Easter Sailing Trip Days 2 & 3 - An Aladdins Cave

We arrived at the marina at around 11ish after a late breakfast at Hotel J. We found the boat wrapped in plastic with its shiny new propeller, but found that the bottom had not yet been painted, which would be a problem if we planned to put her in today। A quick trip to the engineers confirmed that they hadn't planned to paint her till next week and so she'll be staying ashore for this trip.

Easter 2009 - First Day with our Boat

It was raining too heavily to take the plastic wrap off (for our sake not the boat's), so we spent the day inventorying and disposing of crap.
Stuff we found:

• Over a hundred charts
• An old Avon Dinghy (Circa 1987)
• A large box of flares (12 years out of date - yikes)
• A vacuum cleaner that looks like something from the Jetsons
• Hundreds of tools
• A giant axe & crowbar (Maybe this was a getaway boat)

Easter Sailing Trip Day 1 - Hotel J

We've just arrived in Sweden for our first sailing vacation of the year. The journey was uneventful except for the difficulties of lugging our new Zodiac dinghy through the Airports. One thing we discovered was that by stating that it was "Sports Equipment" we saved the cost of excess baggage.

At Arlanda airport in Stockholm, Becks had booked the smallest car in the world, which was funny because we'd brought an absurd amount of baggage. Due to many hours spent playing Tetris over the years I managed to pack everything in.

We've just arrived at Hotel J, a J Class yacht themed hotel just outside Stockholm. Becks booked it as a surprise and I was not expecting all the nautical references,. It's a really smart place, reminiscent of a Malmaison hotel back in the UK. Outside there is a Hobie Cat rental place and a pier to catch a ferry into town. We're sat in the lounge next to a crackling fire chilling out before going for supper in the restaurant in the Yacht club.

Click image for album

Earlier today I got an email from Johan at Bullando Marina saying that all the ice has melted, so it looke like we will be able to put the boat in the water tomorrow.

Another new boat: Zodiac 260 CFR Acti-V

Another eBay bargain... 1 year old Zodiac 260 with Acti-V hull - £425. These have now been discontinued and are only available in sizes of 2.85M and above which would have been too big for us anyhow. It was hard work inflating it and harder still deflating it.
We definitely need to get a pump that can deflate as well as inflate as the one that came with it is crap. Thinking of an electric one, but that's another £125 for one that'll go to 800mb pressure. Maybe I need to decide that manual inflating is healthier and save the cash. :)

Yachting Monthly - May 2009 Propeller Test

Preview: Yachting Monthly May

Looks like the next issue of Yachting Monthly has a big review of propellers in the market place. Having just bought a new prop, this is just the sort of article that you don't want to read. I'm going to speculate that the Bruntons Varifold will be worst in class (only on the grounds that it's the one we've just bought). I'm also going to speculate that the ones I was considering will be best in class (Gori & Bruntons Autoprop).

OK... Pessimism over... I hope the article actually considers sailing performance (drag) as well as just motoring & manouvering performance as this was one of the key decision points that lead us to chose a 2 blade folding prop over other, better motor performing models. I'm not sure how easily you can test this without the use of some sort of tank that flows water over the subject and measures resistive force on the mounting.

What a difference a day makes

Just 24 hours ago I was commenting on the first patch of water, now it looks like the melt has really begun in earnest. Fingers corssed - 9 Days to go till we hope to crane the boat into the water.