When are we leaving?

Johanna

N 60° 9.253', E 24° 53.464'

This is the question we here every day. The answer is the same every time. We leave when we are ready. Then the bigger question is, when will we be ready to leave? Hopefully next week. In May we thought we'd already be gone by now, but since then we have had a quite a lot of stuff to do. We cleared our apartment and moved on board while doing antifouling on the hard (don't really recommend doing those things simultaneously). Then we started to order stuff and install them. And when there are two perfectionists doing things you can imagine it takes time. Well, when it's about electricity and other cables, it's also about our safety, so we really want to have things working for a long time.

We have already installed a new windlass and a wind generator. We've also made quite many changes to our electrical systems. We've installed a new starter battery (in addition to our previous capacity), some CTEK devices (DC/DC charger and smartpass) and about 100 meters of wire (now I might be exaggerating a little bit, but not much).

Timo installing our new AirBreeze

We are hoping to get our new solar panels installed tomorrow. Then we still have left to install an AIS transceiver, SSB radio, and maybe another 100 meters more wire :)

Oh, and I forgot all about our mast. It was also down for a couple of weeks and we did some maintenance on that too, and also renewed all the wires and lights.

After all this we just have to find a place on board for about a ton of our stuff that is now in a temporary storage and then we are off.

We have now worked about 8-10 hours a day for the last two months so we are really looking forward for the time when we can just sit back and relax....  and to go sailing...

This might not be the roomiest place I have worked in...

Our dream is coming true

Johanna
N 60° 9.253', E 24° 53.464'

While we have been trying to sell our boat all the sailing friends have been asking the same questions. What next? A new racer or what? We have been kind of mysterious and mumbled something about a bit bigger cruiser and about the need to sail further than the Baltic sea.

Now it's about the time to come clean and tell everyone what our plan has been all along. To buy my parent?s boat.

Last month on my birthday's eve my dad called us and made a dream come true offer. If we have not sold our boat when the sailing season starts, he'll take it in exchange and continue to sell it.

Our new boat to be is nothing new and fancy, but good and well tested. My parents have already circumnavigated her twice. So here comes the next generation on board "S/Y Iiris".

We are still doing our best to sell our current boat "Valpuri", but now we can actually start making plans and prepare us for our new life.

Once more, we survived

Johanna

N 60° 9.253', E 24° 53.464'

I'm not talking about the apocalypse. I'm talking about the darkness. Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. In Helsinki time between sunrise and sunset was a total of 5 hours and 49 minutes.

Today I actually saw the sun for the first time in a couple of weeks, there really was a large patch of blue sky visible. That was something after all that snowing.

But I don't feel like winner yet. There's still a long and cold winter ahead of us. Sure there's going to be more light, but according to the statistics January and February are the coldest months...

Finnish winter before the sea is covered by ice.

Why Sail Far Away ?

Johanna 
N 60° 9.253', E 24° 53.464'

I was born into this cold country (somewhere way up north) called Finland.

As a kid my life seemed to be quite ok. My family spent all the summers sailing and then during the winters we went skiing and ice-skating and did whatever people do in the winter.

Then something happened. I spent a few months in the tropics. Nothing was the same after that. That one winter when I didn't see any snow changed my life forever. I knew what I wanted; no more snow, no more freezing my ass off.

Well, all this happened more than a decade ago and I'm still stuck here. Even at the moment when I'm writing this there's a snowstorm banging the windows.

But something has radically changed. About a year ago we (my husband and I) made a decision. We'll sail away. We'll sell our 31 footer, buy a bit bigger and more stable yacht, find a tenant for our apartment and then sail away for good.

Our goal was to leave Finland behind us in the summer of 2013, but the way things are going at the moment it looks like we'll take off a year later. We still haven't found a buyer for our 31 footer. so we can't take the next step which is to get the new yacht (not totally new, but new for us).

So at the beginning this blog is probably full of stories where I hate my life and also about the things we want and need to do before we take off.

And when the day comes to actually sail away I'll continue to tell you all about our cruising life. Well, at least the highlights anyway :)