Full sail ahead!

At last! The forecast looks decent, so I got up early, took some time (too much time) to get ready, and I left the harbour around 6:30 without a breakfast, sails up before 7 though! And then let's go for 12+ hours of sailing! The entire day on the same tack, minimal course adjustment and minimal sail trimming. Well, I had to take and shake reefs a few times.

At first, I was racing with another sailboat, a big cruiser, and managed to keep more or less in sync with them. But at some point I started to lose ground, and then a few of the other boats that were stuck in Kristianopel with me started to catch up.

At some point, however, around Utklippan we all took slightly different paths, and I was alone. Completely alone for some hours when I sunk the land. Not a single boat, bird, land to be seen. I spent some of that alone time to play harmonica, to enjoy stirring by hand for a long spell of time. The return to “civilisation” was a bit abrupt: all at once, 4-5 big tanker boats appeared at the horizon. Once I had crossed that cargo-avenue, I could almost see the island.

When Christiansø was on sight, the wind started to decrease a bit. And just before that, I contrive to stumble in the cockpit and smash my hand-made handle to pieces… anyhow, I'll re-glue it together. I tried to approach from the north side but, thankfully, I also thought I'd call them to have a better idea of where I should go and learned that I should actually go on the south side. By then I had already taken in the sails, so I made a little tour around the island on the engine, which was quite nice in the end.

After that I was quite fagged, and I had a good night sleep, which meant that I missed the northern lights and falling stars on that day. Well, we can't have everything, can we?

Lovely weather for sailing!

Time to put a reef again

Nothing to see here, but the sea and the clouds.

Time for a slow blues. I've two spare harmonicas that I reserve for sailing, I don't feel bad if I play them without brushing my teeth just before.

Listening to chicken on a raft while sailing, well suited.

A bit of hand stirring, the auto-helm was struggling a bit with the waves, so I took over. I may not look like it, but I had a lot of fun stirring!

Nothing but sea, wind and sky

Motoring around the island

Setting some personal records today!

A quick walk at dusk, hoping to see where I could go out again in the night to see the northern light, but I was too smashed to wake up during the night eventually.