Category: Winter 2011-12

Today we were out at the dock again and painted the outside of Isabell. The weather was fantastic, and a lot of people were at the marina fixing and getting ready for launching day next week. Now it is time to start loading all the equipment back onboard.

Hope we have the same nice weather tomorrow!

Saturday 14 April 2012. It was snowing again today. I went to see the boat and work inside. Put in a new carpet and rewired some stuff inside. Up on deck thick wet snow. About 0 degrees Celcius outside. Luckily the heater is on inside and warming up nicely.

In the evening the snow stopped falling and the sun came out. Actually became nice. See some pictures of Isabell today…

The past weekend it was time to uncover Isabell, in spite of the snow flurries on Saturday. We worked hard both Saturday and Sunday to polish and fix things. When all the hard work was done, Monica got out the old hammock and a few km of rope and made a nice fancy seaworthy “slingerkooi” for the skipper. She herself prefers to sleep on the cabin floor when at sea. But here is how it turned out… Nice!

Testing out the new swing berth. Or whatever you call a “slingerkooi” in English.

Along the way I have passed a number of Monsun boats. I have seen one or more of them in nearly every other port in Sweden, both along the western and eastern shores. Most of the ships I have seen in real life where in very good conditions, judging from the looks of the hulls and riggings. It is always kind of special to see another Monsun sailing. And all of the ones I have seen are personalized, yet still Monsuns.

A beautiful occasion was when I sailed out to the most southeastern Swedish island of Utklippan one day to do some seal spotting with my daughter Ronja. We were out there late in September, and days had become rather short. Moored inside the inner well-protected harbor on the island, we had gone ashore and taken pictures and enjoyed the wildlife on this beautiful island. As we were getting ready to leave in the evening, another Monsun comes out of the East, lit up by the sun that was just about to tip behind the horizon in the west. It had a German flag and carried a father and son who were on their way home to Germany from a trip to Kalmar and Oland, Sweden. Moments like this are so nice that I have started to think about where all the Monsun boats have ended up after 30-40 years of floating about. Obviously, many were still in Sweden, but some also had been bought by owners very far away from the shipyard on Orust.

Then, as I started scouring the Internet about Monsun information for a while back I found out that many owners are in contact with other owners, and the exchange of technical innovations and ideas about sailing techniques with this special vessel was abundant. So I thought that it would be cool to provide all the Monsun owners with a platform for a connection, the Monsun ships listing.

So with some decent skills in SQL, database management, and PHP I put together the initial list. Then, of course it had to have some content in it to begin with. A good start was the Danish Monsun Club that had a listing of the member ships in their member section. I copied that into the list. Then I also am a member of the Swedish Cruising Association SXK. There were over 100 member boats listed, that I copied into the list. From Hallberg-Rassy Shipyard I heard that many boats had been sold to Sweden, Germany and Denmark. So I had to fix some pages on the web to catch the attention of German owners as well. I know that a few German boats sail in the Netherlands. And then I got so many nice responses from all kinds off people on the list, that I find it worthwhile to put it out to the Internet community.

I have email-addresses of many Monsun owners, but do not want to put them on the public side of the database. But in case you as a Monsun owner have questions to a specific other Monsun owner, please drop me a mail, and I will forward it to the person in question. I will on request post messages and links to sites on this site.

Now it is ready to use the Monsun listing in the Isabell web pages. It has been a small challenge to get the list to work interactively and to be able to read the listing in english, dutch, german and swedish, but it is done. Owners can now also add their boats directly into the listing, which will save me a lot of time. Nice to already have received several international comments from Monsun owners on the list. They like it!

The past weekend it was time to start fixing things inside Isabell. The weather was cold and dreary on Saturday, but turned out real nice on Sunday afternoon and evening.
Saturday it was windy and sitting inside the main cabin the wind was howling in the rigging. Oh what I have missed that sound!

Lots of small fixings to do. But the heater is on and with 220V connected there is enough light in the cabin to see. In the afternoon of Saturday the cable connected to the wall electricity shorted (one of the leads was damaged) and after a big smelly flash, power went out. So after shopping for a new connector the cable was shortened and reconnected.

Not many persons have yet started to do maintenance. It is still cold outside and there was ice left on the lake. See the pictures below.
And Sunday evening!

The weather is getting warmer and drier by the day and the feeling of Spring soon arriving gets stronger and stronger. Now the sails are ready repaired for the season. The sail cover stackpack has a new “expensive” zipper. The to-do list is shrinking. This weekend we are going to have a look at the Marina and see if the snow is gone. Possibly not, since in between the covered boats the sun does not reach down and melt off the thick snowpack until quite late in the Spring.

Isabell is nice and dry inside during the winter. No problems whatsoever with condensation or dampness inside. That was another story with other boats I’ve had.

Nonetheless, most of the interior is sitting at home in the apartment, waiting for better weather, just like the Skipper…

This Spring not much underwater body work needs to be done. Most of the work is inside the cabin and bathroom. The heater is being fixed and the autopilot is at the workshop for service. Let’s hope it can still be used a few more years.
Here Isabell comes out of the water last year, see that there was very little fouling on the hull, in spite of no antifouling use. Great!

First ice in the archipelago! Longing to ice skating and skiing for the season.

After having read “Alla sa att vi skulle dö” about a couple of young people from the northern parts of Sweden (Kalix and Kiruna) who sailed an Albin Vega around the world between 2007 and 2009, I started to look into the option to sail all the way north in the Baltic and Bay of Bothnia, to the most northern towns of Kemi (Finland) and Haparanda (Sweden). From Stockholm this would be more than 570 NM one-way. Could be fun to get up there again and enjoy 24-hour sunlight for a while. I also found some literature about the Swedish coast harbours in the book “Norrlandskust” by Kryssarklubben. I wil have to try an get hold of the nautical charts from the Finnish coast to the Bothnia Sea and Bay.

Here is a nice map of the route in dark blue!
We’ll see what happens with these dreams! And a detailed sea chart (498 NM)

Here is the 12-year old cover of the lifebuoy (guess which one?) and a brand new one that I invested in after the old one sort of started to disintegrate… Let’s hope the new one lasts as long as the old one… they cost a minor fortune, just the cover of the buoy!

Also have done some repairs on the genua, that started to loosen in the lower seams. Nicely sown new seams and repaired the UV shielding blue cover with 4 cm ripstop tape.