Beautiful sunny morning again. After breakfast, and on the request of the (today) ambitious skipper, the whole crew undertook some of these moments of hard work that sailors have to do. Not too often, I am glad to add.

Anyway, with the oldest and most worn docking line found on board, as a tool, we keel-hauled the boat. This action was caused of the discovery I made upon diving in the home port to inspect the lower parts of the whale's (sorry boat's) body. Since I discoverd a few colonies of barnacles here and there I have been at unrest. So we got rid of them and the old line came up from the not very clear water, not unlike a shaving brush in appearance. To anyone who didn't already discover it... barnacles are razor sharp.

As an interesting aside; I recall an article I ead a couple of years ago. As to undesired growth on the bottom of your boat. ( Is there ever desired growth?) In mid July, if you go uop a river or whatever fresh water you can find navigable, for a few days, will kill the 'baby' barnacles off, since they attach to hull this time of the year. This procedure have now been effectively undertaken as to R�de Orm's noble submerged parts. With great interest I will follow-up on this by diving on her every now and then during the rest of the season.

As I think I have previously mentioned, It's three years now since I gave her a new antifouling paint, and it's starting to show, even though the growth in the brackish water of the Baltic is nowhere nere as bad as in the warmer seas.

The skipper also climbed the mast with kind cooperation of the first mate. This action waas called upon since the radar reflector needed to be better attached to the upper shread and the mast not to rotate under way. When hoisted in the Bosun's chair and ready with this chore, I kindly asked my first mate to release the halyard that secured me, so I could climb down again, she first refused. Blackmailing me to take a more active part in washing the dishes and related kind of work on board she made me make a somewhat vague promise before letting me down again.

Mutiny, should need to be disciplined. I am considering how to best take action and will let you know when I've come up with a good scheme...

At noon we felt ready to set sail again and start the next leg of the trip - 120 M to Ventspils, Latvia or to V�ndburg on Gotland, Sweden.

Interestingly enough, Lithuania is the only country facing the Baltic Sea, where there are no weather forecasts in English on the VHF. Internet is not that easy to get access to according to our experience, so yesterday evening I hooked up our SSB reciever to the computer to get a couple of weather faxes. Don't no if my schedules where to old and thus not valid any more but we could not get anything there....

So, since it was sunny and the barometer had been rising for 6-8 hours we thought it wqs as good a day as any for an overnighter. In NIda we saw a (then) 2 days old forecast predicting SW Force 4-5 Beaufort.

When we reached the entrance and had to fire up the engine to make it between the breakwaters, a tremendous thunderstorm caught us. 30-40 knots of wind on the nose, and the choppy confused seas around the piers, combinde with a downfall of rain seldom seen our mood somewhat faded at a fast rate. A mere cable lenght outside the piers I realised that the wind was more NW than SW. This would mean forereaching 120 miles to Ventspils or beating towards Gotland. No, no way! This is a pleasure trip, so the tiller hard to port and back to the same spot to anchor. Basta!!!

Did a few more attempts with weather faxes during the evening but without success.