We are sailing...

Life in Sweden can be many things, but it is never boring or uneventful. In fact, I believe I have done more in the last couple of months than I did all of last year. Leaving out the portion of last year that I was on the Plymouth-Dakar Rally, of course.

There's a boat at the Bombadil site. It's out of the water, sitting on a trailer and restorative work has been started, but stopped at an early stage. We became curious about it, made a few enquiries and were told that the owner was a previous tenant of one of the workshops and was prepared to effectively gift it to us. So today Marianne and I went to collect the sail and some other bits and pieces from Steinar, the owner. Having met him for the first time, we discovered that he used part of his rented premesis here to make kayaks. He stopped work on both his kayaks and his boat due to poor health.

Several years on, Steinar has now recovered, but hasn't been doing a lot lately. So we've invited him to continue building kayaks in his old workshop and help us to restore the boat. He was also involved with the archery club here, which he will revive. There's an archery club party soon, which he will organise.

I only have these "artistic" photos of the boat that I took the other day to use in a presentation. I'll take some proper pictures tomorrow. It's a Swedish built Koster class.





Learn more about the Koster class at the Wooden Boat Rescue Foundation's website.



Steinar also told us some stories about our site. Apparently, the building he used to rent is inhabited by poltergeists, which can be heard knocking, banging and rattling doors at night. Nobel, now best known for the peace prize that bears his name, made his money by inventing and manufacturing dynamite. Every so often, there was an explosion and the inevitable loss of life. On one occasion in the 1970s the explosion was so large that all the windows in the town, around a quarter of a mile away, were blown out.

He also spent time walking in the woods close by; he saw a bear on two occasions in 2006 and he has seen wolves here too. In fine weather he used to paddle in his kayak over to the islands on the lake to eat his lunch.

And all we went to do was to pick up a sail...