It truly is amazing – everybody around here is saying it at the moment, but I’m just going to go with the flow, because the weather is incredible! It’s late April, and usually we would be far from summer temperatures, but this year, Easter is like mid-June.

I promised you last year to let you know what happened when we went out and got ourselves a boat in September, so read on if you’re interested – I’ll try to keep it brief.

Since we had Ronja in 2004, we have enjoyed to go on charter trips during our summer vacation, and mostly they have been really successful. However, these past few years, our charter vacations haven’t felt quite as relaxing as we thought they should, and last summer was an eye-opener to both of us. We spent a week in the beautiful Spanish Island, Mallorca, which we have visited once before and were looking forward to visiting again. So… though we did have a trip with many wonderful moments, we both thought that it wasn’t quite as relaxing family-time as we would have liked it to be. Every place you go presents new temptations to the children in the form of candy, icecream, toys, entertainments etc., that basically leave you with two choices – either you give in or you don’t. Neither one of your choices is the good one, and since a huge part of the offer in places like these are based on temptations for the children, we just never quite got the sense of harmonious vacation that we were looking for. Aside from our trip to beautiful Deia, which was pure bliss (can I please live there when I’m old?).

So last year when we returned from Mallorca, we had planned to go canoeing in Sweden with the girls. Tent and all packed, we were ready to go, and when we got to lake Immeln which we had chosen for our trip, it rained. We waited for an hour, had lunch, waited a bit more – but the rain went on. We decided to put on our rain coats and head out in the canoe, certain that it would stop sooner or later. It didn’t. It kept on raining. And the eye-opener was this: The girls sat between us in the canoe, taking turns with a paddle, “fishing” in the water – and singing! They got cold, quite a lot so eventually, but they were happy, gliding through the water, talking to each other and us. We found a place to make a camp, and it was just pooring, so Mads and I got up the tent as quickly as we could, put them in their sleeping bags with crayons and paper, and they warmed up and had fun.

So just to sum up; we had loads of rain the entire time we were there, and we ended up going home one day before we had planned to, but in spite of piles of wet clothes, we had almost no complaints from the girls – quite the opposite. And that was when we decided to do something else with our vacations. Mads and I both love sailing, and in September we bought Anna – our Shipman 28 from 1975.

She has been up during winter, but we had her put in the water again last weekend, and with the weather we have this Easter, today was a brilliant day to go sailing.

Loving, loving, loving it!

The girls were below deck some of the time relaxing together or individually with their Nintendos, but everyone thought we had a wonderful day. Today we came from Hundige Harbour where we usually have our boat, to Køge, which is much nearer where we live, and where we hope to have her by the end of the season (we’re on the waiting list). We’re spending the night at home due to the low night temperatures, but tomorrow we’re taking her back to Hundige – our first real back and forth expedition. Almost.

There you go – this is why we made the rather sudden decision to get a boat, and I personally cannot wait to go on summer vacation in Anna. No charter trip for the girls and us this year.