It is a beautiful morning here in The Netherlands, the sun is shining in there is almost no wind, wonderful! We are now looking forward to the journey through the canals towards Amsterdam. Yesterday evening I met with our dear Dutch neighbors in their Najad and got some worthwhile discussions and great inspiration! When sailing you meet so very many interesting and inspirational people and they all got their own fantastic stories to tell. Now we have got some valuable tips for the canals! Thank you guys! We will leave the little, but very cosy place who no one except the Dutch can pronounce in the right way; Delfzijl, soon. We are just waiting for the book shops to open so we can buy a Dutch pilot for the canals. Have a nice weekend!

I promised some updates after the cleaning and the beers, however, we decided to leave the cleaning for tomorrow, the beer was hard enough. The body is screaming that crossing the North Sea was one of an adventure. The numbers of bruises have increased enormously. Maria’s got one scary on her arm and my thighs and bum are blue spotted. There are numbers of ways to get bruises on board a boat and especially when the boat is fighting against waves and winds up to 20 m/s.

As Maria said I got little sea sick the first night, so I didn’t spend the night in my bunk, I slept outdoor in the cockpit between my watch keepings. I was steering when the swells started coming and didn’t notice them at first but then Maria came out wanted some air because cooking downstairs wasn’t that pleasant. She putted so called sea bands on her both wrists to prevent the sea sickness. Unfortunately, I didn’t put on the bands that early, which caused me some fish feeding. However, I am glad I usually just feed the fishes and then I am back to normal, or as we use to say in Swedish “jag styr och spyr”. We don’t know whether it is a placebo effect or the sea bands, which applies pressure on the Nei Kuan acupressure point on each wrist, really have a true effect. The sea band works for us and we intend to keep on wearing them when needed.

Crossing the North Sea wasn’t just about hard weather, new bruises and sea sickness. We also had some good sailing moments, experienced sparkling sea fire at nights (in Swedish we call it mareld, click here for more info) and got the chance to meet armed customs officers. Before we could enter Holland and the little Harbor Delfzijl some customs officers had to board the boat and make sure we weren’t some dangerous pirates or something. However, we had a nice little chat with the guys onboard Cantare and finally they let us in. And here we are, enjoying a calm evening in the cockpit, without big waves washing our faces or scary gale warnings. Now we’ll hopefully have little more relaxed sailing in the canals in Holland. Tomorrow we’re off to Groningen and then we’ll continue on the canals to Amsterdam and Rotterdam. We have uploaded some new pictures from the last couple of day’s adventures, if you would like to have a look, click here.

Before a well deserved full night’s sleep we would like to thank you all for following our adventure and giving us sweet and thankful comments. It’s so nice getting up dates from all over and we hope you all are doing just fine back home!

Sleep tight! /First Mate

We just arrived in Delfzilj Harbor after three days and three nights on the North Sea. Stay tight, more updates will come during the evening, but first of all we will clean out the boat and dry all our wet clothes with a well deserved cold Danish beer....:-) Later! /First Mate Ivansson

Checking the latest weather grib files we have decided to leave Lemvig today and try to start our sail to Holland tonight. We start with sailing to Thyborön and if it looks alright we will leave Denmark around 8 p.m. Hopefully we will be able to keep you updated via the satellite phone, but I'm not sure the email connection works yet, don't worry if you don't hear from us for a few days. / The Captain

The weather seems to be against us, we will probably try to leave Denmark on Monday but we are not sure that we will make it to Holland. Maybe we have to make a stop at Helgoland and wait there until the strong winds that are predicted to arrive on Thursday have passed. It is not very uplifting to see how one low pressure after another moves our way. But now we have time to fix more things on the boat. Right before we left I received three custom made wooden plugs from Varalövs Tunnfabrik, they are to be used if the self-bailers brake and we need to stop water from coming in. In almost all chandleries you can buy sets of wooden plugs in different sizes, but they are too small so we contacted a local company who made bigger plugs for us. Today we are going to attach them with small ropes to the seacocks, that way they are easy to find in an emergency. We are also doing some cleaning and stowing. Some of the things haven’t found their right places yet, and since we are expecting a lot of rocking on the German bight we want to make sure everything is secured before we leave. The bathroom is quite alright, it is tight though with all of our bottles. Sofia has her favourites and I have mine so there are almost two sets of everything. In the picture you can see toothbrushes for a whole year, which my dentist Jan Christenson, Tandläkargruppen Höganäs, kindly has supplied us with together with some other things needed for good oral hygiene. My tool storing space on the other hand is a mess. Every time I need something from there it gets harder to close the hatch. I think I have to rearrange the things in there again. Yesterday we bought petrol for the outboard and tried it for the first time. It worked fine but stopped after a while, since I got the wrong manual I don’t know what all the levers are meant to do, I tried to push them a bit different and then it started again. I think I will have to download the real manual to get to know exactly how it works. But for now I’m happy with it as long as it works most of the time.

Thanks for all sweet and funny comments, haha, we needed some action to get some comments in our blog. Just a quick reply; we do know that there are sand banks in Caribbean, and thank Lord for that, otherwise we would not be able to lie at anchor the way we plan. Our unplanned parking on the sand bank was just a little practice for the upcoming daily parking in Caribbean.

Still in Denmark, now we will spend the night in a little harbor called Glyngöre. There are a lot of small cute communities around the Limfjord and since the winds aren’t blowing in our direction yet, we have the pleasant opportunity of exploring Denmark little further.

Now I am late for dinner, Maria is cooking a pie and I am sitting on a sidewalk where I could find some internet. Unfortunately the free network in harbors by the Limfjord isn’t that developed yet. /First Mate

Today it is Sunday the 19th and even though it feels like if we left Höganäs Harbor yesterday it has already been a week since our adventure started. Yesterday we woke up at 6.30 am by a knocking on the boat and then someone boarded. It was the harbormaster who wanted the mooring fee, I mean, a Saturday morning at 6.30?! I was too tired to remember to try to knock down the fee, but from now on I will always have a business card in my pocket and try to get a blue water cruiser (the expression for a sailor on a long trip) discount. However, we managed to go back to sleep again and then woke up finding the rain pouring down outside. Due to the rain the planned morning run and power walk ended up in a long Saturday breakfast. We then left Hals around noon and got a chance to try our new Gill clothes since it kept on raining the whole way to Aalborg. We arrived in Aalborg, the fourth largest city in Denmark situated by the Limfjord, at 4.30 pm yesterday.

Aalborg feels like a university town, Aalborg University is located here and while walking down the streets one passes by a lot of pubs, cafeterias etcetera with student discount. The harbor is situated little west of the city so one has to take a little walk to get into the city, however when living on a 31 feet sailing boat it is very nice to move a little. After having organized all wet clothes Marias parents arrived with some forgotten supplies and with a helping hand. Meanwhile Maria and her father started installing an emergency rudder, (something that is required by the Atlantic Rally Competition, if our rudder will stop working we need to have an emergency one), I decided to go for a run. You will be able to see the wonderful 80’s inspired running outfit on the pictures later on. Running or walking are great ways of discovering a new place, I just hope I can continue on doing it. I have also started doing a fitness program with exercises suitable for doing on board.

Today Maria’s sister left us, she went home with Maria’s parents. Now it feels like the adventure has started for real, we have received things needed that we forgot last hectic week and left Sweden. Tomorrow we will move on along the Limfjord, we don’t know how far we will reach; it is all depending on the winds. Our plan is to go to Nyköbing Mors or further and then cross the North Sea as soon as possible and reach the Frisian Islands outside the coast of Germany and Holland. /First Mate

Our satellite phone works fine, we have received a few sms messages, which we appreciate greatly. We would like to thank the following for sweet greetings: Kerstin Jönsson, Eva Falk, Anders Ingerup, Christina Preby, Sofia & Per, Eva Ivansson.

We left Gothenburg as planned yesterday, but since it was blowing from the west, the direction we were going, we decided to anchor outside Kungsö in the southern part of the archipelago. We had a lovely afternoon, relaxing in the sun and doing some of all the small tasks that still remain. At 3 am this morning, the alarm went off and we left Sweden. The wind was weak and still from the west so we had to run the engine until early afternoon when the expected wind shift took place. The Navtex, which is a weather fax, brought us reports of gale warnings and strong winds from the east in the evening. Therefore we tried to keep up the speed, wanting to reach the entrance to Limfjorden before the wind increase. 9.30 pm we moored in Hals harbour, managing a quick visit to the local super market before dinner time. Tomorrow we will sail to Ålborg where we will drop of my sister and get a new delivery of forgotten things from my parents. /The Captain

Now we have activated the satellite phone. If you want to get in contact with us, our number is; 00881631646477. Whenever you feel like it, give us a call! Online you can send us a satellite messages for free. Click here to go to the Iridium Messaging page. The first numbers of the telephone number are already being filled in. All you need to do is to fill in the rest, that is, 31646477. Skip writing anything in the "reply email" box and just go head and write your message to us and then click the button "send message" and we will recieve a message from you within a couple of minutes!

This will be the last night on shore for a long time. Tomorrow we will move out to the boat and then do the very last preparations before the farewell party on the pier. At the moment Maria is at the boat putting togehter the last pieces needed for setting off and I am doing the last preparations needed at home.

I know a lot of you were seated in front of the radio this morning waiting for the radio presenter to call us and see how we are progressing but nothing happened. Something came up on the radio channel so the interview is postponed till Monday morning at 7.30. Hopefully we will be close to Gothenburg by then, in full sail.

Finding an insurance covering us during our adventure has not been easy. Regular backpacker insurance doesn't cover us while sailing, especially not over the Atlantic Ocean. Not being able to find a suitable insurance has been a worrying factor until we got into contact with Europeiska Försäkrings AB. Europeiska is specialized in offering private and business travel insurance and offers cover before, during and after the journey. Europeiska has a rather new insurance; Travel Insurance Extreme which gives a wide cover for adventures people like me and Maria who want to find challenges in life. When comparing the Travel Insurance Extreme with a regular backpacker insurance it provides a high level of additional cover. For example, the Travel Insurance Extreme provides full compensation for any essential medical expenses incurred as a result of accident or illness. That is, if for example one of us gets injured while sailing far from civilization, Europeiska will do their utmost to help us. Sailing Cantare has started a cooperation with Europeiska, and during our journey we will provide you all with more information about how you can make sure that you will feel safe during high risk adrenaline rush activities.

We rigged Cantare last Friday, it took a while longer than normal. Mostly because we couldn't find a necessary piece that holds the mast in place and had to make a new one, only to find the old one a day later. Saturday we received our new sails and discovered that to hoist the new mainsail we had to make a bigger hole in the mast. When that was done we set out to try the new sails and the boat. It didn't take long until water started to trickle in. A bit worried we started leak searching, until I remembered that we hadn't attached the LPG box yet. The box has a drain that goes through the hull above the waterline, but when Cantare started to list it was well under water. We started the engine and returned to harbour. On Monday our sail maker, Lasse Lind, sailed with us making sure that we know how to handle the new sails. It was great feeling the power of the wind again. The rest of the days leading up to today have been filled with preparations. Cleaning, sewing, shopping and storing. My dad has fitted the life raft and is working on more handrails both above and under deck. Today we are going to pack our personal stuff, exchange money and fix a few other things.

Yesterday we were shopping together with our mothers at City Gross in Höganäs. We spent around three hours loading three shopping carts with provisions for hopefully a year. As you see on the pictures the boat was basically filled with shoppingbags afterwards. But after a couple of hours of organizing we managed to find room for everything! Canned food, sauces, rosehip soup, bilberry soup, rice, pasta, bulgur, ketchup, mustard, "varma koppen", spices, chocolate pudding, you name it, everything is stowed in! We would like to give our warm thanks to Carina Nilsson and her staff at City Gross in Höganäs for helping us with tasty support.

..and things are starting to shape up. We are actually leaving in three days and it is scaringly close when thinking about it! However, we really don't have any time to think about it or reflect upon it any further, so we skip that part for the moment:) The last couple of days have been really intense, tomorrow there will be more updates and pictures regarding what we have been up to recently, so stay tight! Before I am off to bed I would like to emphasize what is gonna happen during the farewell weekend. On Saturday we will have little farewell mingle in Höganäs Harbor starting at 7 pm. Feel free to drop by at any time after 7 pm, and please bring sunshine! Sunday is the actual farewell day. At 1 pm we plan to weigh anchor, so be there little earlier in order to get farewell hugs and kisses and a chance to see Cantare (our home for the next year...) On Sunday lots of sunshine are indeed preferable, however most important are fair winds, most of all winds from the south so we will get a nice first leg to Gothenburg. Sleep tight everybody!

Our new cellphones have arrived! Sonim Technologies has provided us with two Sonim Xp3 Quest phones. Sonim Technologies provides ruggedized phones engineered specifically for people who work and play outdoors or in less than pristine industrial environments. The Sonim cellphone has an extremely durable design; it is waterproof and submersible to 1 metre, have a glare free and shock resistant screen, certificated for salt, fog, humidity, transport, shock and thermal shock. Due to the durable design, we will be able to take a bath with our phones and do not need to worry about dropping it!

This morning we were live on the radio, if you missed it, you get a second chance to listen to it here. Now we are doing the last preparations on the rig, then we are of to Höganäs harbor to be able to launch the rig at around 2 pm. If we are lucky, we might be able to do some test sailing tomorrow, keep your fingers crossed!

Last summer Sofia and I sailed to Poland. When laying at anchor we rowed the dinghy to shore and it soon became obvious that if we were to sail to the Caribbean where anchoring is the norm, we need an outboard. I wanted an engine as small as possible, the Honda 2,3 weighs only 13 kg and is air cooled. The new engine arrived and it looked so nice. But since we don't want it to be stolen right away something had to be done about the look. I have spray painted it pink, to my father and his friends dismay. My friends on the other hand think it's cute.

We decided to give the dinghy a second chance, it works better for our budget as well. I repaired it and it has now been inflated for 3 days! Before the repair it deflated in a few hours. But it still leaks, much smaller bubbles this time though. I have also painted the stern pink to make it less attractive to thieves. Lovely, isn't it?