Stranded in the Caribeans

I know it’s been quite a long time, but things tends to come in cycles I think and so does writing this blog! But the moment is auspicious to start the cycle again! Carl and I are in St. Lucia at the moment, in the Lesser Antilles. We have arrived here by sailing ship no less, the Tres Hombres. After sailing form St. Martin to St. Lucia and then St. Vincent to deliver cargo, we decided to hop off our engine-less cargo ship at it’s return in St. Lucia. And so, in Vieux Fort we landed, after heavy good-byes to our new wonderful friends on the ship.

St. Lucia is not your typical Caribbean getaway. For one, it has no Spanish influence whatsoever in culture, history or language. But it was fought over, rather late in the 1700’s, by the French and English, and changed ownership 14 times! English is the main language, but everybody speak Créole, or Patois as it is called here. It is a volcanic island, and has all the nature and beauty of a place created by such an eruption. Particularly the Pitons, two mountains, one mostly sheer rock, protruding from the island in such a way that cannot be ignored. The Petit and Gros Piton. Majestic can be rightly used here! At the bottom of the Petit Piton lays Soufriere, the oldest town of the island and quite a quirky place. At the bottom of the Gros Piton is where we lay, camping on the beach. St. Lucia also has quite a large community of rastas, especially where we’ve ended up. Now as somebody with dreads and interested in the Rastafari ideology, it’s quite something to stay here. But as a student of anthropology/ethnology, you could not ask for more. (I prefer archeology myself, but as for studying the living, it’s damn more fun and hilarious!)

At the foot of the Gros Piton is the remains of a rum distillery and sugar mill. It is included in the World Heritage site of the Pitons and is taken care of by Paul, a rasta man. He has graciously allowed to stay here if we work a little in his organic garden and occasionally pitch in for food. And so we have for the last 4 weeks. We’ve gotten to know alot of the locals by now, since they all come down to the beach, in order to go to the river or the springs. Paul seems to be a major figure in this community, everybody knows him and must pass on ‘’his land’’ to get water or bath. Since he has also cleaned up the beach, the fishermen have return to use it, their colourful wooden boats laying side by side on a small part of the beach. Paul also has a water taxi with which he has started a tourist business. He gets them from the surrounding towns of hotels and spend the day at the beach. Or climb the Gros Piton. He cooks them some nice Ital food on charcoal of course, and then brings them back. This rasta has it definitely made. Or so it seems.

After four weeks here, this rastafari paradise is somewhat changed in our minds. They are a very smiling and laid-back people who wish you to be as, if not more, laid-back than them. They come down from the village of Lapointe, at the top of a neighbouring hill, to come to the spring and sit with us and have a nice rastafari chat and smoke. Quite welcoming and charming people. But coming from a workaholic boat, this lifestyles is getting alittle bit too much for us, or too little I should say. We must ask Paul every morning if there’s any work to be done or if we can help him with anything and the usual reply is just chill. Upon insisting we might get something to do. Although, if he has guests, then no. If we do not ask, then there is no work for us. It is quite maddening to see other people work and refuse your help! Things could be done faster or at least more enjoyably.

But like all other little communities and small villages, stories, rumours and histories start to come out when you’ve been here long enough. This fate does not escape the rasta. Yet on the whole, the rasta way is something I would like to emulate. Taking your time to do things properly, living as one with nature, meditate, eat organic, vegetarian and usually slow cooked foods. (Although there is some debate going on among rastas about fish here) And generally try to be a better and nicer person who cares and shares more.

After these four weeks of chillin’ hard, occasional work in the garden and climbing the Gros Piton, we are looking forward to moving on. Our next stop is Rodney Bay Marina, where we’ve arranged a passage aboard a sailing yacht that will island hop for some weeks, before heading for Bermuda, Azores and finally Lisbon, Portugal. We are slowly making our way home to Sweden.

Pictures later.

Bottomless pit of human stupidity Part?

Now I know I said I was going to keep you all posted on the bottomless pit, but everytime I read the one entry, I don’t really want to go back there. I don’t feel like revisiting that whole experience, let alone sharing it even more. And there’s really not that much more to add really. So I thought I’d go with our little summer paradise that me and Carl shared after this ridiculously dubious affair!

We went back to my home, in Québec. We were planning to chill there for a little while, waiting for my visa to be able to work on the Kalmar Nyckel, a tallship in the US. Unfortunately, we got into a little pickle with this one too, mainly my visa not being ready in time and Carl being refused entry into the States. Because of course, every Swede in the world wishes to illegally enter the United States of America and become an alien worker... Of course, Sweden is such a poor country, ruled by socialists, equal thinking people, terrible. And the health care system is free, that’s not good and they promote laziness of course with their terribly efficient social care system. Now of course, any free-thinking capitalist would want to run away and illegally work in the States. Indeed, why aren’t all the Swedes in the States, now THAT is the question!


Beyond all the sarcasm, this added wound, after the bottomless pit of human stupidity, was very maddening to say the least! So we got an extension for Carl’s stay in Canada and tried to mend things up. Bottom line, can’t really mend things even with good connections and a lawyer. Anyway, we got a little depressed and morose about the whole situation and then, like a miracle, we found this little wooden sailing dinghy this old man was selling because he was moving out of his house. About 12 feet long, made of plywood, big nice cedar mast, almost new sail (synthetic of course) and the only thing missing, some rope! That's it! A little work to do, there was some rot, but really not much. Guess how much he wanted for it? 50 bucks!!!


So we spent about a week and half working on it, scraping took forever since it hadn't been done since like 1970! The number of coats of paints were incalculable! But, after replacing the transom, a little fiberglassing on the seams and some painting, we had a brand new boat!



During

Hull finished


Got some sisal rope, only natural rope we could find around at short notice, and to crown the whole repairs we then proceeded to experiment with making our own pine tar. That was a great project! It took a few tries because at first we kept melting the pots in which we were trying to do so! For the unlearned on pine tar, it is a very basic concept. Tar, derived from pine trees has been used for thousands of years to preserve wood, make paints, keep metal from rusting, make soap and other numerous uses. In the boat world, it was used to preserve wood, ropes, and waterproof clothes... It’s like the number one ingredient for everything and anything aboard a ship. To make it is also a very basic concept, basically, warm up the wood, without burning it, therefore turning the resin into tar. Unfortunately, this process has been slowly disappearing especially on the small scale. In Sweden, some farmers actually still do it, with cast iron pots. But we ended up experimenting.



Essentially, you chop up some pines, preferably roots, since they have more resin. Then you jam them in a cooking pot, until it is completely filled. Now, the installation is a little recipient for the dripping tar, like a can. Then a pipe or carved out log, or stone from the tar catching can that drains into a bucket. The idea is to bring the tar away from the fire and cooling it in your container. You put the lid of your cooking pot on the can. Make a little hole in the middle so that the tar can fall into the can. Then turn the cooking pot upside down and unto it’s lid. Seal it with mud, or slightly bury the pot so that is is airtight. Then start a fire around the pot and let the heat, by dry distillation, turn the resin in the pine wood into tar. Our first few attempts didn’t work so well because they weren’t airtight and so the fire caught inside the pot as well as outside and burned our pine wood as well as melted the pot beyond recognition! But we got the hang of it by half burying the pot and all the rest of the installation, so no cracks for air to go in. After about a few hours, you get a peanut butter container full of tar and charcoal for a BBQ with your pine wood! Quite nice.


Then we used the tar for our rig! We tarred our sisal ropes, which needed a little coaxing since that fiber is not so keen on tar. Hemp would of been ideal, but we didn’t not have any at the time. And then, we went sailing a bunch on the Lakes close to my home! And camping and sailing and fishing... It was great... There was this little island, on Lac Lablanche, which has a dock so we could sail right up to it and moor the boat. We’d spend the sailing around and fishing at the same time, then dock the boat and spend the rest of the evening fishing. To finally make fire and cooking ourselves a feast! It was a little piece of heaven right there, where no more problems with visas, jobs and money existed...


It was very nice while it lasted.

Bottomless Pit of Human Stupidity Part I

As all of you might not remember, the begginning of our adventure started with failure. Failure to get a paid position aboard some sailing vessel of any kind. Fortunately, we found a shipyard and work on wooden ships, so that was close enough for us. But suddenly, in the middle of our stay at the shipyard in Småland, we received the visit of a ghost. We had an offer to work in Ibiza, of all places, on some wooden brigantine that takes school kids out for day-sails. Pretty straightforward. It’s Catalan/Spanish country there, so all we have to do is sail the boat and play in the rig and maintenance and that’s it. The kids are taken care of by a Catalan/Spanish speaking guide.

Perfect. Easy. Simple.

Or so we thought.

On many of ours and individual adventures, we have met up with some cool people. We have had extraordinary opportunities and taken advantage of every one of them. We have sacrificed money-making schemes for interesting schemes. Experience, travelling and learning over steady paid job... It has, in the past, always paid off. We’ve met entertaining people, made some connections for future possibilities, learn random and rare skills, obtain impossible experiences while having a blast the whole time. But today, right now, is where we have finally hit a bump in our magical bus ride.



Don’t worry honey, it’s still all that you say - experience, travelling, meet interesting people, make connections for future.... . it’s all right! (So says Carl)

But although the ship and especially the owners of this place are horrible, we have met two really cool people. And so, in that way the trip was worth making. We are losing money coming here, since these people are just a bunch of bastard that won’t even pay for our food, but I guess that is the price to pay sometimes. Sometimes adventures aren’t always fun, sometimes you get screwed. Sometimes you take a risk and it pays off. And it mostly always has. This time, we were totally screwed, unfortunately. These people have lied to us so many times that it can’t be counted on the fingers of both my hands. They have lured us here under false conditions and facts. I will never forget this or the now marred image I have of Eivissa. (Ibiza) This boat is rotten and rusted to a point that it is only a matter of months before it sinks at the dock. I’ve never seen anything like it, that is still floating. Museums wrecks are in better condition. There is no permanent crew or Captain, just the ones that pop up for a sail, which have been now, one day a week, since the owners constantly cancel them. The reasons for these cancellations changes from person to person when they explain it to us. The owners are apparently the only continuing link every season and they do think highly of there experience in sailing... But here I must mention that they had an other boat, the Tho Pa Ga, but it sank a year ago...

More importantly is that these people are from the original hippies of Eivissa. See Eivissa was a tranquil little Spanish/ Catalan island in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. It was the best kept secret of Europe. Then some hippies in the 60’s discovered it and started flocking to it. And as more Hippies came to it, it got more attention everywhere else. Then it wasn’t about flower power anymore but money power. The rich and famous came to play here and the island began to be a party paradise, where anything, but I mean anything, is permitted during the summer. Anything goes, literally, whatever you want, any drugs whatsoever, you can have in 5 minutes. Even police join in and don’t care. There is a saying here that during summer, if there is not a death during the weekend, by fights, overdose or drunken car accidents, then it hasn’t been a weekend in Eivissa! And then, strangely enough, the winter comes and the island quiets down again and people get back to their regular lives. The locals show their faces and live as if nothing happened. And the cycle continues...

Now, Gérard and Nicole, the owners, are from the first generation of hippies flocking here. Unfortunately, they still live in the past. Gérard is 65 or 70 and used to be an old sailor, but there we are unsure of the credibility of this past. He also has giant grey-white eyebrows that are about to swallow his face, thus the nickname Jerry Eyebrow. Nicole, on the other hand, is 50 and I am sorry to say this but has to be the worst case of menopause in the history of women! She also thinks she’s some kind of pirate and wears Jack Sparrow style boots and crazy clothes, thus the Porn-star name of Nicky Boots. Now these two characters, run the ship Cala Millor. They managed it so that nobody stays there more than a month, but one exception, Igor. This Russian- illegal immigrant to Spain only stays here because they owe him money. He’s also a monster of a guy and used to be a policeman in Russia... I’m sure you get the picture right? Nothing reads Russian mafia like this guy! He also drinks like half a bottle of whiskey and several beers, all during lunch time! Now, there is also Tony the captain, who really must of found his licence in a cracker jack box since his knowledge of docking implies crashing the boat into the dock every time. He also fell in the water last sail and started to panic... (Inspiring captain, non?)
There is also Javier, nicknamed latin-lover, because that is what he impersonates. Always smiling, like a bloody Ken doll... And he’s always leaping into action, but really leaping into action, as if every acts he does, is somewhat heroic! And this cast of characters is what sails this boat, more or less. I say more or less, because if it’s too cold, the sail is cancelled. Too windy, cancelled, I don’t know it’s maybe going to be cold, cancelled. Maybe in three days it’s going to be windy, cancelled. Too much sun, cancelled....

And so, here we are, amidst this grand theatre. We were in pourparler with this ship in last November. Before I left for Sweden, we exchanged numbers and e-mails, documents and job offer. When I got to Sweden, the correspondence suddenly became cold and they would not answer our phone calls or e-mails. Then, last month we received an e-mail with an offer. We did not think much of this delay at the time, since many a ship has a disorganized office and many tallship have breakdowns of the office, while the boat keeps on sailing.... That is not uncommon.... We get there with the promise of sailing five days a week, weekends off, and maybe paid STCW’s for Carl... We arrive here and are told that they would like us to inspect their square sails, since we are experts in that and they haven’t been used in awhile. Inspect sails and rigging and replace what is needed. O.k. That is cool, that’s a fun project, even if they forgot to mention the state of their square sails to us... We go for one sail on the day we arrive and it starts to smell funny. This whole place seems a little queer and surreal... But that’s a Friday and we have the weekend off and the other crew member, Oriole, is one cool dude from Majorca, who likes to windsurf and usually does sailing regattas and sailing yacht deliveries... So we spend one fun weekend with the guy, all the while having this funny feeling. The owners seem a little strange, the ship, the more we look at it the less we like what we see... And then comes a week of working here. Sails cancelled, every single day. Then the arrival of the fourth live-aboard crew, the French engineer Antoine. At least this core group of four sailors all agree, this is the worst place on earth and we must flee before we become too crazy. The engine room is a total disaster, you can clearly see there has been two fires in there before, the ceiling beams, which are in the middle of being scraped clean of paint, are clearly all mostly rotten. Everytime somebody walks on deck, some piece of the engine room ceiling falls on Antoine. The rig, which is now our department, is completely rusted and the yards are rotten through, we are not even stepping foot on them. The standing rigging, which stays and maintains the masts in place, are completely slack. The bowsprit wiggles from side to side with a little coaxing (The mast that is sticking out the front the ship). The Fore deck is going to cave in at any moment because it is totally rotten and it’s support beams are broken off... The deck is as soft as mud at certain places, the dead-eyes are broken and only holding into place because of the line through them, most metal, including chains, wire rope, eye-bolts, are rusted by more than half of their width... For those of you who only have a vague idea of ships, it’s quite easy. For a seamen, one look and you know. For a landman, a few minutes of looking around and even you are pondering how come this thing is still floating. Everything is just waiting for a big stress, a big wind or a big wave to break. Basically. And the mechanic keeps finding leaks that would sink us in 6 to 8 hours if none of the pumps would work...

It’s rather a dire situation and it gets only better from here. Because you see, Jerry Eyebrow and Nicky Boots are still living in the past, in LalaLand, in the Eivissa (Ibiza) of the sixties... Everything is normal, it’s just superficial rot. Let’s paint over it and everything will be ok. Let’s repair the lifejackets. But that’s illegal! Oh no, not here, it’s Spain, it’s Ibiza, it’s OK!
How about that slack standing rigging, what if we tighten it? Oh no no.... I like slack rigging because you know, wooden ships need to breath, they need to work a little bit so you want everything slack...

Every single day, something even stupider comes out if these people’s mouth and makes you wonder how they could have 2, 42-meters brigantines for so long and make them work? Make money with it and have a viable organization. Oh wait a minute... One of them sank and this one will, pretty soon and they have no money.... Ah ok... Yet still...How do they pass inspection every year? This is Evissa, Spain, but it’s still in the European Union, it must meet SOLAS requirements... The only option they have friends in high places and some well placed bribes also help.... We then learned that the inspector is an old friend of Jerry Eyebrow...

And Nicky Boots.... Thank god they like me, I made a good impression or something, but she is the son of the Devil! I’m no religious person, but if he does exist, she’s definitely a spawn of him! Completely ignores the: that’s illegal! remark and wants you to fix, or should I say tamper, with lifesaving equipment.... Thinks rot is superficial and should be ignored and painted over and that fixes everything. And as far as rust is concerned, it doesn’t exist, it’s a figment of your imagination. Even if you show her, that this piece is falling off, this piece of wood I can dig in it with my fingers or this metal piece is needle-thin, it’s not normal, which is her usual answer for everything and then passes on to something else... Oh, can you fix this line of the gangway? Of course, I can... Your ship is falling apart and will sink anytime soon now, but yes, of course I can fix this little stupid thing! Aaaaargh!!!!

And so, day after day, we are given proof that the pit of human stupidity is limitless... You think you’ve hit rock-bottom, that there is no more that these people can say or do that will surprise you. But alas, the diversity of human nature has bested me again, and we are blessed with the theatre of yet another jaw-dropping moment of unintelligence, even more acute than the previous day. And now I must put in a passage from the dictionary of this writing program I am now using. I was looking up synonyms for stupid, since I figure I’ve been using it too much with the description of Nicky Boots and Jerry Eyebrow and this is what I find. I mean, being upset is no reason to start to lower your writing skills! But what a gem!


THE RIGHT WORD
If you want to impugn someone's intelligence, the options are almost limitless.

You can call the person stupid, a term that implies a sluggish, slow-witted lack of intelligence.
Asinine is a harsher word, implying asslike or foolish behavior rather than slow-wittedness (: a woman her age looked asinine in a miniskirt).
Calling someone dumb is risky, because it is not only an informal word (: you dumb bunny!), but because it also means mute and is associated with the offensive expression “deaf and dumb,” used to describe people who cannot hear or speak.
Dense implies an inability to understand even simple facts or instructions (: too dense to get the joke), while dull suggests a sluggishness of mind unrelieved by any hint of quickness, brightness, or liveliness (: a dull stare).
Slow also implies a lack of quickness in comprehension or reaction and is often used as a euphemistic substitute for stupid (: he was a little slow intellectually).
Obtuse is a more formal word for slow-wittedness, but with a strong undercurrent of scorn (: it almost seemed as though he were being deliberately obtuse).
You can't go wrong with a word like unintelligent, which is probably the most objective term for low mental ability and the least likely to provoke an angry response (: unintelligent answers to the teacher's questions).’’

So from now on I’m going to have to use Obtuse, because I definitely feel some scorn towards these people! Although I kind of like dense as well, yet it doesn’t feel as powerful as obtuse... And then there is Asinine, which I am most pleased with the asslike implication...What a place, when my dilemma here is not knowing which words in between obtuse, asinine and dense to use to describe the owners! What a place! OUF! Fucking Eh! As would say my Prince Edward’s Island friends!!!

Wow! What else can I say? The pay I will get is only paying our travelling expenses, but if I could I’d be out of here now... I have never felt like this before, where you can’t stand a place like this.... Thank god for Oriole and Antoine! Antoine is a very entertaining Frenchman I must say, but a month of him would be too much... Oriole is probably the only sane person we have met here, yet he is slowly going bonkers, just like me and Carl... Only one week, eh, one bloody week left! That’s a very good thing, very good... I can feel my mind unravelling already....

On an after note, We are awaiting news from Oriole, who was the only remaining live-aboard crew after we left. Antoine, after saving the boat from two sinkings and one fire, was deemed a black cat by the owners and asked to leave... He left the same day we did. And so, on the last day in Eivissa, where we spent it roaming around the old town and fortress while the ship day-sailed, we came back to say our farewells to Oriole and guessed what news he had for us? You know that bottomless pit? well it just got even more deep! While Jerry Eyebrow was driving the boat to anchor it in a little sheltered bay, he ran aground!!! Ha haha!!! His response to the event? ‘I‘ve been sailing here for 30 years with the Tho Pa Ga and we neevr ran aground. I don‘t know where those rocks come from.’
Yes Jerry, it’s the new Spanish economic revival plan, start growing rocks to trap ships and then plunder them... How daft can you be, really?

But stay tuned for more anecdotes, next week, same channel, same time, live from the bottomless pit of human stupidity!

Gamleby 2: Sculpture park

I have been asked to continue writing about this place and I sure intend too! More importantly, there has been a never-ending expedition while in Gamleby. It’s called the saga of the troll sculpture park. This peculiar little town has a tradition of legends of Garp, trolls. Their shopping center has a nice big Garp on top it, looking down at you with a friendly smile... Now we know where J.K. Rowling got the idea for the giants, especially one named Gawrp...

Anyway, with those aficionados of my ridiculous past adventures or attempts to, will remember the trips to the Peking in New York. Quite simply, this historical sailing vessel is docked right in New York city, at the south street seaport museum. Me and Maggie, on my day off from the Nyckel, would daytrip to the Big Apple to see this ship. We would daytrip is a proper way of describing this epic saga. Every day off, we would go and every single time, it was closed to public. Too much snow. Bad weather. No volunteers to man it. Gone to dry dock.... And this went on for weeks, make that months....We tried, every single weekend to step foot on the Peking but to no avail. Instead we spent our time exploring the great city by foot, seeing other museums, trying to smuggle our way into the FBI Building, following John Lennon’s foot step...

Finally, one day it was open when we were there and had the ship to ourselves. But as we were exploring the ship, it was one of the saddest moment ever. So much deception, the ship was falling apart, nobody was there or even cared about it and our adventure of exploring New York was over. This was suppose to be the culmination, the climax of all this waiting. The pinnacle of the odyssey ended up being this hulk of a rusted ship, this grand historical mighty ship, nothing but a piece of...

O.K. So I got a little side-tracked here, but the point is that the sculpture park, although not such a long trial, ended being the same. Without the giant deception at the end, of course. Because we never found it! So, we walked around one weekend, trying to find it. Couldn’t find the path to it. Next weekend, we find the path to it, but it was completely covered up by snow, and the soft snow, you know, the one you step on and suddenly you’ve got snow up to your armpits or something... So after finding it, we decide that the next weekend, we are going to attempt the climb up the mountain to see these cool sculptures. So there we were, climbing up the mountain, in this snowfilled path of some sort... Finding these cool icicles from all the cliff-like rocks, stepping armpit deep into snow, scaling the rock-face... Up on the mountain, no sign of any sculptures. Nice flagpole with a Swedish flag on it though.

Walk around, more like trundled along or swim in the snow, finding an abandoned water shed, back country skiing trails and cliffs.... Lots of the latest... A bandy game being played somewhere far off, since we can hear the commentary from a loud-hailer... After wadding around all this snow and blindly heading for the running commentary, we finally see a path amongst the cliffs, down the rocky mountain. And down we head, like a couple of Sasquatch coming down the mountain. Covered in snow, dreads peeking out of our tuques, made a grand entrance into the ice rink. Had nice hot chocolate and local sausage in a bun and watched the game. Bandy is like hockey, played on ice, skates, sticks and a ball instead of a puck. But the sticks are like a merge in between golf and hockey sticks, the rink is the size of a soccer field and most of the same rules applies actually. It’s very interesting. It’s hockey and soccer put together.

Afterwards, we went back home, wet, cold and without a sight of sculpture park... After this, we speculated on the whereabouts of this park, but never found it. Maybe we passed it in our rambling around, and it being covered in snow, we never saw it. Maybe... Or, maybe it was on the other side of the said mountain. Or possibly, it is a mystical park and the sculptures moves around as they please... That’s a possibility....

Nonetheless, we never found the park or it’s sculptures. And the only Garp I saw is the one that greets people atop the shopping center... That is the sculpture park! I think I’ll have to go back there during summer, for sure! As far as the boats... The said beam that we cut with the contraption was then craned to the sawmill. Then rolled on it’s cart and picked up by an other crane, one attached piece of equipment in the sawmill, to pick up the logs. There, we had a little accident and the scissors that grips the tree let go and the whole thing kind of went flying... Then put it up again and in place... Anyway, we saw how come Egil works alone and takes days just to set up things... He can fix any problem with a little thinking and a few piece of wood, pretty amazing. He is a true engineer, more like a Macgyver of wood. Put a piece of wood here, nail this here and then the 1 ton log will hold while I move the scissors around... Now if we put up a lever here by the means of this metal bar, then we can lift it up and then.... And what do you know, after a hour of fiddling around, the 1-ton tree is back on it’s tracks, ready to be sawed... He is quite amazing! Although he’s always talking about royalty, kings and queens and history... Trust me, I love history, I can bore you to death with it for a long period of time myself, but this guy! No matter what the subject, he somehow always manages to bring it down to the king of Sweden and how Canada doesn’t have a king! Ah, but wait, it has the British Queen!!! All the time, it’s pretty funny, and it’s so predictable, that before he has even made half the link from our current discussion to Royalty, we see where he going and say it before him! Especially Kerstin, it’s hilarious!!!

Wow, it’s pretty amazing how the fact of relating these stories of Egil and Kerstin seems so far... I’ve been in Ibiza now for like 2 weeks and it feels like I’ve left Sweden months ago! It’s pretty amazing how when you feel miserable at a place, everything seems so long, so far away, so unattainable.... But that's my next blog!

Sweden has ships, wood, snow, but especially whimsical people

There we were, in Gamleby, Småland, Sweden. I have been told that Småland is rather similar to redneck country in the States... Where there is nothing to do but drive your car around and try to be cool by revving up while passing by pedestrians. And if course, drinking. Usually, not both of these at the same time, but it is redneck country, you never know...

But Gamleby, rather seemed to me quite enchanting and promising. This little town of like 2 500 peeps, has quite some history in it. Paintings and carvings on rock walls from before the Vikings, medieval arabian coins, a castle, a sculpture park full of trolls and most importantly, a shipyard. But what really makes this place special is with whom were living; Egil and Kerstin. (Egil is pronounced égil with the G almsot a k sound and Kerstin is pronounced Sherstin) They are a mid-sixties couple who now owns five historical boats, a shipyard and a giant old boarding house in Gamleby. They have built their own shipyard from scratch, saw mill, dry dock, everything. There aslo is a boat builder who is now working on refinishing the Thelma, one of the last old Swedish folkbåt, a 16 meter or so long sailing boat from 1900’s. One-masted with a giant sail, built for the archipelago here and only three remaining of it’s kind in Sweden.

But anyway, here we are, sometimes helping the boat builder, which is what we really want of course and sometimes finishing up this building they’re making for like a lunch room, kitchen, head... Cause right now the kitchen/hang out room is in the carpentry shop, less than ideal. And this house is kind of like the office At The Land. Some things aren’t exactly square or fit right... Feels like I’m back At The Land, never quite left the States it seems... It was built by a work camp of international volunteers, which I am pretty sure none of them knew much about house-building...Which also brings me back to these two people, who somehow manage all this. I say somehow, because no matter how crooked and unsquare that little house is (which also slightly represents the sum of all their projects) they do end up making everything work. Their are bright, very bright people, but they are a little... whimsy. Egil especially...
A little exmaple: We were talking about stability of ships at supper one evening and then the next morning during breakfest he decided he was going to show us how to calculate stability by hand! By the way, stability calculations are now done with computers and the process usually requires months...

And he told us that for the two big boats that they rebuilt (Vega and Linnea, a three-masted topsail schooner and a two-masted schooner), they had to calculate it and Egil thought he should do it himself. So he found this old German book from 1903 and taught himself how to do it. And he did it correctly, too... The same applies for everything else, if he doesn’t know it, he just tries to find the info somewhere and teach himself. Also tries to calculate everything, bring everything down to a mathematical formula... But he is very bright and good at it, to a point that he is pretty well-known in Sweden for ships and made drawings for the construction of some ships. He’s a regular consultant for repairs and building Tallships... Yet he’s so whimsical and everywhere all the time, you wonder how this could of all work! Especially when you see him and his wife, Kerstin, have an argument like the one they had other day about e-mailing! It was hilarious! Kerstin is the sensible one in this couple and she’s the one who take cares of all parperwork and computer related things, you know, to make things actually work. And Kerstin was on the computer doing somthing and Egil was like: I don’t remember what to do to check my e-mail...
Kerston just kind of made a non-commital sound, hopping he would go away or something. But Egil persisted and said: ‘‘I know I have to click something to get there, but I don’t know what!’’
Kerstin said: ‘‘But you know what! I’ve shown you this like a hundred times before!’’
Egil: ‘‘ But I don’t remember! If you don’t show me, I’ll just click anything!...’’
Kerstin: ‘‘ Why can’t you just learned this? I’ve shown you a hundred, no make that a thousand times already!’’
And Egil just keeps on going, in this very like childish teasing voice: ‘‘You don’t want to show me, then I’ll just click anything! I tell you, I’ll click anything!” And this just goes on and on.... It’s pretty hilarious to see this guy, who’s always talking about one ship or another and their technicalities and how to calculate how much this wood can bend, how much stress it can receive, blah, blah blah, and yet still be unable to check his cellphone for SMS...

Yet he is gold mine, everybody should see their shipyard! They have these train tracks into the water and pull out the ships unto land themselves with a winch. It’s very impressive and they made their own saw mill and have extended it to accommodate 15 meters-long trees so as to make deck planks as long as possible. Less ending-seam, less caulking pain in the... And then they couldn’t get trees long enough delivered to them, so they got their own little old truck with a longer bed and went to pick up the trees themselves! It’s crazy the stories they have and even more crazier is that all this old machines, most from the 60’s still all work... Although they’ve been siting for years, through winter snow and ice, they all start when needed, or maybe after a little coaxing. But there are still functional and being used.

They also try to make everything old- fashioned. Like going around picking trees with curves to make knees and using every section of it in different ways or making their own copper nails.... (Egil has wrote a book about all of this, too) And this is actually an other funny story that explains to you more of Egil’s character. Across the street from his house was an old printing company. In the 1981, the guy who owned it and was running it, small-business of course, was getting pretty old and thought he’d retire instead of upgrading his machinery. He was still doing it old- fashion, you know, placing every letter together in a mould and then printing that page over and over again.... All by hand... So when Egil say that he was closing shop, he couldn’t stand that, had to buy every last bit of machinery and keep it up to shape. Now that he had all this printing gear, what was he going to do with it? Well, might as well write a book and print it! So he wrote a book on the renovation of Linnéa and printed it and everything, the only thing he didn’t do, is the binding... Anyway, he’s kind of crazy like that... Who ever had the idea of writing a book only because they had a printing press?

But these are the people we are living with and volunteering for. The little house is done, anyway our part in it is, thankfully! It now has nice wood planks everywhere! The Thelma, that old Swedish folkbåt, is now our main attention. We are mostly spending our time gluing layers upon layers of thin mahogany boards to make up the deck house with it’s proper bend. In between gluing, we clear off snow from ships, install fasteners to frames and planks on Thelma and help Egil in some of his schemes... The most exciting for us, which was right after two weeks of working on that little crooked house, was sawing hatch beams. Now this procedure usually implies that you’re cutting up some wood into beams, as wide and long as possible. Nothing exciting there, right? Well, this is Egil... He figured that a certain giant oak tree laying buried in the snow somewhere was of sufficient length and width to make the whole hatch from it, instead of a multitude of beams building up to the desired height. So first, pick up the said tree with giant crane. Since Egil himself was driving it, that was quite spectacular.... Then, cutting it... Humm... Then the tree in question is too big for their sawmill, of course... Defeat? Of course not, let’s bring out the contraption. This is where the excitement reaches it’s pinnacle. Because the contraption is two over-sized chainsaws welded together with a steel chassis mounted around it so as to cut straight... Of course, this thing can’t be driven single-handedly, have to be two people on it at all times... I think here a picture is really the only thing left to be said, or showed.






So, this is part of our périple here, but more later this post is long enough as it is!!!!

Adventure always starts with failure

The adventures or rather misadventures of Gen and Carl actually starts with failures. After dropping everything in the North American continent to come to Sweden to rejoin my boyfriend, Carl, we had but vague plans for our winter. As usual they kept metamorphosing into something even vaguer when the spectre of collapse loomed. But finally like true vagabonds, we threw caution to the wind and set course to execute plan Tre Kronor. The Tre Kronor is a Swedish sailing vessel, a brig, shortly returned from Copenhagen and in the midst of a downrig. Downrigging means taking down or dismantling part of the rig, spars or sails and bringing them down and inside, to protect them from winter. After arranging to stay onboard while helping them with this process, we departed for Skeppsholm, a small island in the middle of Stockholm city where the brig is docked. And did I mention it was in downtown Stockholm?

But upon arriving there, we found the brig downrigged and most of the crew taking their leave of the ship. So we ended up cleaning, like a very thorough cleaning of the whole boat, while the powers high above decided our fate. Are we going to be able to stay onboard and have a job, or what? And amidst all the cleaning and waiting around, dirty news makes it’s appearance in the form of cutbacks. The director of the organization has stop all spending, no expense for the winter season, even for maintenance and general upkeep of the ship. Luckily for the ship, it is very new and will come out of this none-maintenance scheme fairly ok. Unfortunately for us, not only have we no work, but no place to stay, because zero spending also means no water, gas, heating and whatnot on the ship as well. In short nobody can live onboard. Yet like bums we are, we ended up bumming a place to stay at Anton’s, a friend of Carl. And while all this is going down, an officer of the Tre Kronor, Ib, has kept an ear out. His family owns the Vega, a three-masted schooner docked at the Vasa museum, in the middle of a big refit. He therefore realized what an opportunity this is, to have two experienced sailors who could tackle just about any maintenance project he can imagined without him having to supervise, explain, instruct or help us. And at such a bargain! So we end up helping them out for two days, by building their greenhouse to cover and protect the ship from snow and ice. We got to meet some of the family and show our worth and this seemed to work out. Since we left them with the promise of getting in touch, once Ib has talked with the rest of the family and discussed us working there for room and board.

Ultimately, failure came knocking on our door again. After spending some time bumming at Anton’s, hanging out with friends and getting slightly intoxicated to a point where we got lost in the subway at four in the morn, we received news that it wouldn’t be possible for somebody to live onboard the Vega. Since they wanted to do major carpentry projects, they didn’t want anybody living there....



They we were, temporarily living at Anton’s, plan-less, jobless and practically money-less... Finally, luck did finally smiled on us, it pays never to despair! Ib’s parents, who owns the Vega, also have a foundation that owns other wooden boats as well. One of them, the Linnea, is currently hauled out of water and being worked on in their shipyard, in the small town of Gamleby. And so next week we leave for Gamleby, about three hours south of Stockholm and two hours north of Kalmar. And once we get there, you shall all learned about the schooner Linnea and the Gamleby shipyard.


Photos: Carl Johansson

Le début

Voici le début de la fin: je débute un blog!!! Ce blog a pour objet de tenir ma famille et mes ami(e)s, et tout ceux qui veulent bien le lire, au courant de mes dernières mésaventures!

Alors
Enjoy!

This is the beginning of the end: I am writing a blog!!! This blog has the object of keeping my family and friends, and whoever else wants to read it, in the loop with my latest shenanigans!

So,
Enjoy!