Christ with a kite!

I managed to have an “early” start today, and left Junkön at 7:05 and was under sails 20 min after. The first part was relatively easy, navigating around Junkön and exiting Luleå's archipelago. Things got more complicated after that 😅

There was a lot of wind forecasted, and as I was leaving the archipelago, I took a second reef on my mainsail to be ready (lesson learned from previous times 😅). However, that was not enough…

Elvira was riding a strong and tall cross sea, with the wind sometimes right on the beam, sometimes 3/4 back. The pace was exhilarating, but also a bit worrying: it's not every day that one see the spray generated by the bow fly high and make a sharp 90° turn instantaneously. At that point I thought best to reduce the sail area even further and rather than removing the mainsail entirely, I opted to try to partially roll my front sail. It answered really well: stirring became easier, I could also point the boat closer to the wind and try to get some shelter behind an island that was on the path. It helped to at least reduce the amount of sea I had to deal with!

The sun came out around that time as well. Although it was still early at that point (barely 1pm), I thought I would still start to make my way to a stop. I elected to go back to the guest harbour I'd visited on the way up: Furuögrund.

So here I am, having a relaxed afternoon, trying to rest my arms and my back. And still it was great fun to sail like this! Yeepee! 8+ kts with a reduced front-sails and 2 reefs… I've covered 46 nm in nearly 7h of sailing, not bad!