Sailing home in yacht 17 3 7 (10) 25 1 21

I was in my middle age the age I like to think of these days as the days of my countries, a globe trotter with a good number of visits to the US so many I had lost count already, with regular visits to Belgium France Germany Spain and UK and with upcoming visits still to China Japan Thailand and Vietnam, content to holiday for the present still in Cyprus or Greece, The Canary Isles in addition to yearly visits to Scotland to climb my beloved Munro hills and see my Mum, but here was something new in my life buying a yacht.

After two voyages taking my two sons on sailing holidays with my wife A-E 3 years before for our elder son S and a year earlier for our younger son P and his wife J, I announced now I am going to buy a yacht, with protestations from my wife because of the enormous expense... But I had already determined that the price of a second hand yacht in this country is no more than the price of a second hand car, and at this time of year in my job I was weekly visiting the capital to keep abreast of developments associated with the casing developments at our customer's meat processing operations so I took the opportunity to visit people with boats to sell on the back of such activities once the formal reason for my travel was concluded.

Soon I had found the boat of my dreams with spacious head room in the cabin in the price range I had decided upon and on the second visit the guy selling her made the mistake of giving me a review of her sea-going properties in which it said how good the boat was in the harbour but hardly the kind of boat to have your wife climb over the decks in a high wind to reduce foresail, which had the effect of killing that project stone dead: my wife had hardly ever sailed and was not the most practical of people...

It was then that I turned my attention to the first boat I sailed in with colleagues during the second year my arrival from UK only now it struck me as being eminently affordable with all round good handling and comfort properties: in the baby of the Hallberg Rassy fleet the Misil ll. I bought her from a young man in his late 20s Jukka who had recently become a father perhaps for the second time who had other more pressing problems than those associated with outdoor pursuits and I hope we came to an amicable agreement over the price at what in today’s money would be €3900 around $4130.

I shall always remember our first voyage to bring her home, a 3 day sail from beyond the capital with only my wife A-E for crew and the port of Hels*nk* our first port of call. My younger son’s input on that occasion was of no help. How you going to bring her home Da? I have a friend who will sail her down for you, for a small sum!

Well I sailed on the 8hp engine to begin with, my recently acquired new skills of sea navigation from a course in off-shore sailing in Scandinavian waters with its extensive pilotage now subject to the full set of tests: my wife sitting in the cockpit unable to take her eyes of me! All went well until we approached South Harbour of the city when the engine cut because I had failed to open the air vent to the petrol tank thus building up a partial vacuum to the delivery of fuel to the 2-stroke engine resulting in its ultimate failure. But we were soon enough on our way once more with no more misfortune: had there been ocean going Liners in our path at this time it might well have been a completely different story but there you go… If I write a further sequel I may treat you to an account of the first time some years later when we returned to the same waters from where we had collected our Misil ll when with gale force winds directly ahead sailing again on the engine when the friends we were to visit were anxiously standing and waiting on their own landing stage as I took a 90 degree turn from the water course of say 200 yds about 180 metres wide to decelerate and throw our Fisherman’s anchor which fortunately arrested further our forward movement but when I had perhaps only one or metres or yds of warp left as my wife’s warp was secured by our friends! Have a good day everyone, you’re not an adrenalin junkie too by any chance? Hahaha. Pics courtesy of H-R links on Google.