Preparing for six months on the hard in high latitude winters

 October 15th - October 20th Orkanger

With lift out planned for the 17th the afternoons was spent preparing the boat for winter.

To avoid close contacts I chose to try to take down and fold the sails alone. I store the sails at a sail loft in Trondheim so the folding don't need better than to get them to fit in the sailbags. Luckily the dock was dry. But finish in the darkness.

Through the week more and more of the boats that was to be lifted out together showed up. Unfortunately at least one of the boats was to deep and bottomed out in the low tide. I also winterised the engine and emptied the freshwater while in the water this time. 

The lift out went well, albeit wet, cold and fairly windy. We amateur load handlers made up of a ragtag tema of sailors had a couple of near misses when hanging boats swung a little to close to other boats for comfort. But no damage was made.

Sunday (18th) the weather got better. And I could have last short moment of cockpit, though the benches was wet. My nephew and his girlfriend came and helped me getting a tarpaulin cover to try to protect the teak from most of the expected maybe 1 m of snow at some time during the winter. I also tried to secure the halyards to avoid them banging against the mast in the upcoming gales and storms. Neither the cover or the securing of the halyards was entirely successful - but everything survived the winter. 

Not much snow yet on December 26th

I keep all cushions and most other textiles in the boat over winter. I  place som moisture traps and close the down completely, trying to avoid any exchange with the outside air. I believe this is against all recommendations (ventilate well and store textiles in heated rooms). I have done it this way all seven winters I've had the boat without any problems.  Here the high latitudes and stable low winter temperatures actually is helping, mold doesn't grow much below 7ºC.

Thanks for a nice but somewhat distanced season.

Final sail of 2020

 October 7th - 11th    Brekstad - Orkanger

I took the car from my home outside Oslo and the 500 km up to Orkanger where the boat is going up on the hard.

On the way there I took a detour through a fall covered and as ever spectacular Romsdal. I even stoppet at Verma and made a short walk down to a view over Kylling bridge. 

The weather was a little too gloomy for me to fully admire the sharp peaks in Romsdalen and here in Eikesdalen. 

Around Eresfjord somebody had made a sort of art installation by placing brightly painted bikes around the landscape. I'm a little unsure to the need since this i a very pretty part of the world bikes or not, especially in fall colours. 

After spending a couple of days at my parents I took the high speed ferry out to prepare for the last sail of the season. This was also the only trip on this first corona year that I had a visitor on board since my sister joined. 

In a grey and sometimes rainy weather the trip was fairly on spectacular, but it is always nice having company so it became quite enjoyable anyhow. We even got some downwind sailing before the wind again wained. And by then the strange sailing season of 2020 came to an end. 1163 nm miles sailed (to be honest - mostly motored) and 86 nights spent a board. The latter thought,  not bad for a weekend boat spending 6 month of the year on the hard, is mainly due to the stay at home corona restrictions allowing for doing my office work from the boat.