After a couple of days in Vaxholm, I set off for Höga Kusten this morning! And what a start. Bad weather has been around for a couple of days. It seems to keep hanging around for a few more days. But, the good news is that it blows from the south, which is perfect for my plans!
Shopping, bunkering water, toilet, (forgot to shower) and we were off into some grey soup that slowly turned it a grey rainy soup. But we made good way as we had the wind from the stern at about 8-12 kts of wind. We made good progress as the wind increased gradually to a steady 15-20 kts, when suddenly a gust hit us with about 35 kts. Things got interesting very quickly. I decided to take the main down and got it entangled in the lazy jacks. Actually the car at the luff got entangled which made it a bit tricky to get it cleared. While I did that, Nils had some fun taking off and doing belly flips. I think the dinghy turned over 5 or 6 times and I dragged it along happily with the underside up.
The gust was a prolonged one as it took about 5 minutes to go away, by which time I was nicely reefed down to passed Furusund in about 20-25 kts of wind. It stayed like that for the rest of the journey. There were some occasions when I sailed 6+ knots under a teeny-weeny genoa.
So glad to have an autopilot now. It would have been near impossible to sail in those condistions without one.
