It was the first evening of our summer vacation.
After having spent a long day getting ourselves and our belongings onto the boat, after casting off from our own harbor and waving farewell to Charlotte’s mother standing on the dock, and then, after just a few hours of relaxed sailing, we were at our first anchorage.
If measured in miles behind us, not very far from our home. Looking ahead, though, a whole summer’s worth of stories and adventures eagerly waiting for us make them happen.
Finally, it got warm enough to go out for a short weekend trip with the whole crew: Charlotte, the children, and Aiko the dog. It didn’t start out all that well, though.
I woke up and (like I often do) opened my app to check that Charlotte (the boat) was where she was supposed to be. Hmm. No data? Weird.
Last year I wrote a post summing up our first season sailing performance. Now, a couple of months into our second season, I think it’s clear that we’ve already found a better gear! In this post, I’ll share some data from a two-day solo sail I did this week.
In Finland, among quite a few places, 1 May and the eve before are celebrated loudly and merrily, in big crowds, and with a neverending amount of sparkling wine. Not so this year, obviously, but I had another good idea.
We just came back from two days of (Happy Easter!) sailing with J and O. This time we tried our best to optimize the sailing performance, and the results were quite encouraging!
Last weekend, it was still too cold and also a bit too windy to go out sailing with the family. I played around with some other things, though!
So, what do you do with your sailing blog when the whole world— I and our family included, obviously— is in the middle of a pandemic outbreak of a virus?
One slightly frustrating part of sailing– at least with monohulls!– is when the boat is deeply tilted over to one side or the other. It looks cool in pictures (“oh wow, look at them going, wind in the hair, smiles on their faces!”), but real life aboard a heeling boat isn’t always very heavenly.
Winter is a good time to plan for next summer. It is great fun to make big and daring plans, but the recipe for success, I believe, is to be very relaxed about actually sticking to the plans. So, we might end up boldly going where we intend to, but— and maybe even more likely— we might happily end up somewhere else completely.
Keeping this in mind, here is draft number one of our sailing summer 2020!
