14 September

A gray and drizzling morning welcomed me when I looked out of the companionway hatch. Well,
no gale force winds anyway. I was quick to get underway, by motor, to get to the Town Guest Harbour ( a busy one during summer, with 500 guest moorings available). After more than a week the hot shower and a shave was sooo enjoyable. After that, most of the day was spent washing sheets, towels and clothes.
During this time I had a walk with the dog in the surroundings, including two more yacht harbours. A handwritten sheet of paper on the wall of the clubhouse caught my attention. It advertized a second hand, but never used(!), inflatable dinghy. Since my present dink, in reality more of an enlarged bathing toy than a serious dinghy, I called the phone number on the ad. The man answering came to pick me up in his car just ten minutes later. I recognized him immediately, Tony W�rdig, a retired navy officer, who has been giving lectures to my fellow nav. teachers and myself at the beginning of this year. This sure is a small world after all!
The dink was defintely 'as new' and we made a deal. Upon return to R�de Orm with this new 'sibling', it was time to pick up Sanna at the train station. A happy reunion...

15 September

When I arrived to the Guest Harbour yesterday, I soon found out that there was a sailing race taking place here this weekend. 112 starting yachts was to sail to Byxelkrok on ?-land today, and back tomorrow. Approximately a distance of 32 miles one way. They all took off at 8am, before we woke up for sure. Pretty rough conditions, with winds in the 25-40 knots range predicted for today from NW and decrasing and veering to W or SW for tomorrow.
Sanna wanted to have a look at the town before taking off, I stayed in the boat due to a sore foot. Thus we did not leave harbour until 2pm. The wind was hard and gusting a lot. Since we were only going some 12 miles south to find a nice island to anchor at for the night, I thught it was a splendid occassion to try the storm jib for the first time. Hence, we left harbour with only this tiny, red sail hoisted. In all honesty, it left the boat a bit under-canvassed. But in the gusts we made 5,5 knots and 4-4,5 in between. Since we found this to be sooo comfy, we were just to indolent to bother with hoisting the mizzen too. Broad-reaching like this a couple of hours took us to our chosen spot for the night, ?-stra Ekn�.
During this short sail, we met some 25 boats heading the opposite way. All participants of the race, whom apparently had had mishaps or simply given up the race. The weirdest thing was that most of them motored against waves and gale force wind. I am never going to understand those guys... Anyway we were fine, without any drama whatsoever we kept sailing at our mderate speed, never having to worry about anything breaking or so. Upn arrival we enjoyed a supper of fried salmon with rice and aioli, mmmm.

16 September

Gray skies again today and believe it or not, very light wind from SW. We did not experience more than 15 knots at most today. We got under sail around 10 in the morning and broad-reached back north, needless to say with full sails. Just before the narrow strait at Sp�r� B�k a small powerboat slowly approached us. The man in it observed us very thoroughly for a little while, after which he steered up to us and wondered how things where going. -Just fine, I said a bit surprised. -Are you fishing? I wondered. -No, just taking a little trip,he answered. -Might be the last trip this year, he went on. Then he drove off. As we wondered about this curiosity from his side, we happened to take a look over our shoulder. There came all the racing boats on the same course as we, but a couple of miles behind. The coin fell down. This guy in the powerboat thought we were actually leading the race! We had a good laugh. Then we were quick to go to Skansholmen to tie up to a mooring. We justabout had time to prepare a picnic basket with our lunch. We then sat at the terrace of the clubhouse, lunching, while all the participants rounded some 100 meters away hoisting their spinnakers in front of our table. Grand ending of an out of season weekend sail,don't you agree?
The wind piped up during the evening and night, gusting at gale force again from time to time. Didn't bother us much, though. We contently spent the remains of the day in the cabin with the diesel heater making it warm and comfy...