Sailing the Skagerak/Kattegat towards Gothenburg, part 1

We're now on the way from Helgeroa to Gothenburg.

I got two crew members with me through some Norwegian forum "Mannskapsbørsen" that I found through Google. One of them was joining in the last minute, he's going to see the Volvo Ocean Race, it's currently in Gothenburg, and they will have the in-port race at 12:00 UTC on Sunday. His original plan on getting there failed (he could of course just jump on a train - but the best place to watch the race is from the sea). I'm happy that he joined, he's clever and more experienced than me. He also took with him his son, 2.5 years old. I specifically didn't bring any of my kids because I knew it would be a rought trip, and indeed his son did seem a bit scared and distressed when we got out into the worst waves. (There was also a lady from Barcelona responding to a posting at the BeWelcome.org website that was planning to fly up to join me (she also joined me on the very first trip I had with this boat), but her husbond got into hospital so eventually she couldn't come).

Things are as always breaking faster than what I can manage to repair it. Last autumn, I got the buttons for the anchor winch replaced - even paid a lot to get professional people to do it for me - yesterday already one of the buttons started failing. Not only that it's bad connection, but sometimes it also jams up. I had to run into the boat and disable the winch by the main switch this time. That's quite bad considered that I had planned to anchor up outside Gothenburg too.

Ginger is supposed to help preventing against sea sickness, so we bought some sushi with extra ginger on the way to the boat, and ate it just before we started hitting the waves. Big mistake, although ginger may work against sea sickness apparently eating sushi right before hitting the waves have the opposite effect. And it was rough out there - just like predicted. Forecast said that it would be near gale just when and where we left the sheltered sea - and then gradually become calmer towards the night.

Here is my crew eating sushi:

There was quite much stress in the beginning ... we were fighting to get the main sail out, we decided to try to pull the dhingy closer to save an ore - which was very hard work when going in 7 knots. We were trying to clean puke away from the cockpit. Actually, doing just anything at all in such waves are very hard. I went first to bed, quite exhausted and sea sick - but there was not really any way to sleep. The constructor of the boat optimized for comfort in harbour - so the captains bed is a wide double bed with leg space at both sides of the bed. I slept across the bed (with the head on the windward side of the boat, instead of towards the stern), but still i had to hold hard not to slide out of the bed in the worst waves. All the noise as well - like, the autopilot engine is inside my bed. Eventually the weather calmed a bit down and I eventually got some few hours of sleep. But it was maybe worse for the crew that got assigned the sofa ... I have two sofas, and I was pointing out one of them while we were still in sheltered water - not thinking that I pointed out the sofa on the windward side of the boat!

Saturday morning ... trimming the sails a bit, and the continued effort of cleaning up puke ...

The weird thing is that I've been looking forward for this the entire week! :-)

Here is a photo from early Saturday morning (04:30), my dhingy is still trailing us. Unfortunately the lens pump has stopped working, so it's quite full of sea water now.

All photos available in better resolution on IPFS QmeHLBUJnC3Bfy4H3B4yQxxKwtnW9HtHFfRDqmidyEZwsr. License: CC BY-SA 4.0