The internet is a wonder and I sometimes feel that it must have been very similar for people in the 19th century staring at steam-engines – simply a miracle.
Today I got a call while I was about 10 miles out to sea. The mobile just rang but could not connect the call. So, out comes the notebook, hook up to the web (4G mind you) and call back via Skype – perfect quality, free!
What the skipper has failed to mention is that we were sailing in a veritable storm with Akka wallowing around like a pig in muck – you can see that it must have been cold and wet because he isn’t wearing his habitual shorts-and-bare chest but full foul weather gear – and that we risked life and limb sailing into the harbour at Storjungfrun with rocks to the right of us, rocks to the left of us and the narrowest of channels in between. You sail up close along the harbour wall to the entrance and then have to execute a zippy turn into the right to avoid the shallows mentioned in the guide but also to avoid some enormous ROCKS that stick up like molars waiting to crunch up unsuspecting little ships. We made it in safely, thanks to the Skipper’s precise instructions, but couldn’t cast the anchor out very far from the harbour wall because of the aforementioned shallows, and as the wind is due to get even stronger, he’s outside now fiddling with ropes and making sure we are as safe and snug as we can be under the circumstances. The weather site says it will rain until Tuesday. That’s 5 days of rain. Happily, this is the same site that prophesied glorious cloudless sunshine for the first full week I was here and we didn’t get much of that, either.
We bought the world’s most expensive, hand-printed tea towel in Hudiksvall and I see Wolfgang still hasn’t put up a picture of it. Where is his sense of priorities?!
OK, OK here it is – the world’s most expensive tea towel.