Sails

I talked about our new main and jib from North Sails earlier in the blog so I guess we better follow up with some pictures now. 

Here is a picture of the Carbon/Dyneema 3DL main from this summer. It worked wonderfully this year (second season). We had some issues with how the mast curve fit to the mast last season and I thought that we would have to adjust the mast curve.

Thanks to our sailmaker, Martin Angsell at North Sails Stockholm who came out and sailed with us on a very short notice early in the season we found that the mast had too little pre-bend in the lower section and by moving the foot back just a little bit the sail suddenly fit very well. In this very picture it looks like we haven´t pulled the cunningham at all though but don't be fooled. It looks and performs great!

This is a picture of the Dyneema/Aramid jib that is new for this year. Note that even though the luff of the jib looks loose we found that the jib was very sensitive to halyard tension and we had to be careful with too high tension. It is going to be very interesting to see how this jib holds up. It was made new for this year in 3Di and is roughly 10% larger than the old one. We decided to not put it on a furler since that in reality limits the selection of head sails for a cruising boat to one. Given how actively we prefer to sail we needed more flexibility.

The boat is originally designed for being raced with large genoas only but since we normally sail with much less weight on the rail than racing mode we designed the jib to work well already in low wind speeds but we added a reef for it to ensure that we could carry it through a large spectrum of wind. Above 25 to 30 knots we have a smaller heavy wind jib in dacron and below 8-10 knots we still use the one of the many Carbon/Aramid 3DL G1 that came with the boat.

Summer 2015

First full day of sailing out on the open sea on a three week trip around in the Baltic. Everyone is having a great time and we are enjoying the possibility to let Alma stretch her legs. For longer passages we take the dinghy up on the stern or place it on the deck of the boat to reduce the drag.

You may have guessed it already but the first trip of 2015 went to Gotland, an island roughly 70 nautical miles south east of Stockholm archipelago.

We had a great experience with wind ranging from very light in the beginning to double reefs in the main and reefed jib in the end. My 8 year old niece helmed the boat making 10-12 knots (with a little help from me).

The trip was very enjoyable with the exception that some water came in through the diesel heater exhaust. This was quickly fixed with some tape...

We stopped the first night in Lauterhorn on Fårö, just north of Gotland.The pictures are from the village of Lauterhorn just a short walk from the fairly exposed harbor.

Onwards to Lickershamn on Gotland. When we arrived a few days after midsummer there was only three boats and we all tied up along the pier.One or two weeks later when the normal summer vacation has started for Sweden the harbor would be full. Lickershamn has a nice and chatty harbor captain and well kept facilities with both showers and laundry.

It is also a great spot with easy and quick connection to Visby if you want to avoid the crowded harbor of Visby but still see the beautiful old town and the ring wall. Lickershamn also has the largest Rauk in Gotland, Jungfrun.

After three days in Gotland we sailed back towards the Stockholm archipelago. Now we had dropped off my brother and his kids and instead my parents tagged along for a few days. We had the good fortune to meet the Brig Stockholm heading south as we sailed north, what a beautiful ship!

We had good luck with the winds again and sailed straight up towards the northern end of Utö and stayed for the night at Björkskär just east of Utö. A beautiful evening with this nice sunset and a good dinner. Our friends with the red X312 Danmark joined us here and they sailed with us for the remaining two weeks of this first part of our sailing vacation.

Our good friends in their X312 Danmark (Yes, we know the name of the boat is odd but their kids insisted so that is the name).

These two pictures from one of our our favorite spots in Stora Nassa a group of over 300 islands concentrated in a small area in the outer parts of the Stockholm archipelago. This is a very beautiful but often very crowded part of the archipelago.

Our own secret spot in Nassa is difficult to get into so it is very unusual that we have to share if with anyone else. We really enjoy the solitude if we can get it.

Our Code 0 was a very well used and appreciated sail this summer. It was virtually never stored away under deck and as soon as the wind angle opened up it helped to give a really good drive to the boat. to compare it with the rest of the sails the Jib is 33 sqm, the Genoa 50 sqm and the Code 0 is 77 sqm and the largest spinnaker (S2) is 115 sqm.

Sofie is working the spinnaker, a North S2 of roughly 115 sqm. A great and versatile sail for light to medium winds. 

We continued across over the Åland sea to the Finish archipelago of Åland.

The first night we had a great time exploring Rödhamn that is the clud island for the Ålands Sailing Club. It has a great little sauna on the eastern side of the island. 

For the first time ever we continued around all of Åland (now with our friend Stellan and his two kids tagging along in Alma). We found some nice places up on the northern part of Åland that we had never explored before. Much less people than in other parts of Åland since it is a little more exposed and remote.

Just for a fun comparison, if you are alert you will notice that this is again a picture from our favorite spot in Stora Nassa. We came back to this same spot roughly 4 weeks later on a second sailing trip during this summer and you can now see that if you compare with the picture above the sun is already setting noticeably further south in early August.