29 July 2020

Perfect wind? and fresh from the Netherlands - a new chart plotter.

 July 28th - July 29th    Kjerringøy - Bodø



Almost prefect wind conditions through the day. A windless morning made for an early paddle, breeze on the border to gale for the sail down to Bodø and windless again for the docking.

During the sail down I was to preoccupied with the sailing to take any pictures so I only can offer images from the dead calm. 

The main reason for going to Bodø today was that my chart plotter was arriving from the Navico distribution centre that I was told lies in the Netherlands. On the sail down here in choppy seas and double digits (in m/s) winds the advantage of having the chart plotter and the autopilot connected became obvious. The sail was on a close reach and on the way I had to pass a gap in a line of skerries between the mainland and the island Landegode. To find the right one early enough to avoid having to go higher to the wind (and getting overpowered) wasn't easy when I had to extrapolate the direction from the iPad. And the seas was to choppy to find the lighthouse at the right pass through the binocular. In the end my extrapolation turned out right and I got another reminder of the skills of sailors of earlier ages.


On tuesday afternoon Tina from TT Marine came and test fitted the chart plotter. On wednesday she came back and did the final installation even with a new custom plexiglass sheet to mount it to the pedestal.

With a new chart plotter I had to download new electronic charts. A task that should have been simple but that turned out to be more difficult. Garmin had been hacked and their entire online solution including the newly acquired Navionics site was down. And to download the alternative C-Map I couldn't find a solution that didn't require a windows PC, which I with my affinity for fruits only have at work. In the end I could borrow a computer from a neighbours boat and download the appropriate C-Map.


At the docks in Bodø the the old motor fishing vessels Rapp and Faksen lay side by side. Faksen was built in 1916 by the legendary ship builder Nils Skandfer i Mosjøen and after more than 80 years in service for the Pedersen family of Bliksvær outside Bodø it was transferred to Salta coast culture society in Bodø. M/S Rapp was built 1913 in Risør for a Swedish customer, but it was sold to Austevoll in 1916. Today the boat is home-ported in Stavanger.

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