Why am I being punished?

When Mum got annoyed with me when I was a kid, she’d put me to bed early and I’d lie there awake in the summer evenings, waiting for it to get dark – so that I could actually do something productive – sleep…

It’s already 10:00pm and I could sit outside for the next hour or two reading a book without any artificial light – and yet, it’s time for bed…  Why am I being punished so?

Today marked a couple of firsts… a first failure of the boat that was not caused by inept captaincy… we went to up-anchor and the windlass died. I had to pull the anchor up by hand. Not only is it bloody heavy, but it was covered in mud and slime. It looks like the motor needs new brushes – which we don’t have – but we hear there’s a good chandlery in Mariehamn so we’ll head there in the next day or two. (Side note: When anchoring yesterday, our second day in Finland, we went aground for the second time!!!!)

The other first was successfully mooring Swedish/Finnish style – taking a stern buoy and tying up to the dock – except that we did it backwards – mooring stern to the dock with a line from the “stern mooring” attached to the bow. No major problems – here we are well secured to the dock, comfortable… Thanks to the harbormaster for lending us a Swedish hook to facilitate hooking the mooring…

Today we had our first rain since leaving Ardfern about a month ago – but tomorrow is supposed to be sunny – so we can explore…

All very good aboard Toodle-oo!