Nils has been retired in disgrace. Apart from his one heroic outing to tie us to a buoy 5 metres away at Hudiksvall, he has been nothing but a nuisance, getting in the way of anchors, getting his line tangled around buoys and generally being exactly where you didn’t want him to be during tricky manoeuvres. If we kept him on a long line, he would promptly get it tangled around some obstacle (usually a mooring buoy), making us look like rank amateurs as we attempted to enter or exit harbours. If we kept him on a short line, he was invariably exactly in the way of whatever manoeuvre we were attempting. If we lifted him onto the bathing platform, he blocked our view. Today, however, he produced his trump card and managed to get his floating line tangled around the propeller as we backed away from land after a reccy of a parking spot. The engine expired on the spot. The Skipper, with commendable presence of mind, cast in the anchor, which thankfully held, and then stripped off heroically and leaped into the icy brine. 
After a few brief screams, he plunged under the boat with his trusty knife and proceeded to hack off bits of line until at last, after several very long minutes, he had got every last bit out, and could tell the nice man from the boat on the other side of the bay, who had rowed over in his own Nils to see if he could help, that everything was back under control. There is no photo of this, although I was tempted, because I was afraid my darling husband would kill me if he spotted me photographing him during a crisis. Back on board, he hauled up the anchor, Old Faithful sprang instantly to life and we chugged away out of danger, re-did the landing manoeuvre, this time with no mishap, and tied the mooring lines to a couple of handy trees. The Skipper plunged back into the arctic waters, having noticed that without his shirts on his armpits were distinctly whiffy, and I tossed the thermometer over board and discovered that the Arctic waters were in fact a temperate 20 degrees. I don’t know what all the screaming was about.
Shortly afterwards, the Skipper discovered that in all the excitement his glasses had disappeared. We fear they must have gone overboard – possibly he was still wearing them when he jumped in for his wash. Luckily, he has a spare pair with him, but they have an outdated prescription, so he will need news ones. Bifocals, and more expensive than Nils. That was the final straw. Nils was hauled out of the water in disgrace and is now thoroughly deflated. So long as we are within the archipelago, he will remain in that state, and serve him jolly well right.
We now have another boat parked next to us, occupied by four adults and four moppets of the male persuasion, all under five and one a right brat. I can see this will not be a peaceful evening, unless they all go to bed at 6.
