Ulla the dinghy

Nothing else might be in place onbord Kiwi, but the dinghy Ulla has the most beautiful name tag painted by Tor.

... And then there are days like today

...with so called reversed progress. The service guys came with the happy news of our second hand life raft being discarded as rubbish.

Great that we didn't have to discover this ourselves out on the ocean!

Invisible progress

Christophe visited Kiwi last week and constributed greatly in fitting the vhf antenna inside the mast. Couple of more trips up the mast and radio station s/y Kiwi is ready established! The battery capasity of Kiwi has been tripled, a monitor for battery capasity and energy consumption has been installed, cables exchanged with sturdier ones, interior lights exchanged to LEDs... all completely invisible changes in the boat : ). The most visible improvement from the last weeks was wash of the deck allowed by the warm spring weather.  

The standing rigg - still standing

Maxime and Gerald were friendly and winched me up the mast yesterday. I needed some distance from the bilge and electric installation work downstrairs. The scope was also to inspect the rigg and take some measurements for the new VHF antenna fitting.

Those kind of sailors, who have everything in supershipshape all the time say that the rigg should be replaced every ten years. Ours is 25 years old and and has gone through six years of ocean crusing including two tyfons! The rigg happens to be the shiniest and finest part of this boat : D.

Book suggestions wanted

Hi all. Since we might have some hours here and there during our trip, we are looking for good book titles. So if you have any suggestions, please send them to us! Anything goes, from text books to easy reading. We read English, German, Norwegian/ Swedish/ Danish, and Finnish. And if you have books you can spare: give them!

Perhaps the last northern lights of the year

...and next year!
Skattøra marina by night

A punch of people have signed up for crusing in the warmth of the Tropics, or the most adventurous parts of the voyage such as Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic crossing. We are very very happy about that : ).

BUT what about the beautiful and easy accessable Norway?
Likely the most courgeous part of trip? Anyone who doesn't have summer holiday plans settled yet

for the coming up summer (mid-june to end of july) ?

This weeks spare time has been filled with:

-visa application for US
-chasing documents, old contracts and sertificates in order to satisfy the border bureaucrats in each country we might enter
-trying to get hold of antibiotics and other medicine that we dont need right now
-trying to find a serial number of the old engine of Kiwi, such that we can later prove that really ours (the serial number is stately "7", by the way)

It's rediculous! I don't even remember when we've been sailing last time...

The home harbour in Tromsø