The chestnut tree, the dreaming sea
I forgot to mention it yesterday, but since I've shot past Umeå, I have entered the Botnia Bay.
When I woke up this morning, I spotted another neighbour on the docks, the nice wooden boat from 2 days ago. I think they arrived late: at least they weren't at the dock when I went inside my boat for the night and I don't know when I fell asleep, but I didn't hear any engine noise before. While it would have been fun to talk to them, when I had everything ready for the day and there were still no signs of movement aboard, so I left. The forecast said the wind was going to make a 180 and blow softly from the south. So I wanted to be on the sea for that, ready to use as much as I could before it calm down for the night again.
After a few manoeuvres to get going, I hoped to not make as much cap towards my destination as I could. Instead, I opted for a slanted approach which meant longer distance but hopefully at a higher pace making up for it. It's hard to tell if that was the right choice seeing as there are really few sailboats on the sea. The only one I can see now looks like one of the modern cruisers (that was also at the dock yesterday) which has much more sail area. It is gaining slowly on me, but not more than could be expected, I guess.
I've used the autopilot for a good portion of the day so far. Partially because the conditions suits it and don't require my full attention to the trimming and the helm, but also because I am still tired from yesterday. While I don't dare to go in for a little nap, it's more relaxing to just sit there and look around.
I am not sure where I will stop for the night, but I would like to make a good distance today as this is my last day of holiday. From tomorrow, I'll have to work before going sailing, which will considerably shorten the next steps.
I'm still roughly 80 nm away as the crow flies but more realistically about a 100 nm of coastal sailing from Luleå. While I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to complete the trip to Luleå within these 17 days, I've still covered a good distance and had a really fun time. I'm curious to see how much I can sail in the evening and I guess instead of packing lunches as I was doing so far I'll start packing dinners 😅
