Well we gave the boat a spring clean at Köge Marina, secured the boat for a 5 night stay while we were away and closed all the seacocks and headed for the airport. All was good at home, except the lawn needed mowing. Tayo's school leaving dinner and Bradfield commemoration service was a well organised and enjoyable affair.

On the Monday we headed back to Luton and took our £25 flight back to Copenhagen. It was a 17h40 flight but was delayed and hour. It turned out being a bit of a marathon of trains, planes, buses and a bit of route marching towing suitcases. We got back to the boat at twenty passed pumpkin hour and, after a shower, into bed at 01h00.

Next morning we were off to Sweden. Before we had left I had gone to exchange a gas bottle. I paid for it and left it there but the husband was away with the keys to the gas bottle cage. I was supposed to go back but I forgot before we left. So, on our return on Monday, we had to wait until the chandlery opened at 10. After my morning movement, I swung by the chandlery to check the opening time......closed on Monday's.....aaagggh! Almost as to enhance an already fantastic and friendly response we have had from this marina, the harbour master type, came running out of his office to say, you are the boat that left a gas cylinder. Problem solved and we set off for Gislövs Läge in Sweden.

We rigged all the lines for the parasailor and with less than 10 knots of wind, we launched it pretty soon after leaving the harbour. The wind direction was good but with less that 6 knots true, we struggled a bit to trim it and keep it inflated. Eventually, with 8 hours ahead of us, 3.5 knots was not going to get us there, so we resulted to using the engine. As we started to see southern Sweden on the beam, the wind came up, albeit light. We set the sails and made 4.5 to 5.5knots, arriving in Gislövs Läge at 19h30. It was a tiny marina next to a small Swedish sea side town. Beautiful, beach and the weather just perfect for steak and sausage on the Bonteheuwel briefcase braai.

This is one for the my fellow African's and Surf African's to muse about. In typical northern European style, there is no one to be seen around the Marina but there is a machine that you pay your dues at, it issues you a tag that you must stick on your boat and a card to stick into the shore power outlet. When you are done the next day you take the card back to the machine and it credits you with the electricity you have not used. Of course you could just be dishonest and come late and go early....but that is not the Northern European way.

This morning I had the Nesspresso machine doing its thing at 06h45 to coax the crew out of their pits. I the tootled off to figure out what to put into what in the 10 different recycling containers and to my surprise the crew actually got out of their pits and we managed to slip lines at 07h30.

We had to make 52NM to Hasle on the island of Borgholm. It is one of those days you have when sailing, sea like a mirror, wall to wall blue sky and a motoring day. Right now we are heading parallel to the shipping lane to a point were we have to cross it. Jimmy and Tayo are on watch, lying on the mattress on the coach roof. Earlier, such was the calm sea state that we had an outside cooked breakfast, we painted teak sealer on the outside table, fixed the sailgen towed generator and Jimmy and I installed an additional shelf in the pot cupboard. The shelf job that was more involved than I thought, including plugging the jigsaw into the inverter and having to re-position the slider for the door.

We plan to take 2 days off on Borgholm, which is rated as 2 in the top 10 things to do in Denmark.

I have added a few more pictures to the gallery, so if you are so inclined, please check that out.

As I close this post, a quick update. We have arrived in Hasle in Borgholm, what a welcome, blue sky and tee-shirt weather. We have this berth in a very nice olde world harbour, next to a fishing boat that is chartered to beer swilling Germans. Of course you can substitute any nationality for German but I am just trying to get the mental image across. We have a day and a half off here. We will get the bikes out and cycle down to Ronne, the capital.

Seems Tayo and Jimmy have arrived with the summer and the mellow sailing after a month of June where we had some pretty tough conditions and a lot of it with just the two of us. Let me not speak too soon.

Back later....