Never did show you how we spent our last summer vacation, did I? Now I can’t wait for summer to arrive – totally had enough of winter. Our plan is to head for the Skerry west of Sweden (sorry, it’s in Danish, but check out the pictures anyway, it’s amazing…).
It’s March 1st tomorrow, and we will have to do with the pictures from last year for a while still, so here they are:
The rest of the pictures are right here. Summer, sun, sea, sand, swimming. Can’t wait!
This here below is something that has caused – how should I put it – a bit of disagreement in our little home.
Mads is making a sprayhood for our boat. For those of you who don’t know, a sprayhood (also “dodger”) is the canvas hood that covers part of the cockpit and the entrance to the boat. You can see the old one in the picture below.
The one in this picture was old and brittle, and it had seen many repairs in its time. Last year was the end of it, it toar and was past saving. Which is why we have been looking for someone to make us a new sprayhood for some time now, continuing to be schocked by the prices everywhere. Having someone make you a sprayhood and a cockpit enclosure for a Shipman 28 (which for most is not a pattern they have lying around) can easily cost you around DKK 23,000 (app. 4,000 USD). This may be fair, given the time and material used, but at the same time, it’s around 25 % of what the boat cost us in the first place. Rather steep.
Now, I have been making a few things for the boat last year. I made new cushion covers, curtains, and pillows.
And it all turned out pretty good. However, a sprayhood is a heavy duty kind of thing, and I announced, that I would not sew a sprayhood. No way. So what does the man do? Does he go back to the best offer we received and ask them to make it for us?
Nope… He let’s me know, that in that case, he will do it. I objected at first, even a lot so, feeling certain that we would end up having an installation more similar to a hammock than a sprayhood over the entrance – but now he’s working. And even though we have yet to see the result, I have to say, it does look promising.
He borrowed a heavy duty sewing machine from the yacht club, used the old sprayhood for pattern, bought all the different supplies to make it look just right, and now I feel a bit guilty for backing out in the first place. Well, well – I’m sure he has fun with it even so. And I am so excited to see how it turns out. I’ll show you when I know. 
Last week we celebrated Midsummer Evening in Denmark. This being our first Midsummer Evening as boat owners, we wanted to head out on the water in the boat to see the bonfires on the beach from the seaside. These are just impressions from an evening on the water that offered a beautiful ever changing sky.
Frida had fallen asleep below, but Ronja was high with energy, so she did a little midsummer dance on the deck.
See the rainbow here?
The proud captain.
Looking at the bonfire.
A view of the beach and the bonfire.
This past weekend, I have been sewing on a very special dress together with my friend Karen, who designed it. It may not be the same everywhere, but in Denmark as well as many other places, the groom is not to see the bride wearing the wedding dress until the wedding, so this is a secret project. That means even though I’m dying to show you our progress here, I can’t. However, if you are a blog friend, I can give you a guest pass to a secret Flickr album – just let me know here that you want to have a peek. 
I won’t be showing anything here until after August 13th.
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.
The pavement and the streets were glazed with recent rain that had just started to freeze, and the first kilometer was more about skating and keeping my balance than it was about running. After that it got better and I had quite a nice run, though it was not a fast one.
I started running again a few weeks ago after the very snowy period we had here in Denmark and all the illness we had in the family. And if you’re thinking about getting out there running, I really just want to bring some encouragement to the table, because it may be cold and dark, and I may be tired in the evening, but I am genuinely enjoying my runs! I use the running app Endomondo for my iPhone to track my routes, which also adds motivation by enabling me to compare and share my runs. Also, during my last run, Mads discovered the peptalk function in Endomondo, and receiving messages like “Run faster you lazy bastard”, and “You go girl” in my headphones during my run just cracked me up.
Anyway, most of the snow is gone, but it’s still winter here with the temperatures that follow. Last weekend, we all went for a walk in Køge Marina. Mads and I recently learned that we’re first in line for a space there that fits our boat, which is brilliant because it means we’ll have our boat (wrote about it here) much closer to home when summer and sailing season arrives.
Don’t you just long for summer now? I do. We are seeing more of the sun, though, so I guess we’ll do with that for now.