White smoke

For mum’s last day in the islands we had perfect sailing weather all morning, blue skies, sunshine and wind, but in the early afternoon we ran into a local cloudburst (you get a lot of these micro-weather systems and it looks very dramatic to see an island bathed in a spotlight of yellow sunshine while behind it black ropes of rain twist down and lightning flashes). The wind abandoned us and as we were motoring towards Vaxholm with the raindrops bouncing off the sea around us, Wolfgang noticed white smoke coming from the exhaust. It was a nerve-racking feeling, especially as we had to motor through an incredibly narrow channel and I was convinced the engine was going to conk out us when we only had a couple of feet of water between the rocks and one side and the land on the other. But we made it, and since Vaxholm is a big place by archipelago standards, today we’ll try to get someone to look at the engine, or at least make an appointment to get it looked at. It’s a good thing I didn’t ditch “Maintaining Your Marine Diesel Engine” when I was packing in favour of an extra bottle of gin, as a certain alcohol-minded acquaintance of mine suggested. Wolfgang is peering at it even now (the engine not the gin) and though it is 20 years old he says it looks perfect, nice and green and not emitting little flames anywhere.

Wolfgang heroically steering his way through the rain with his buttocks.