Monthly Archives: July 2014

The hunt for Nessie begins.

After the first day on the canal we are now mored on the Loch Dochfour side of the Dochgarroch, close to Loch Ness. Tomorrow we’re going Nessie hunting, well we’re going to do all in our power to catch the monster. If anyone has any suggestions on bait feel free to tell us, preferably before 8:30 uk time so we can read your suggestions.

The canal is so far all we expected, lush green bushes and trees, mountains as a backdrop (probably even more on the next part as we get closer to the Scottish highlands) and a mix of proper british boats in various states of decay moored by the canal bank. So far we haven’t been traveling in any actual rivers until tomorrow when we’re going to cruise the River Ness for about 4 minutes before entering the nest loch. If any one of you readers know how to actually pronounce the names feel free to give us the phonetic versions. Here comes a few…
Clachnaharry, Tomnahurich, Dochgarroch, Kytra, Cullochy, Laggan, Loch Oich, Muirshearlich, Gairlochy, Corpach, Benavie, Dumnadrochit and Loy and Moy.

I  read in the brochure that one should not ruin ones vacation by contacting the press if one finds Nessie, but I’ll promise to update here with a picture..

Complimentary picture of the day, the fish-eye view from our go pro sitting at the back of the cockpit.

Heading to the next lock on the canal.

Heading to the next lock on the canal.

Stenungsund-Inverness

Our route this leg.

Our route this leg.

After packing in the last things into Trusty (forgetting a lot of the things we wanted) and casting our moorings for the las time this year in Stenungsund we pointed our bow to the west (at least after stopping by to refill our gas for our gas stove, the nice one I installed earlier) and headed out to Mollösund for diesel and meeting up with S/Y Momo and Håkan who is going to sail with us through the British isles at least. Lasse, Trustys owner jumped to the more comfortable Momo and we were off towards the North Sea.

Off into the sunset.

Off into the sunset.

After a bit of sail/rigging problems that had to be solved (remember to always check everything before setting out on a long journey right?) we sailed out into the sunset and the sun was shining and the mood was great. The first night was good sailing and our Aries wind rudder did the hard work. We cooked dinner and settled in for the night (doing our 4 hour watches) witch except for a couple of fishing vessels were quite uneventful. When the dawn and sun came, the wind left, it probably had something more important to do right then. Well so then we started our Iron genua (aka. engine) and just worked our west. 265 degrees have been the compass direction of the week with a +/- 10 difference. We motored and did some chores while letting the nautical miles just pass by.
In some norwegian tv commercials Lindenes look huge but when passing it in the sunset it looked quite small and boring. Not that it wasn’t beautiful but in my mind it would be like passing cape horn or something.

The bad North Sea weather.

The bad North Sea weather.

After a quick night stop for diesel and letting Norway squeeze out a last couple of kronor we headed out again for the open sea. Guess that course? We had a small but cute passenger that joined us for almost 20 minutes before leaving and heading back to Norway. The first part of the passage offered stunning weather and out came the sunscreen-lotion as well as our little showerbottle (more about that in a later post), I cracked a joke about not recognizing the North Sea since last time I was out here  and everything was fine.

Our little stowaway friend.

Our little stowaway friend.

Sailing ACTION picture or something like that. At least that's how they're called in the brochure.

Sailing ACTION picture or something like that. At least that’s how they’re called in the brochure.

On the horizon or at least starting to show up at our zoomlevel in our digital chart was the dreaded drilling rigs for oil and gas. Big things that make your radar crazy off all the metal angles and bringing with them their guard-dogs (their tender ships) that hunt small sailors as they close in bullying them and herding them like cattle-dogs. But who could have imagined that if you do a great-circle line from Farsund to Inverness you actually go between them if you keep your course (hehe 265 something) and don’t stray off to much.

It was around this time that the first dolphins visited us, preforming a nice little show before splashing of towards the horizon. Later that night in the dark they haunted us again for over and hour and a half playing around our bow wave jumping and making noise. I say haunt because the chapter in my book was exciting and I had to put it down to look at the show..
The dolphins playing around in the dark so close turned Martina into a giggling 4 year-old, not that she cared about dolphins earlier and she was rather surprised about how they affected her. Of course as always you forget grabbing your camera but that is going to change now, our gopro will have its own “easy grab place” in our doghouse.

A night at sea.

A night at sea.

Finally the North Sea turned back to how I remembered it, foggy, foggy, foggy and yeah you guessed it foggy. Soon we were in the middle of the oil/gas fields, seeing about 10 meter in any direction, relying completely on modern technology letting our AIS and radar work for their money. Our AIS plotting looked a bit crazy for a while, needless to say one had to keep awake and focused while trying to get one pin point away from you while not making all the others point towards you. It’s a game I rather not play without the equipment we have on board, at least not in the fog.

Land ho!!
Martina earned an extra mug of rum when spotting Scotland in the mist and fog while approaching Fraserburgh so Momo could fuel up on diesel. Steaming westish along the north coast of Aberdeenshire was beautiful as the fog lifted and it felt good being close to land again, then the wind and tide shifted. All of a sudden it was a slugging match against wind, waves and the tidal-currents as the dark fell over our little bubble of the world.
Pounding our way towards Inverness we run the engine at the normal rev. 2000-2200 and were soon down to 1,8 knots over ground. I think we did ’round 4 through the water and it felt quite depressing hunkering down in the dark with my book, at least there was no dolphins disturbing the plot this time.

Aberdeenshire and Momo in the evening sun.

Aberdeenshire and Momo in the evening sun.

After a long night the bad times lifted and in came our friend, the fog, again.. and Mr Radar had to work again..
The approach into Inverness in fog I’d never dream making without digital charts, AIS and a radar, it would have ended up with us sitting on a sandbank eating lunch while waiting for the tide to turn or the coastguard to show up, witch ever happened first.

Rounding the lighthouse at the same rev as earlier that night (remember us doing 1,8) we did at a stunning 7,5 knots while being joined by dolphins, it was like something out of a disney movie but with no singing crabs. Our first real look on the Scottish countryside confirmed our prejudice about how it would look, fluffy greenish and small houses that dot the countryside while the ling-patches threw purple streaks amongst the green and yellow fields.

Our Scottish flag as we approach Clachnaharry lock.

Our Scottish flag as we approach Clachnaharry lock.

Under the bridge and into the lock and we had made it to the Caledonian canal only to be yelled at by a grumpy lock-keeper who told us to monitor channel 74 so we didn’t have to interrupt his lunch. Right before entering the lock Martina drew a Scottish flag to show our respect going into port.
Going up the lock was nice and we found our berth at the Seaport. After a shower and the berthing scotch we were like new people as we headed out for fish and chips and a lager or as it’s called here, beerbattered haddock, but that is a discussion we’ll take an other day.

TL;DR version:
Left Sweden, no wind, oil/gas-rigs, fog, dolphins, fog, scotland, fog, tidal-current, fog, AIS, radar, diesel, Inverness, fog, canal, Fishandships and beer.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Onionsoup with all the right sides.

Onionsoup with the right things next to it..

Onionsoup with the right things next to it..

Inverness!

After a couple of days motorsailing, motoring a bit of sailing we are now moored in the first marina in the Caledonian canal. Most things work as we want it to but some we might have to look into.

I’ll post a big post with pictures and everything that happened a bit later tonight or tomorrow morning.  A small picture describing how it was this morning right before we approached the channel into Inverness…

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By the way, rain in Scottland? How is that possible..

Leg one part one

After a night stop in Norway to fill up our diesel we’re off again. Now its Scottland and Inverness again. The watch system works fine but it’s a lot of motoring. Catch you all when we’re there or get the emailblog function to work properly..

Leg one, Stenungsund to Inverness

Leg one!

Leg one!

Here we go, hopefully we’ll be there before the weekend. The weather look good and now it’s just filling her up with diesel and water before sailing of into the first sunset.
How often we can update we’ll see but we’ll try as often as possible. The first days will be a big game of Tetris and I’ll download the theme music to play when we try to find a spot for everything

Look us up at marinetraffic (link in our locate us page ) and feel free to e-mail us. We’ll grab our e-mails once a day at least (might as well when we grab our grib-mails) just to make sure everything works now in the beginning. As sunny as it is right now I don’t have to worry about the icebergs that have haunted my dreams the last two weeks 🙂 but hey, they show up on radar don’t they?????

Tomorrow

Tomorrow it’s cast of day! Today is shopping day and the last day to buy swedish stuff for a year.. 🙁

Yesterday we packed most of our stuff into Trusty and now it’s just the computers and food left, I packed my razor so I guess I’ll shave in Inverness next time. Weather is looking good for the crossing from Sweden but we might have to motor a bit (i guess motor alot) but as long as we don’t get any bad weather nothing is that much of a problem as long as we’ve started our journey. Later today we’ll make a more detailed post about the crossing and what routes we might be taking. I think we’ll have AIS coverage at marinetraffic the whole way so we can be followed as we make our way over to haggis-land.

Now it’s off to Torp, ooh the picture… From last night when we motored a bit to shake down everything we’ve packed so far so we can cram in some more stuff..

Testing if we can move Trusty with all our things inside.

Testing if we can move Trusty with all our things inside.

Soon… soon.. soonish?

Well soon we’re ready to cast of our moorings and sail out into the sunset… at least on Monday, if nothing new comes up..

Well how to summarize this week? Easy, solve one problem – find a couple of new ones, test one thing – find it not working 20 minutes later. It’s easy to only look at the negative and just grasp all the problems and things that need to be fixed instead of looking at what is finished. I can easy list a couple things that need to be sorted out before Monday but I’ll give you the completion list instead (not in importance or chronological order).

New stove, doubled the battery capacity, new battery-charger on the generator, new water tank, new windows on our doghouse, reinforced our doghouse, ais installation, moved our radar, sat-phone installation, masted and rigged, reinforced our wind-generator and solar-panel installation, new cables for the wind-gen and solar-panels, new lantern in the masthead, new wooden step on our bowpulpit, closet door, lighting in the head and in the closet.. and a couple of other things.. 🙂

TL:DR version, leaving on Monday, got shit done, need to get shit done, need to pack our shit, need to buy more shit, it has been warm and now Trusty is looking like a bout again.. And.. I need to sort out more on our blog, kind of what I’m doing right now among other things.
Mandatory pictures..

It's not supposed to be like this...

It’s not supposed to be like this…

Quite nice scenery...

Quite nice scenery…

She's almost sailable.. (I guarantee that sailable is a word..)

She’s almost sailable.. (I guarantee that sailable is a word..)

Damn we need to look into our wiring...

Damn we need to look into our wiring…

One week

That’s how long we’ve been going at it full speed now, well full-ish speed, the last few days we’ve been slowing down a bit. Totally understanding since we’ve been working long days out in the sun with no rest in between, but now we’re starting to feel it. So today we start a bit later and I take time to post a bit of pictures from this weeks work.

New little friend

New little friend

Mast ready to be raised

Mast ready to be raised

View from the top

View from the top

Most booring phone ever ;)

Most booring phone ever 😉

Next week the fun wiring and connecting black boxes to other colored boxes starts…. …that will be interesting at the best.

Yesterday..

… we were sailing or rather motoring a bit. After getting our doghouse bolted back, with new windows and a bit sturdier then before, we did a bit of work on our mast before taking Trusty out for a 5 minute stroll outside our marina. It felt great having her move like a boat after spending a couple of days just working with plexi-glass and wood in a garage.

As soon as one thing gets checked of our list two other things appear but the list is actually getting shorter. Right now I’m just waiting for out satphone to arrive so we can give the number to relatives and friends. Yesterday evening I configured the program we’re going to use for email and stuff and now i want to try it over the satphone. 🙂

Today’s rigging day and hopefully later you’ll see pictures of that process if the sun don’t burn us too much and typing is too painfull.

I’ll leave you with a picture of my moring view as I drink my tea and write this entry.

Swedish summer...

Swedish summer…

We’re doing stuff

Now we have been working for a couple of days on Trusty and we’re getting stuff done. In my ordinary life I’m spending a lot of time right by the stove as a Chef, now I spent most of the day working on our stove.. Bought a new one and installed it while removing the old one. The sun was shining all day and now we’re quite burned all of us.

We almost finished the support for our windgenerator and solarpower mount and now we just need a few more pieces and we’re set. It’s great to see that things are getting done and how all that work seems to just become easier.
If I can muster enough energy tonight I might start installing MaxSea (the chartsuite we’re going to use) and looking into all the computer stuff that needs sorting out.

But for now I leave you with a display on before and after…

Before

Before

After

After