water tanks, probably found one more leakage (not fixed). Sunday 2022-08-21, Saint Michel -> Brest, 1/2 ---------------------------------------------- Started at around 02 to get the most from the current. Not much current now, anyway - due to the moon phase the tide differences aren't that extreme. Not enough wind and wrong direction, so went by engine all night. In the morning the wind was almost perfect - got decent speed, but not more keeling than that I could sleep well. The directon was not completely perfect, we got relatively far out from the shore, but that's sort of nice now that the autopilot works. Found that there were water in the small room with water pumps, probably also water that has been standing there since the last big fresh water leakage. Mopped it up and let the storage stay open for drying. Kjørte gjennom en stim av delfiner! Massevis, og noen som hoppet. Litt senere kom vi til en annen stim, og de fulgte båten et stykke. Monday 2022-08-22, Saint Michel -> Brest, 2/2 --------------------------------------------- From wrack to Brest Foggy. Less than 300m visibility. Started with 18 knots headwind, ended with 8 knots tailwind. Engine most of the way, but managed to do a little bit of sailing. I think it would have been great views if it wasn't for the fog. Tuesday 2022-08-23, Brest ------------------------- Maintenance log: * Now there is (small amounts of) water under the tea drawer, and water on both sides of the grey water tank. Where does it all come from? All water tanks are almost empty now. * The chair is falling apart again. My glue work is keeping up this time, but the sitting pillow is falling apart. As I was preparing to leave port, yet another time we got a huge fresh water leakage. The outlet connection to the big 200l water tank, where I had replaced a thin O-ring with a thicker one had popped off. I did manage to locate the problem before the water tank emptied completely, but to fix the connection was difficult. Together with lots of mess in the boat and a need for sleep, I decided we'd stay one more day in Brest. I decided to measure how much water I mop up from various places it shouldn't be water, and write a log on paper. Which maybe wasn't a great idea, because the paper gets soggy when I write notes with wet hands. Wednesday 2022-08-24, Brest -> La Rochelle, part 1/4 ---------------------------------------------------- Left the port in the early evening. Plan was to leave at 16, but it was more like 18 when we left. There was a PAN-PAN-PAN with DSC to all ships - but no information in English, only in French. All the security information too, it's all in French. It's the first time ever I've experienced a lack of information in English. (Though, when Helge Ingstad sunk, all the VHF communication was also in Norwegian) The landscape out from Brest was astonishing. Brest and the surroundings is definitively on the list of things we should see again on the return. The harbour fee in Brest was also slightly more affordable than other places. And it's a roadsted. Thursday 2022-08-25, Brest -> La Rochelle, part 2/4 --------------------------------------------------- There was a stretch where we went by engine, because the wind had calmed down too much. I had switched over to the port diesel filter again. Engine stopped immediately after starting it, had to switch over to the starboard diesel filter. Anchored up in the bay of Le Pouliguen. I seem to have overlooked that it may have been possible to anchor up inside a much more protected bay just a bit north of that location, nearby some salt fields. Friday 2022-08-26, Brest -> La Rochelle, part 3/4 ------------------------------------------------- We stayed by anchorage first part of the day. Family did some bathing. Relatively strong current, considering that we were in a bay. My plan was to fix the winch at the mast (procrastinated it as I don't remember where I put the grease) and to deal with the port diesel filter. Maintenance log: The port diesel filter is clogged with biological goo, while the starboard diesel filter is shiny clean - even if we've been through quite some waves. Most likely the biological goo is a local problem confined to the racor filter unit. I took out the filter itself and cleaned the unit as good as I could (I considered it would be too much of a job to disassemble it), there were quite much goo in it (and it was very difficult as the goo didn't want to get out through the small opening in the bottom of the filter holder). By now we probably have some diesel inside the manual bilge pump, should probably try to wash it with quite some amounts of dish water soap and some hot water when being far out in the sea. I should buy some biocider and apply it directly to the filter ... and a bit to the tank as well. We got out sailing in the evening. With 150 degrees tail wind it was a comfortable ride ... all until I zoomed out on the map and discovered we were heading slightly in the wrong direction, and had to turn and get the wind 70 degrees from the side. Saturday 2022-08-27, Brest -> La Rochelle, part 4/4 --------------------------------------------------- Arrived in La Rochelle before 7, very exhausted. Sunrise around 07:30. Went to the huge marina. They have a special "check-in area" where one should stop and pay and get assigned a place - but of course there is nobody there so early in the morning. It was a small place, and with a neighbour we already occupied the whole place. It was a bit uncomfortable, I couldn't go to bed as I probably would be awoken early morning, asked to pay and move on ... but I couldn't stay awake either. I went flat on the couch. Got up every time I heard a sound to check if the office was still closed or not. Strange service. At some point (nine?) a man came and wrote down the details of the boat on a form ... just to tell that the office would be manned one hour later and they would assign us a place. I fell a bit deeper in sleep, kids were having music lessons, and it was 11 when I finally managed to get my feet into that office. Three persons were employed there, just to receive guest boats - no wonder it's expensive with guest harbours in France. And this was just the reception point, further behind was another office building with even more employees. I had to fill out the form again. I was still so sleepy, scribbled down things in such a handwriting that it was impossible for the person behind the counter to copy the information correctly into the computer system. Got a baseball cap. We went to find a place for the boat, they were measuring and cursing that the first place they found was too short. I was trying to concentrate to memorize the location of the place ... but was too sleepy, when going back with the boat I was uncertain and went too far. Apparently the staff was standing there to receive me. On the way in I got stuck in the mud. As it was the lowest water, I tried to suggest that we should just tie up the boat and then I could pull it closer when the water would be rising, but no ... one of them picked up a dhingy and tried to push me in. No success, so he demanded that I turned on my engine again to help - and suddenly my boat had great speed towards the place. Sunday 2022-08-28, La Rochelle ------------------------------ Family leaving for ~3 weeks (dentist and braces, school start and whatnot). Plan was that the family should take an early train to Paris, see Paris, go to the Beuavis airport and sleep over there, then continue by a very early flight. And then I would have the rest of Sunday and Monday to clean the boat and do further maintenance (fix a battery that didn't want to charge, last two layers of varnish). Of course with packing and breakfast my family was ready to leave after noon and take a later train. We were to take a ferry to the train station - ferry going every half hour. Except ... when we got to the ferry stop, we discovered it had a lunch break from 12:00 to 14:30. Katja tried to get a taxi ... but of course that wasn't possible during the lunch hours (I remain convinced we would have gotten there fairly easy and in time if my family would have gone by bike and skates while I would have been running with the suitcase), so ... next train. When we got to the train station to buy tickets, we discovered that all trains for the next 24 hours were fully booked, tickets should have been booked weeks in advance. Oups! I couldn't find any alternatives. Oh wait ... didn't we just pass an office with car rentals? Indeed - there were several car rental offices around the train station. All of them except one was closed, and the one that had open could rent us a car - next week! I desperately started to browse for rentals on my telepone and booked the first I could find - with delivery back to La Rochelle. In retro perspective it would have been a very good idea to search for something that could be delivered to the airport. Oh well. It appeared that the closed offices was not closed because it was Sunday, but because it was lunch break. Soon we were sitting in a quite small car headed for a quick trip towards Paris. The ride, with stops and detours took more than ten hours! And the airport was even closed for the night. There was a McDonalds nearby that was open until 03, and the terminal would open 04:30. It was around 02, so the plan was to hang around on McDonalds for an hour, then survive for one and a half hour, and then the airport. However, the McDonalds had already closed the resturant itself, shoved all other "overnight visitors" out on the street and was only serving through the McDriveIn. My wife said they would be fine sleeping a bit outdoors on a bench, so I returned. Monday 2022-08-29, France ------------------------- On the return I went straight for the highways as that would (according to Google) save me two hours - and also higher probability of finding gas stations and coffee. But I had to sleep on the way. It got maybe 70-100 euro more expensive, both due to road tax and higher fuel consumption. And then I lost my exit from the highway, costing me some few euros more and 45 minutes. And then I failed to find a petrol station, and it was like 45 more minutes lost searching for petrol and filling the tank. Got back during lunch hours, and got a parking fine while waiting for the rental office to open up again. Lots of money spent, and more than 24 hours lost ... a full working day plus that I almost didn't get time for cleaning and maintenance. I did some cleaning on the boat, and tried to eat some of the leftover food ... but I was doing things very slowly, in the end I gave up and went to bed. Tuesday 2022-08-30, Paris/Copenhagen ------------------------------------ My turn to do a quick trip home to Oslo. Got up 01:30 Tuesday morning and tried to work a bit. My head still not working properly, and I failed to plan my departure properly. Managed to take a shower, but things got very stressful in the end. Forgot to throw garbage. Almost forgot to close the hatch in front, even though it was promised rain. Worse of all, forgot my passport on the boat. Got in time for the train, but then I looked on the train ticket and discovered that a valid ID document was required for boarding the train. Oups. I didn't know what to do, but I would for sure lose both my train and the flight if I was to return and pick up my passport. They did not ask for passport on the train - but I noticed they spent very long time checking ID-documents from everyone on the Vueling flight. My tooth started aching more, only thought I had in my head was that I really couldn't miss my appointment with the dentist in Oslo. I was denied boarding the Vueling flight without my physical passport. What now? First thing first, a call to my dentist to cancel the appointment. I found a Norwegian flight to Copenhagen the same evening that wasn't too expensive, Norwegian usually doesn't ask for passport on Schengen journeys. Except, when they fly out from CDG they apparently do ask for passport. Luckily the lady by the gate (unable to reach her superiour by telephone) made a quick decision and told in a hushed voice ... "proceed!" Perhaps my tooth was aching mostly due to the stress and anxiety, as soon as I was allowed to board I almost stopped thinking of it. During the day I discovered something ... I could add my credit card to my telephone and use the NFC on my telephone to pay for things on credit card readers. Wow. Now I have a working "credit card" again. I stayed at a hostel in Copenhagen - in a dorm room. I thought I had become too old to stay in dorm rooms, but then again ... I was exahusted, I only needed a bed and nothing more, and I could probably sleep well even if the dorm was filled up with people snooring. Anyway, I decided to pay a bit extra for a room with only four beds rather than eight. I got a QR code, it should be possible to use it to get a keycard from an automat - but the automat was inside the hostel, and to get inside it was required with a keycard! After ten minutes of ringing the door bell, calling and writing messages some employee opened the door for me and ... asked me for my ID! Wednesday 2022-08-31, Copenhagen/Oslo ------------------------------------- Things worked out, it was a great hostel, I slept very well, there was another guy in the room, but he was asleep when I came, apparently didn't wake up when I entered, and he was asleep in the same position when I left. I hope he was alive. The breakfast was nothing to brag about ... but it was reasonably cheap, I managed to get pretty much filled up, and it was a nice area for sitting and working. I certainly did some reflectations on how lost one can be without ID-cards, credit cards and money. Nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, impossible to get home. I'm quite well off compared to quite some refugees ... Took a bus to Oslo, got home in the evening. Very nice surprise for me at home - my wallet with my credit cards! It had been found in Swinemunde, sent to the embassy, and they had sent it to the police in Oslo. Then a not so nice discovery, my driving license and ID-card was missing. In the letter it said that it had been sent to the road authorities and to the ID/passport department at the police station. Thursday 2022-09-01, Oslo ------------------------- Dentist appointment, finally! Too much time had passed, so the tooth either needed root canal treatment or to be pulled out. Given everything I decided for the latter. Stressful, uncomfortable and I will miss that molar ... but I have a wisdom tooth that was held back by number seven, with some luck maybe it will come out as a replacement. At the police station they said it was standard procedure to destroy lost and found ID-cards. Bummer :-( :-( And my laptop apparently stopped working (some few hours later it was working again ... weird). Lost many hours of working time due to that. Friday 2022-09-02 Oslo ---------------------- Got my driving license back, but it was weird. Bureaucrat said something like ... "Can I have your ID, please?" "Sorry, without an ID I cannot give you your driving license" "No, a photocopy of your passport is not acceptable. Anyway, what's your birth date and personal identification number?" "Oh ... it seems like your driving license has a picture on it! Probably we can use that one as an ID!" (As far as I know, all Norwegian driving licenses have a picture, and have had that for more than 40 years - though, the driving license used to be valid until the drivers 100 year birth day, meaning that the picture could be of a much younger person. Luckily I've lost it some few times, so the picture is not more than 15 years old ...) Saturday 2022-09-03, Paris -------------------------- Travel day. Norwegian at OSL airport has self-service gate and nobody checking passport. Walked from the north train station to the Montparnasse train station in Paris. 23256 steps in total during the day. Slept well and long. Sunday 2022-09-04, La Rochelle ------------------------------ Cleaning day - spent the full day doing not much else than tidying and cleaning the boat. Spoke with my new neighbour, two men from GB. It's a hassle being outside the union, for one thing they can stay only for 90 days in the union. The boat is 3 months old, but already has lots of problems. They cannot charge by land power anymore (and things are difficult because of different electricity standards), they've spent three days trying to fix it before giving up. Then there was problems with a gas leakage. There will come someone tomorrow and fix it. Perhaps I can piggyback that person, since I also have something that should be fixed with the gas (the stopcock in the kitchen should be replaced and moved). When will I ever stop doing mistakes? I managed to throw two sofa pillows to the sea. Well, well, it's probably good for them to get washed a bit ... Maintenance: * Upper saloon bench had slided out again. Fixed it with some more and some longer screws. * Water tanks, water tanks, will they ever stop leaking? Bottom fore tank this time, outlet. Expected problem, sort of. The tube had become twisted. The thin O-ring is apparently not good enough anymore. The thick O-ring didn't fit, the screw wouldn't sit properly. Cleaned the ring as good as I could, applied some hemp around it and screwed it tight again. I don't have good feelings about it ... perhaps it is possible to fix it with small O-ring plus hemp if using enough of it, and getting it in the right places, but it's difficult. We will see if it holds or leaks ... looked good while filling the tank at least ... still looking good some few hours later * Li-Ion battery mess. Cleaned up some of the cords, bundled together the switches and wrote what they are for with a permanent marker ... then I concluded that the oldest battery charger is defect, reconnected so that one of the full batteries is not connected to the working charger while the middle battery is connected to the working charger. Monday 2022-09-05, La Rochelle -> anchorage behind Île-d'Aix ------------------------------------------------------------ Shopping, cleaning and maintenance. Anchored up behind a small island, famous in France for some TV-show (going continously for 40 years) shot at the island fortress. We got a hitch hiker through the good old way of knocking on ships and asking politely ... a lady heading for Brazil. * Bought new ore for the paddle board * Bought new diving mask. Florian recommended to get a relatively cheap one at Decathlon if I was to use it just infrequently. * Bought a good bike pump. The tires were almost flat, the gas station was far away and when I got there the air was out of order. I thought we had a bike pump on board, but I can't find it in the inventory. Well, the brompton has one. And, came to think, we have LOTS of pumps on board, but probably none of them has the proper interface for a bike tire. * Bought lots of food and drinking water. * Charged all the small Li-Ion batteries, Florian ensured all of them were working properly * Fixed the broken rail. Rearranged the genoa sheet, hopefully it won't conflict with the rail again. * The neighbour boat had major problems with the gas and had managed to find a professional. We managed to piggy-back on that, and got the slightly broken security stopcock replaced and moved to a safer position. Florian is doing the wood work. * Port side water tanks seems not to be leaking. At least not when standing still ... we'll see what happens when there will be waves. * Worked a bit on the connection that I assume is leaking - cleaned the O-ring and added hemp with Unipak on both sides in case the O-ring fails. * Water on the bottom on the starboard side just as I was finished working ... very weird, the tanks were supposed to be completely empty, and I cannot see that any water did leak while I was working. * Fixed the right gas burner * Never ending ... more cleaning, cleaning, cleaning ... Tuesday 2022-09-06, Bay of Biscay --------------------------------- Took up the anchor only around 11:30 as I needed to work. It was very little wind when we left, but also no waves, so we had speeds between 0.5 knots and 2.5 knots, but mostly like 0.5 knots while I continued doing important work. Eventually I gave the go for using the engine. When the wind picked up we decided to try the sails again. It was probably a mistake as we ended up spending lots of time beating out from the roadsted. Eventually the wind picked up a bit too much, we had like 25 knots on the worst, so we took in quite some genoa and took up the staysail. Spent lots of effort beating and adjusting sails. Sails flapping a lot. Eventually Florian ended up alone in cockpit while the rest of us went sleeping a bit. Variable wind speed while I was sleeping, I was amused that the conditions were good enough for sleeping flat in the bed - it didn't seem like that when I decided to go to bed. Big waves, but long wavelength, so not so much rolling - but bad enough that I got a bit sea sick while trying to work at the computer. Did manage to log ten hours of work though. We kept a southern course, not too far from land. Internet coverage disappeared in the late evening. Wednesday 2022-09-07, Bay of Biscay ------------------------------------ Easy night, but the daytime was horrible. Overcast, some rain. Wind speed varying between 7 knots and 35 knots, so we had to change the sail area quite a lot. The wind direction was even worse - it seems like we got a bit stuck on some weather border line, tacking towards the west and in short time the wind forced us to go in a more northern direction. Tack again, and we'd have a good direction for some ten minutes before the wind was pressing us in a more eastern direction. We spent a lot of time tacking. From what we had seen on windy before going, it should have been possible to keep a quite south-southwest direction, but ... no. Sometimes it was possible to go in a western direction, which would be good for the long-term plan of getting around Portugal, but bad for the plan of getting back into internet coverage - and could also be bad as Windy had shown too much wind in the western part of the bay. Eventually in the evening the wind stabilized around 20-25 knots, and both the direction (towards Bilbao, Santander or a bit east of Bilbao), speed and keeling was kind of OK. Even the waves were not that bad. Big, but not bad. Port sheet rope for the genoa broke. It was kind of expected since the rope had become quite worn out over the last few weeks - but it was a bit unexpected that it would break so close to the sail. One bilge pump in the fore cabin started going all the time. I thought it was the starboard pump under the bed and was trying to investigate where it could be disconnected - only to find that it wasn't connected to electricity at all! It was the next bilge pump, apparently not physically connected to the hull, so it had tipped a bit over, causing the floating switch to activate. I did a big food shoppingin La Rochelle, but it appears I forgot to buy staples except for one small package of pasta - there were just a little bit of pasta on the boat, no rice, no potatoes. We managed to eat up all the bread too. A freak wave came out of nowhere (I had my back to it), the tent got engulfed in water ... luckily the tent survived. Some water leakages, but we didn't get very wet. A family of dolphins were swimming parallell with us for a short time, coming up to breathe synchonously just right outside the cockpit, on the port side. We were pretty alone on the sea, two boats observed - one with a blinking yellow top lantern. What does that mean? I think boats are not supposed to have blinking lanterns? Intuitively, it means "keep a distance" - it was around 1 nm close to us at the closest, so it was OK. Thursday 2022-09-08, Bay of Biscay -> Santander ----------------------------------------------- Relatively calm night, no need for tacking, right speed, not too bad direction, waves and keeling not worse than that it was possible to sleep in the beds. All until around 5 in the morning, hell broke out with too little and too much wind and a lot of rain. My watch started at 5, but I didn't realize it was already 5, I got up due to the racket - so eventually both me and Florian went to sleep assuming Someone Else was at the helm. We both got woken up by alarms from the navigator and apparently nobody ack'ing the alarms. Wind speeds changing between 10 knots and 22 knots while I was at the helm. Around 9 I took down the sails and we continued by engine, with the course towards Santander. Before turning on the engine, speed was around three knots, but sails were flapping with the waves. We have lost the anchor :-( Rope simply torn off. Max was fixing the rope-anchor connection, and my crew was lifting up the anchor. Second time the anchor disappears while we're on the go. I think that next time I'm heading for the sea maybe it's an idea to let the spinnaker halyard carry some of the anchor weight. And having the anchor directly connected to the rope without any shackle in between was not a good idea. I should have fixed a more proper connection long ago. I raised the telephone a bit up the mast to get working Internet. We threw anchor outside Santander - we used the rear anchor, but connected it to the rope from the bow. I did a huge mistake however, the rope went through the support for the rear anchor, so we were efficiently anchored up from the aft. I removed this support, but then the rope had managed to get stuck both with the rudder and the propellor. Did go for a swim to try and fix problems, but ... no chance. It was dawn and getting dark, but worse of all the tide current was very strong, I had to hold on to something, otherwise I could barely swim with the same speed as the current. Things eventually solved itself somehow, but we were considering ways to deal with it, including to wait for the tide to turn and then throw a heavy propellor on the anchor rope while there were less pressure on the rope. There is some strange sounds in the water ... it's like sparkling or cracking. Audible from the outside of the boat, even more audible from the inside, and especially from the captains cabin. We have no idea what it is. It stays constant, independent of passing ships, tides, etc. Friday 2022-09-09, Santander ---------------------------- The dhingy is leaking air now, after beeing too much rubbed against a screw on the davider. Pauline tried to patch it up, but without success. We did a trip to the city. It's much bigger than what I had expected. I didn't like the town itself that much, but the nature was great and Santander had some nice bike roads for skating. First mistake already while rowing in, but I blame it on my crew - they asked if I had any special wishes on where to land the tender, if not they wanted to land it on some ramp. Only thing, we discovered it was on an island ... Paulina continued her journey by bus, she will hop on to another boat leaving from Lisboa. Florian and me went hunting for a boat flag, ate lunch in a busy very Spanish tapas place (it was quite cheap - we both got stuffed for only 20 Euro), we found a more quiet bar where I could work while Florian went shopping for food. Some Swedes passed by with a dhingy with an electric engine, they were chatting a bit with me. Did the sixth layer of varnish, but when I see the work in the shower with different lightning ... I did a horrible job. Anyway, I hope I can take a shower tomorrow, it's really needed. Bilge pumps in bow - the one without electricity was trivial, just to find the connection and plug it in. And switch it from timed mode to water sensing mode. The other bilge pump works, but is not attached to the hull, and in heavy waves it turns over and starts working (as the water sensor depends on gravity working the right way). It appears there is no bottom part of it, that's weird. Water in the bottom - it's not much of it, and it's dirty. I suspect that the water is not coming from the water tanks, but from the grey water tank, it's not completely water tight (big o-ring needs cleaning, minimum), it's never empty, and when there are waves it can probably come some water out of it. Lots of water in the rear bathroom, under the sink. It's coming in through the sink when we're keeling too much to the port. Katja has suggested to install a stopcock. New anchor to arrive in La Coruna Monday or Tuesday. There are some places in between where it's possible to throw anchor. Saturday 2022-09-10, Santander -> La Coruña, day 1/3 ---------------------------------------------------- Work on the starboard sheet rail (Max loosened up the screws to install the car, we lost lots of glue when doing that, so it should be reglued. Unfortunately there is some humidity in the wood by now, so eventually it should be unscrewed again later and let to dry. Work on the second bilge pump in the bow - Florian did some gluing work, but reports that it's needed to wait for the glue to settle before it can be fixed more properly. Marking tapes on the anchor rope is getting work out. We took the whole anchor rope into the cockpit to let it dry. Florian burnt in my diving mask and inspected the propellor, it's clean (I was worried that the fishing lines from the 6th of August could still be stuck there). Before we could leave, the police came for a visit. They needed to fill out a customs declaration form with lots of questions including the size and names of crew, engine model, they needed to look at the boat documents, even including "målebrev", VHF license and insurance documents, our passports, etc (but they did not ask for boating license). One person came on board (with boots) and did a quick inspection. We did some more bathing while the tide was turning. Florian found that the anchor rope was hanging around a rock, he undid it, and then we got concerned that we may end up colliding with the neighbour boat. We decided to drop all further maintenance tasks and just get going. Tailwind. Went by genoa first stretch, then we tried out butterfly ... but a bit too much waves, genoa ended up flapping and snapping a bit. Rolled in the genoa after a while and went with only main sail. Kept good speed for a while, but closer to land it was less wind. Main sail was difficult to roll out this time, it was a bit stuck in the start. The brand new sail getting worn out already? Sailing is for sure the most expensive way of travelling for free (but we probably could have done more to take care of the sail). At some point, I came to remember that the wheels for the dhingy was down. I climbed into the dhingy and took them up ... while it was relatively big waves and relatively much wind, with main sail out with a defender. I was almost thrown out of the dhingy. Florian thought it was quite crazy, he would not have done it. I did the same thing the day after, but going by engine, putting the engine in neutral before climbing into the dhingy ... in the darkness ... but it also felt quite crazy. The depth was 72 meters, and the color of the water was different to what I was used to ... I'm color blind, but some light blueish color. I also thought the mother ship looked quite indignified as it was rocked about by the waves. The main sail has been taken a bit too far out at some point, and now it has a small hole where it's touching the port spreader. Sunday 2022-09-11, Santander -> La Coruña, day 2/3 -------------------------------------------------- We were heading for Ria de Villaviclosia, I thought that looked like a good anchoring spot on the map. Well. Just when we entered the river I was reading reviews from another sailor, they had been chased away by the police because it was not allowed to anchor up in the river, and the guest harbour was only for small boats. Worse, the space was much less than anticipated, and with the not so good anchoring gear we did not feel comfortable anchoring up there. Outside the river there were not enough shelter given the conditions. I had a thought that probably we should not have headed there at all, because if we had kept further out we would have had sailable wind until 08 according to Windy. We already lost a lot of speed because we got too close to land prior to entering the place, and on the way out it was already too late - we got out just before 8. I went to sleep a bit, Florian took the wheel - at some point he managed to do some sailing, so Windy was not completely correct. He helped me removing the rope from the mast. We got to Playa de Llumeres, anchored up there. Not a perfect shelter, but good enough. Lots of ruins there ... I wonder if it has been a military base there? Florian left me after we ate lunch at Restaurante Casa Roces. Very nice restaurant - well, twice as expensive as the one in Santander, but it was very nice. I did an attempt on patching up the dhingy, but ... failure. There are no usage instructions in any of the repair kits. It seems to be impossible to remove the failed patches, so now there is patch upon patch upon patch ... and it's going to become even worse! The rest of the trip to La Coruña will be by engine, if windy is correct. I hope I have enough diesel. Monday 2022-09-12, Santander -> La Coruña, day 3/3 -------------------------------------------------- Quite hard night ... I was very sleepy. At some point I discovered we had some wind, so I furled out the sails. I think the Spanish radio service is abusing both the concept of "pan pan pan" and DSC all stations call. So ... probably it was night before Sunday somebody falls into the water, DSC pan pan pan on channel 16, all boats in the area that may assist should report. Fair enough. I considered we were too far away, would take at least four hours to get there. Perhaps six hours later the same call is repeated ... and even a full day after they fell into the water, there is still DSC pan pan pan alerts sent over the radio. At some point we passed the area, I didn't consider that the pan-pan-pan was still in effect when we passed. By all means ... a life is at stake. But I would expect random ships to aid with the initial search, in that situation a PAN-PAN-PAN seems appropriate - but eventually the random ships should be replaced by a dedicated rescue effort with specialized equipment, like helicopters with night-vision. Probably ran out of diesel on the port tank in the early morning. Oups. Cannot change tank easily, as the starboard filter is still relatively dry. Decided to equalize the tanks a bit, while trying to use the little wind there is to get a little bit further. I believe the contents of the port tank should last until La Coruña if I'm conservative - if it doesn't, I'll find some pump, pump everything from the starboard tank over to the port tank and try to be even more conservative on the usage. I was last equalizing the tanks in Santander, meaning I've spent half of the available diesel from Santander to the point where I ran dry. Windy promised a bit more wind and favorable directions - in reality I was probably sailing around half the time (with speeds varying between 1 knot and 4 knots) and going by engine the other half (on around 1.3 krpms, which gave me a speed between 3.5-5.5 knots) During the night time and most of Monday, I was very alone at the sea ... but around Cabo Prior, there was like 15-20 fishing boats passing in the other direction during a short period of time. Tuesday 2022-09-13, A Coruña ---------------------------- I was intending to go to the marina in the morning, but got a bit stuck with breakfast and work ... and whenever I was trying to get out, it started raining. In the breaks between the showers I managed to put out fenders and haul the anchor rope tight. There was also a shower just before I came to the marina, so I slowed down a bit. I was assigned a place behind two Danish and one Finnish boat ... nordic corner? In the harbor I got help from one employee there and a random lady ... the random person spoke Norwegian with me. While walking to the harbour office, I realize that there are at least five Norwegian boats in the harbour, and several other Nordic boats. A Norwegian was also helping me to hold the door when I came from the harbour office with the new anchor. Later, after visiting the supermarked, I met another man in the door for the land toilet and he says in Norwegian, "oh, it's you! We met in the shop!". I was rather confused since I came directly from the shop and didn't speak with anyone there. But indeed, I did meet him in a chandlery in La Rochelle a week ago. The nature isn't as great here as further east, and I was a bit appaled by bad smell when I arrived yesterday evening ... and when arriving from sea my first impression was that the town was ugly ... but walking around in the old town, I must say it's an interessting and beautiful town. Not the best for biking or skating though. Difficult to find parking for the bike. Spent nine hours of doing laundry; had four tokens, each could be used for feeding a washing machine with electricity for 2 hours 20 minutes exact, most washing programs took more than 2 hours 20 minutes to run ... so I had to have two timers on, one for feeding the machine with tokens and one for replacing the laundry. In addition other people were using the machine in the day time, so I was finished with laundry only at 06 in the morning ... Wednesday 2022-09-14, A Coruña ------------------------------ Decided to stay put at the same place for convenience. One crew member from BW (karoxo) joining this evening, a couple joining Sunday morning from Vigo (it's the son of a lady from BW based in Catalonia, she took a flight to Oslo and joined me sailing on the very first trip with Solveig - I think his name was Joan - and then he has a girlfriend). Drying the laundry, drinking tea and working. Went out for lunch, passed the isthmus and climbed up all the hills before I asked Google for the nearest high-rated low-cost lunch place. I was a bit disappointed that they were serving sandwiches ... but I was not disappointed, it was more like pizza than sandwiches. Ali Baba arrived today, third meeting (Cuxhaven, Cherbourg, A Coruña). They will go to Cape Verde, then cross the Atlantic and later Pacific. Thursday 2022-09-15, A Coruña -> Sisarga ---------------------------------------- Reltively much wind, good direction (150 degrees) and relatively much waves. Arrived around 23 to the anchorage at Sisarga. Amazed to be perfectly alone there. Friday 2022-09-16 Sisarga ------------------------- Amazed that the nature looks quite much as in Norway. Not much vegetation, rocky islands connected by shallow narrow straights, some civilization and wind mills on the mainland. As I had my morning meeting at work sitting behind on the platform, dipping my feet in water, thinking I was perfectly alone - and then suddenly out of nowhere a fisherman appears right next to me to pick up/inspect his fishing gear (crab cages, apparently). Quite much wind - we wanted to go to the island, it was very hard to row against the wind. We had a walk on the island, it's amazing - particularly the cliffs on the side facing the Atlantic - and also the strange house with strange equipment inside and some tuba-looking thing sticking out from the roof ... and some mystic apparently unreachable lookout-platform with a tower further out towards the sea. 99 meters above the sea level there were several "Giant's kettle" (jettegryter), something I usually see closer to the sea level. I used to think they were created by the sea, but it's actually created by glacial rivers. Hard to understand how a glacial river could pass on a small peak 99 meters above the sea level. On the return it was even harder to row agains the wind. We had the wind from the side and a bit from behind when rowing towards the ship, but we missed it a bit. I had to take over the ores, rowing as hard as I could, finally I managed to grab some ropes from the ship. Anchor got completely stuck. We were intending to sail on, but decided to stay for another night - hopefully it would be less wind in the morning so it would be easier to resolve the problem. I made some plans involving a very long rope, a loop to go around the anchor shackle, and pulling the anchor from land. Saturday 2022-09-17 Sisarga -> Ria de Vigo ------------------------------------------ It was quite wind still in the morning. While preparing for my plan, my crew suggested I should try to pull it in the other direction with the engine ... and also noting that we perhaps didn't have much time because the wind was picking up. So I carefully gave the anchor a gentle nudge in the other direction (going slowly to avoid getting ropes into the propellor) - and the anchor was loose. Not much wind, tailwind, much waves ... so difficult conditions with flapping sails. Decided to go a bit further away from land, perhaps it would give better wind conditions. Two big packs of dolphins came close, one of them for a visit. While on the distance, they were jumping completely out of the water (strategy to save energy when swimming fast), when coming closer they were swimming along the ship and under the ship playing for maybe ten minutes before they continued swimming north. Heard on the radio that some boat was attacked by orcas. They resolved the problem by pouring diesel in the water. Heard on the radio that some other boat with 3 persons got attacked by 4 orcas. Rescure service scrambled. We were told to keep a sharp lookout and call if getting attacked, if passing the Finisterra bay. We passed the Finisterra bay and observed 4 orcas - it seemed to be one mother with three children, they seemed to be playing, but keeping a relatively steady course in front of us, away from us, and from port to starboard, out of the bay. At that time we had just put out the sails, but it wasn't enough wind for sailing - we got like one knot. Anyway, I didn't want to start the engine, perhaps that could trigger the orcas. Sunday 2022-09-18 Ria de Vigo ----------------------------- Bioluminescence can be weird. I saw this when taking up the anchoring rope some weeks ago in the night time - the rope was like sparkling. Now I could see it on the rope going to the dhingy as it was being splashed into the water every now and then. And behind the propellor, there is a long stripe of mareel (morild), even when going slowly by sail. We have it in Norway too, but I've never noticed sparkling ropes. Arrived in Ria de Vigo in the early morning, anchored up vis-a-vis Vigo - Cangas. Went for a ~400m swim to the beach and back again. Got new guests, a couple from Barcelona. The mother of Juan was joining when I did the very first trip with this boat, from Skjærhalden to Smögen and back again. Very hot day, went swimming several times. Tried redoing the attachments of the solar panels. Did some overcomplicated stuff on the starboard fore panel, with five different connections - but perhaps the easiest is the best, just continue using rope and knots, but in a bit more orderly fashion. Found that the connections and the wires going to and from the solar panel MPPT are underdimensioned. They get hot, and I suppose it's big voltage drop over them. Should do something with it - but when the sun is not shining. I did a reset of the power meters for the fridge and the DC outlets. It seems like the fridge is consuming 40W 24/7 now, I find it a bit strange. Monday 2022-09-19 Ria de Vigo -> Portugal ----------------------------------------- Started working on the electricity cables to/from the MPPT in the morning, but I was a bit slow, the sun already started shining on the panels. Decided to replace the easiest cables with thicker cables anyway. Sparks flying, not good for my nerves and not good for the electronics. The rest of the crew went food shopping while I was working a bit. Lunch and some bathing before departure. Left around 15:00. Headwind, wind speed and direction was changing a bit. Crossed out of the ria and started beating southwards - but as the wind got quite weak I gave it up and reverted to engine. Replaced a slightly burnt contact with a soldered junction after sunset, but procrastinated both cleaning up the wires and fixing the negative wires. Arrived in Rio Miño around midnight. Navigated very slowly into the river as the navionics map on my telephone, the navionics boating app on my telephone and the depth meter showed three different things, and as it also was marked some "awash" rocks where we were entering. I was considering to choose the safer way south of the fortress/light house island, but when I saw that it was shallow also on the safer approach and that the tide was 2.4m above the reference ... and almost wind still and no waves ... I decided to go for the shortest approach. Also, if nothing else, sandbanks moves, but I think rocks should be pretty stationary. The depth meter was never showing less than 1.2 meters of water below the keel. Upon arrival we were greeted by a police car (!) and officers requesting us to anchor up in the bay and they said they would come tomorrow for inspection. I feel a bit like a criminal ... and one shouldn't believe such a thing as the European union and Schengen existed. I took down the Spanish guest flag and replaced it with the yellow flag. Tuesday 2022-09-20 Rio Miño -> Vila do Conde --------------------------------------------- Police came in the relatively early morning. We had a small argument, the police officer believes that he saw the mast being totally diagonal and that we certainly hit a sandbank yesterday. "You're not fair with me" he replied when I denied hitting a sand bank. Oh well, I suppose it's only my problem if I hit a sandbank ... unless it's against the Portugese laws to hit sandbanks - but I hate it when people think I'm dishonest. The police officer also claimed I was crazy to enter the river north of the Insua Nova lighthouse. Anyway, they tried as good as they could to give us instructions on how to get out of the river again. On the way out, we were wondering a bit on the instructions we got from the police, we had understood it so that we should keep close to the island - but there were breaking waves. Then came the taxi boat in full speed - gesticulating wildly, pointing that we should go closer to the beach. We had less than a meter under the keel on the "worst". We found three problems with the mainsail/mast/boom and fixed two of them: * The bottom of the sail was not attached to the hook for rolling it * The sail does not want to go down now (may be related to the one above - maybe the sail is going some few times around the roller at top while it is rolled completely out at the bottom - possibly we will need to climb up the mast to resolve this one) * The bolt keeping the boom in place was on it's way to fall out. We also attached some disks to the connection to make it less wobbly. While that may help keeping the bolt in place and may help reduce chaffing (there were visible damages to the aluminium due to chaffing), it does create new noises, so I'm a bit concerned. (the fix is a bit temporary - we used some wire to hold the bolt in place, should eventually use something more proper) Dolphins in the sunset. Filipe has gotten reports that we should not try to enter the river before midnight, due to silting and tides it's best not to enter outside the high water - the river is quite shallow nowadays. I don't quite get it, now that there are no waves it should be quite safe. It's shown to be several meters deep and without sand banks according to navionics, and in addition even the low tide now is more than 1.5 meter above the zero. Perhaps the local advises applies in different circumstances - with wind, waves and without good maps, GPS, depth measurement, boat not sticking too deep, etc, it could probably have been very difficult not to get stuck in the mud on low water. When entering I put the depth alarm on 2 meters and it stayed there until we anchored up. Admittedly the alarm went off some few times, at the "worst" we had 1.2 meters of water under the keel, I did adjust the course sharply and the alarm disappeared. When we got to the downtown area it got more shallow though. Anchored up at 1.6 meters, expecting the effective depth to be 0.1 meters on low tide - but it's ok, it's only mud, and we're going nowhere while it's low water. Wednesday 2022-09-21 Vila do Conde ---------------------------------- Crazy day... I've been in Vila do Conde before, quite some years ago, but I'm surprised how little I remember of it. I have a friend Filipe from this place. We appointed to meet with Filipes mother 13:30 Portugese time. Before that we went for a walk. I had my work meeting at 13:00 Norwegian time. When it was over I was searching for the button for hanging up the call on the telephone, and didn't see the big concrete block in front of me, crashed with it and started bleeding a lot from my leg. The couple from Catalonia told me they'd like to disembark in Porto - and if I rather wanted to sleep than going to Porto, then they would disembark next morning from Vila de Conde. They do at least have some problems with sea sickness, so I can understand they want to continue their vacation by renting a car instead. We were to pick up Filipes mother by the river shore, but it was too shallow to get close enough. What's worse, when we decided to find another pickup-point, we discovered that we were quite stuck - and that at the highest tide! Things got a bit stressful. Eventually we managed to get some other boat to help us. I prepared a rope from the top of the mast, but the man insisted on towing us from the stern. It did not go very well, so we decided to go from the top of the mast instead. It was quite stressful instructing everyone to get on board and prepare for a 45 degree inclination. Also, the dhingy got stuck on the rope on the first attempt. I totally forgot to prepare the boat, so my water glass fell into the floor and broke. Eventually we got out from there. Filipe had been bragging a lot about his cousin Samuel having a boat yard and being an expert on wooden boats, so the propsal was that I would ask if they could do work and come with some recommendations. Next on the agenda was to go there for a visit. When we arrived to the shipyard there were three persons there, and the lady snapped: "we don't work on boats like this one", so I considered that topic closed. (they are repairing wooden fishing boats). We also couldn't stay there for more than one hour. We found a place to put the boat, but it was for a boat school or something like that, and we could stay there only for two hours as they had lessons. The fishery harbour was deep enough, and when we arrived in the late night it was free - but now it was full of fishing boats. The marina was also completely full. So even on high water there were nowhere to stay or even easily pick up people except by anchor, and it wasn't much better on low water. Quite much mess in the communication. Filipes mother did have hot food with her for eating, but we could only meet her by dhingy - so the plan was to save it for later and eat in a resturant. Or so I thought. My crew members was not ready to pay for a resturant meal, so they only wanted coffee - and then we were denied entering the resturants that she could recommend when we only wanted coffee - but I was hungry and prepared to eat! Anyway, we had a good evening. Continued towards Porto later in the evening. This was expected to be the first day without seeing dolphins for quite a while, but they came at 23:45! It was extra spectacular to have them visiting us during the night time due to the mareel effect. Thursday 2022-09-22 Porto ------------------------- Arrived around 04:30 in the river outlet, and anchored. Around 12 we went to Porto, I wanted to do the sightseeing by boat (didn't quite have time to go in land), so went to down town and let off everyone, then back to the anchoring point. It was a nice sightseeing trip. Juan and Laura disembarked. And it seems important to at least keep notes on this, because the police were later asking, sounded a bit like they suspected I had lost crew members to the sea without informing the authorities. River got quite wild eventually as the tide was turning and eventually ebbing. Malstroems and big current. At one moment my boat was pointing upstream while a neighbouring Canadian boat was pointed downstream - I was shocked and surprised, distance between the boats was quite small. I went to the dhingy to pick up crew, considered first to just let go of the boat and pump it up while drifting, because the mother ship was pointing towards the shore. Next momentand the river was suddenly running wildly towards the sea. I decided to pump first ... and then I did not really know if I dared to release, the current was so strong. But I rowed as hard as I could diagonally, and was faster than the river. Eventually the current was less bad (and even in the opposite direction) when I got closer to land. I went a bit upstream to be sure we would catch the boat. A sailboat from the UK lowered the dhingy, put on a small outboard engine and came over to us (he had to run the engine on full power) just to ask if we were comfortable with the distance. I've never experienced that before. We didn't see dolphins. Friday 2022-09-23 Porto - south ------------------------------- Another day without seeing dolphins, but we were not paying too much attention. A day with nothing much happening. Strong tail wind, sailed broad reaching first part of the way, then continued with only main sail. Good speed. Destination set to Berlenga. Saturday 2022-09-24 Berlenga ---------------------------- We arrived at Berlenga in the middle of the night. Tried anchoring up in Cova do Sono, but it was crazy ... 90 meter of cliffs on three sides, so we where very well sheltered, but it was a bit narrow. The navionics map on my telephone did not correspond with the terrain - rocky bottom, the depth indicator was several times showing less than 1.5 meters under the keel, meaning it would be too shallow on low water. It was not enough space to go around one anchor. Probably it would have been quite possible to anchor up there with two anchors and with daylight, but we decided to anchor up closer to the fortress. Tried a bit too close first time, second attempt it was good, though not much sheltered. In the morning it was rather bumpy - and I was a bit concerned that the wind would be too strong to row to land without blowing to Lisboa - but it was quite OK. Before we managed to get to land, 600 tourists arrived. There was a cave right nearby, I did want to inspect it with the dhingy ... but then two sightseeing boats came out. I could then conclude that it did have some other entrance somewhere, and that it for all practical purposes was a one-way tunnel, so we left it like that. We went for a long walk on the island and ended up at the castle. By then all the tourists were gone. We were invited to eat anchovies and drink wine - and even to join a party later in the evening. They said we should anchor up behind the castle, further into the narrow bay, one of the persons there tried to explain very detailed where to drop the anchor. Well, we tried a bit, eventually with two anchors. We were pretty close to the rock, but we waited for a while and the distance was the same, apparently both the anchors were sitting. We joined the party, observing the boat every now and then, and things seemed OK. I also went back to the boat to pick up an instrument some few hours later, and the anchors were still sitting. Two more hours after that, and the boat was gone - we could see the anchor lights relatively far away. There was a RIB there, but with everyone drunk, pitch dark outside, and lots of waves and wind it was not an option to use it for going after Solveig. It was a chaos with everyone beeing drunk, but at last someone managed to call the authorities and explain what was going on. Since no life was at stake and since it was dark, and since we had tracking on the boat, we were told to wait until daylight (I was quite worried that the boat would drift too far from land, causing the tracker to become out of cellphone coverage). What actually happened? At first I thought that the rope lenghts were too short - but the boat was sitting for several hours and drifted away on low water. When I fetched the boat, both anchors were lost, rope was torn over. Perhaps the ropes got chaffed by rocks on the low water? Later on I noticed that some eight meters of anchor rope for the bow anchor had disappeared - there is no way this can have happened while the boat was drifting. As for the stern anchor, insignificant amounts of rope was missing, but at least the knot was missing. Even later, the people at Berlenga dived and found the anchors, so the ropes were definitively chaffed off. A friend of me thinks it was orcas biting off the ropes, but they probably wouldn't go at such shallow water. Sunday 2022-09-25 Berlenga - Caiscas ------------------------------------ Boat drifted directly south. It was difficult because we were told to hire a boat or a rescue service privately and deal with it - but how to best find the resources? The boat was too far south that people on Berlenga or Peniche wanted to help, and it was too far north for the rescue service in Lisbon. We were considering to let the boat drift a bit further towards Lisbon and pick it up from there - or try to get in touch with some fishermen from the small fishermens port half-way to Lisboa. Then the wind changed a bit, and the boat was drifting towards land - Sebastian even estimated that it would hit land in only some few hours. Possibly that's why the authorities changed their mind and was willing to help us anyway. We set off with a small but fast RIB. I gave the coordinates to Caro, who gave it to the rescue people in the boat, they did enter a waypoint on their Raymarine. However, they took the decimal numbers and entered it directly to the plotter, which expects degrees and minutes, so the coordinate got quite wrong. I wanted to double check the coordinates before leaving, but they just dismissed me, pointing that the coordinates were carefully entered into the system. Only while we were at the go I considered that the position was too far west. I tried to explain it, but they probably didn't understand it completely, because they continued westwards. We were soaked wet and for every third wave we got engulfed by seawater, so it was very difficult to check the coordinates on the telephone. I did manage to get Sebastian to send coordinates with minutes, but he misunderstood and sent degrees, minutes, seconds while the Raymarine system expects degrees, minutes and decimals. On the third attempt I think we got the coordinates right. We went there, found no boat at first - I suggested to use the radar but they didn't want (perhaps it sees nothing but waves anyway). However, within some few minutes the lookout managed to spot Solveig. Getting over was not so easy, as she was rolling quite a lot. We couldn't enter from behind due to ropes in the water, so we had to jump from the RIB and up on the side. Caro was trying first, but failed, was hanging from the boat for quite long before he dropped himself in the water and tried to get up the ladder. The blowed up life west was severly restricting him, he didn't even manage to climb the ladder. I jumped on board, was not aware that he was still hanging behind, so I started taking up ropes from the water before I helped lifting him on board. And then he still didn't manage to take off the west. Things had been thrown quite a lot around - luckily the boat was relatively well stoved, but I left a water glass on the kitchen bench, it was of course broken. Caro the smoker had also used a tin as an ashtray - now it was ashes and cigarette butts all over the cockpit. My quite important work laptop was lying on the desk, it had not fallen to the floor! There were lots of water behind, in the bathroom. Boat was leaking, water entered from under the sink, filled up the available volume there, running further out on the floor of the bathroom. The floor hatch was floating and sloshing and banging around in the waves, causing some damage at the lower parts of the walls. I need a bilge pump in that bathroom ... We did some effort pumping out water, but the pump seems to have gotten stuck again (we later found a micro fiber textile had gone through the tube and was completely blocking the pump). Eventually I managed to get most of the water out using a small bucket ... but I had to repeat several times during the journey. We were both very tired, particularly Caro after his bathing and climbing efforts, he fell asleep. Lots of things to be done at the boat, and I had some admin tasks by the computer to deal with as well. At some point while nobody was at the watch, it felt like we crashed with something. I hurt my leg and started bleeding, table fell over despite being secured by rubber bands, even the picture on the wall in the lower saloon fell down. There was no radar alarm, and we I saw nothing but water when I got out in the cockpit. Caro thinks it was simply a rogue wave. No visible damages in front of the boat, and quite much of the boat was all wet after the incident, so he may be right - but the impact was really from the front, that's quite unexpected when we have both the wind and the waves from behind all the way. Could it have been a whale or other mammal, maybe? Good wind. All the mainsail was out, at some point the boat did turn more or less directly towards the wind, even full rudder didn't prevent it from happening - so I gave the main a bit more slack and started rolling it in. When we came to the coast it became more gusty - varying between 11 knots and 35 knots. I considered that it could be disasterous if the boat would turn against the wind - and towards land, so I started rolling in the sail faster. We arrived the Cascais marina around nine perhaps. It was very strong wind, I didn't quite get time to fix fenders, and quite difficult to navigate inside the marina at all - and that was just to get to the check-in ponton! From there we were supposed to move to an assigned space inside the marina. Luckily they were full, so we had to sleep by the check-in ponton. But the bureucracy was horrible. The night duty was very friendly, but he insisted on seeing a registration document issued in 2022. Monday 2022-09-26 Caiscas - Algés --------------------------------- The proper check-in in the morning was also quite bad. Friendly staff, but we had to go through lots of registration procedures once more - and I was supposed to move to another place, and then get out before 14:00 or pay for one day extra. I forgot to bring money, so had to go back to the boat - and when I got back again there was a long queue! Quite some time and effort later ... I got a call from Filipe, he had made an appointment for lifting the boat up a bit closer to Lisbon, so we just paid and left. 80 euros for perhaps nine hours of sleep by the ponton, perhaps two hours of trying to work from the boat and perhaps one hour of bureucraziness. A hotel room may be cheaper. Went parts of the way to Algés with engine and parts with sail. No wind in the beginning, and turning into headwind before our arrival. Boat was lifted up around 14:30 local time. Quite some small damages, one hole at the side - and one big, we've lost parts of the rudder - and supports for the rudder on the inside of the hull is also broken. A week in Algés --------------- Got done surprisingly little. Slept, ate, worked by the computer, and devoted a tiny bit of time into boat maintenance. Removed LOTS of water. Engine room was soaked - after fighting with a Biltema pump for some days we eventually opted for a more low-tech solution, bought a bucket and a broom. It did have some bonuses, most of the oil got stuck to the broom so that we could throw the water directly into the drains (though, I do expect the drains here to have some kind of cleaning solution before the water goes to the river/sea). It also got quite clean. We still have some work, the room directly under the engine is not accessible with the broom, and there is water slowly leaking from the starboard side into the engine room (water tank still leaking?). There is also a big inaccessible volume beetween the aft toilet and the port side wardrobe in the aft cabin - and it was filled with water. I need to arrange some kind of access there to clean it properly up from the inside. As an emergency fix, I drilled an 8mm hole near the floor, and lots of water started pouring out - but there is still more water left there. It's very slowly seeping towards the accessible hole under the floor in the bathroom, but it's not good. I'm considering two solutions, either to get some professional carpenter to make a nice lid on the top of the "box" behind the toilet, or to make an opening myself via the wardrobe, an opening that can either be left open or fixed with screws. At the davit there is a supporting metal rod between the booms, but the screws constantly got unscrewed - so I decided both to put some glue on the screws and to put some disks there. To get the disks in place, I unscrewed the rod completely. To my surprise, this solid piece of rod (which looks quite much like it's coming directly from a factory - no visible welding spots) has two loose nuts on the inside, making it nearly impossible to screw it all in place again. We're considering different ways of reattaching it, but it will be difficult. Except for that ... work, work and more work. Unfortunately I believe my positive flexi time quota will soon be used up. I've started seriously looking into my calendar-cli and python-caldav projects, working towards a 1.0-release of calendar-cli. However, my back can't survive this much sitting by the laptop. Need to arrange a better working position and/or devote more time into physical boat work. There are actually enough of things that needs to be done on the boat. I should start making an overview. I'm of course quite unlucky to have this accident, but I'm still thinking that it could have been so much worse, for so many reasons ... * I saved the boat! It was not a given. Wind towards the east, and the boat would have gone out of GSM coverage and would have been very hard to find. Wind towards the east, and the boat would have crashed with land. I thought the boat was perfectly safe that Sunday, but it wasn't - Sebastian calculated that it would have drifted on land if we would have found it only one hour later! The authorities (ISN) did not want to help me, and it took a lot of pressure (the mother of Filipe and the people from Berlenga helped with this) to get help from this resource. Without this the boat would certainly have been lost. * No lifes lost or injuries. Consider if the children would have been sleeping while the anchor ropes got torn off, it would have been a horrible (and quite dangerous) experience for them. * Very little damages on board. I had been drinking water and left one water glass on the bench - it broke, but that's a very minor detail. Some of the more expensive electronics survived. The Bose headset was lying in a pool of salty water when I found the boat, but it survived. My laptop was carelessly found at the middle of the desk - that's a miracle, my laptop is quite important for me for so many reasons (I have backups of most of the data ... should ensure I have backups of everything!). I can't believe it has been there all the time, probably it worked it's way out from it's "safe" position in the small map storage space. * Also, having the children staying on board while the boat is on land on such a place ... not much fun. I generally don't want my children to play on such places, as there may be quite some harmful chamicals on the ground and (while works are ongoing) in the air. My Swedish neighbours are currently stuck here with two children. Well, mine is in the slightly wrong country now, and it may be harder to get them out as time passes, but I'm sure we'll manage. * It's an insurance case, so I don't have to worry too much about the costs. Unlike my Swedish neighbours, who has a "tear and wear"-problem. * I'm not particularly much in a hurry. Well, I do have a flight ticket from Ibiza on the 25th of October, but it's a low-cost ticket. There is also the concern about winter storms, we really wanted to enter the Mediterranean during October - but it's not so far to Gibraltar now. Compared to many others I'm well off. My Swedish neighbours were headed for the ARC, they may miss it. Quite many people take a full year off from work and end up spending months of it with the boat on land for repairs - I'm not in such a position, I have work to do while I'm here. * I have more or less everything I need for "normal life" here, water, electricity, shower, toilet - a bit far to the toilet when I need to pee in the middle of the night though (my wife advised on using a bottle - my crew mate is doing that). * Short way to Lisbon, trains going all the time and I have a bike. I expect I should be able to source all kind of things I need here relatively easily, and there is also some tourism stuff I may do while I'm here. * Airport nearby - and since I'm alone, I can probably afford flight tickets if it will be useful. * I even have a beach in the immediate neighbourhood, so I can go bathing whenever I want. Ok, the "immediate neighbourhood" is a the other side of the fence so it's actually a big detour to get there ... but I have a bike :-) Today is a nice Sunday, so I went for a bike ride to Lisbon. First impression was not so good, particularly with the bike road - several places it was just ending up in nowhere, no instructions except for "no biking"-signs - which people tended to ignore anyway. At one point it looked like it applied to the bike road itself, but it was pretty obvious that it was for a pedestrian square on the other side of the bike road. At another point it was a quite narrow commercial strip between resturants and a marina, with lots of pedestrians and very well signed that people were supposed to walk with their bikes for several hundred metres, impossible to bike around it due to the railroad. It's OK for me being a tourist, but for daily bike trips to some office in Lisbon? Not acceptable at all. And then I got to some bigger suburban areas with quite boring residental areas penetrated with car roads with no signage and no considerations that some people may be biking. I hope Google will suggest some better bike routes back. Though, there seems to be no way to cross the rail road by bike, so I probably should check with Google maps if has any faster bike routes to the north side of the Algés train station than to the south side. I stopped for a toilet visit and an ice cream while I was in the not-so-nice district with lots of cars, and while sitting there looking into google maps I coincidentally found Elevator de Santa Justa. Without any other destination, that looked like a good destintion for a sight seeing - but I was unable to find it again. I confused it with Elevator Santa Luzia. While searching for that elevator I did get to do a lot of sightseeing. I got pretty stuck in the Alfama district, carrying the bike up and down stairs there, navigator working poorly. I searched for a "cheap resturant with good ratings" on google, and came to a place I had already passed twice before - croweded by tourists drinking beer on the street, so they were actually resturant guests hanging around on the outside of the resturant because there were no free tables. The elevator seemed to be inside a residental house, I didn't care to check it up. Biked a decent distance away from there to see other places of Lisboa, found an escalator, decided to ride it upwards, found some way to the castelo, decided not to pay money to enter the castelo itself, wasted money on the outside instead (including entrance to a clock tower). Biked more around, and eventually found myself once again in a place I'd already been. Ate a bit and went back "home". Two more weeks in Algés ----------------------- Only after two weeks we learned that the local carpenter was overcommitted and didn't have capacity to do any work. Only Friday on the third week we got two more people looking at the boat. I went back to Lisbon again on my second Sunday, visited several viewpoints. I went back to Lisbon again on my third Monday (start of week 3) to do some shopping and errainds. It was raining pretty bad. I tried spending time indoors drinking coffe, beer and eating during the worst downpours. Towards the evening there was one pretty bad shower - I rushed under some overhang over some resturant tables and drunk some beer while waiting for the rain to stop - but the rain just picked up more rather than stopping. Even the waiters were taking videos of the rain. I thought a bit that there was a certain risk for flooding, since we were pretty low in the town and on a relatively flat place - and I was correct, some minutes later the street had turned into a river. They were relatively lucky in the restaurant that I was visiting, they didn't get much water into the resturant itself, but other places down the street had major indoor flooding problems. I was a bit slow realizing the water level was higher than the engine of my bike, so I lifted it up and parked it on the chairs. There were plenty of garbage floating with the water, so it was quite some work cleaning the wheels after the water had disappeared. I moved indoors, ate a pizza and continued towards the airport. My mother incidentally had a transit through the Lisbon airport, a very late evening inbound flight into the airport and a very early morning flight out from the airport. Very unlike her, she usually prefers comfort. I managed to meet her at the airport and show her photos from our trips. I was considering to take her for a walk - but it was raining again. I took a very early flight from Lisbon quite early Saturday morning. Or, actually not so early as the flight was delayed with 90 minutes. I decided to walk to the airport - from Algés. It took three hours, 18000 steps (I managed to pass 20k steps before 07 in the morning). The straight line goes through a small strip of forest, so parts of the journey went on forest trails and I passed some nice viewpoints too (too bad it was dark).