Mac the Knife

We left Utö this morning in brisk winds with the threat of rain (threatened by the weather forecast, plus  a general cloudy greyness). In the event, though, the sun came out and though we had to tack north against the wind, we made good progress and decided to skip the harbour on the east side of Ornö we’d planned to aim for in favour on one further up. But just as we were tacking between two islands, the genoa sheet got stuck on the winch (that’s the rope you pull on to move the front sail, for you landlubbers) and owing to the steerwoman turning rather too enthusiastically into the wind to try to take the strain off it, the whole genoa blew over to the other side and we found ourselves heading too fast for comfort towards the rocky island just downwind of us. Wolfgang tried to undo the thingy that attaches the sail to the rope (God, I’m a master of this nautical language!) but there was too much pressure on it, so quick as a flash he whipped out his knife and cut the rope. And here is the evidence!

Old Faithful leaped into life at the touch of a button, so we weren’t dashed to our doom on a lee shore, and we motored round the corner and into Kolnäsviken (it’s a very strange feeling coming in because you have to go round an island really close to three semi-submerged rocks – the Swedish word for a semi-suberged rock is en bränning; I am going to kick ass at Swedish classes in the autumn -and not pass through the much safer-looking water to the right which contains fully submerged and hence entirely invisible rocks). We found a good place to moor, but I don’t think our keel can be more than an inch from the bottom because look how shallow it is!

I could step from the nose of the boat onto land without getting my feet wet, which was also a strange feeling (Akka has a special nose attached to her bow with a pull-out-able ladder precisely for getting on and off islands, but I didn’t need the ladder this time).

And finally, a picture of the Hero of the Soviet Union hour having a well-deserved scrub-up, and, as promised, of one of the cooks in the galley.