It took about a week more than planned to finally finish the organising and setting up of our boat. Each item on the boat is now documented with its exact location, quantity, part name and number. The only things we didn’t document were our clothes, personal hygiene and cosmetic items — that would be just a bit over the top.
We’ve organised all of our parts, tools, and equipment on a spreadsheet.
Food and utility stores are documented since you need to know what to stock back up on — do we need more eggs? Butter? Toilet paper? Dishwashing liquid? Yes, this is a great big PITA — notice the glass of wine next to the Mac? But we will be thankful we did it – sooner than later.
The boat is still not in order, and our dog, Senna is tired of all the boring organising and tidying up.
We didn’t just organise the interior of the boat. The entire contents of the various deck lockers (sail locker, port and starboard lazarettes and the side deck locker) needed to be moved to the most logical place. For example, since the heating exhaust passes through the port lazarette, we put only “non-meltable” items there. Since the side deck locker is the most shallow, we put smaller items there, such as boat cleaning products, the filters for the water maker and other small parts.
Organising the sail locker
Organising the side deck locker
The long and thought-provoking (Do we really need this? Can we leave this with Adams Boat Care for now?) process of organising and tidying up resulted in an entire pallet box full of things! I was inspired by the book by Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. She says you need to be rigorous with your decision process and always ask “Does this spark joy?” If it doesn’t, it should go. In boating terms, the questions are: “Do we really need this?” and “Do we really have the room for this?” While we do have a few things we don’t really need (candles, a small Alvar Alto bowl that can be used for tea lights or to hold nuts or strawberries), they don’t take up much space.
This is what is staying at Adams Boat Care for the summer and then going back home with us in the fall.
At the same time we were in the process or organise and documenting, Carl Adams was getting the boat in shape to go. He contracts the rigging work to expert rigger Daniel Engström. We had to postpone rigging day twice because of high winds, but the day finally arrived — chilly, but calm and sunny.
Attaching the boom. The mast had already been put up before our arrival in Sweden.
Putting up the inner forestay with its Reckmann furler
Daniel in the air
Putting up the jib
Making sure the lines and halyards are correctly organised on the mast
Senna, our dog, found the entire rigging process really fascinating. So much so that she was completely wiped out at the end of the day.
After a leisurely three-day drive up through Germany, Denmark and the south of Sweden, we are finally back onboard Freja.
We will be spending the next 10 days or so on mission number one, organising the boat. You see, last summer, when we moved most of our things onto the boat, we had only two days to unpack our boxes. All 22 of them. This did not make for a logically organised boat. Nothing was documented, either.
Organising, organising…
So here we are, on the island of Orust in Sweden, going through each drawer, closet, storage hatch and shelf, trying to decided what the most logical place is for everything. Anodes and other heavy parts and tools go towards the center line and as low in the boat as possible. Lighter spares and equipment can go towards the starboard and port sides and higher up. Everything is to be documented, labeled and placed on a boat diagram.
Hanging up a painting of sailing in the Swiss Alps.
We started with our clothes. Easy enough as we have only one hanging closet, one large drawer and two large shelves per person. Ok, we are cheating by hanging up our foulies in the workshop hanging locker.
Trying to find a place for everything, and then documenting it in a spreadsheet.
Then we attacked all of our spare parts, after that, our tools. For the past three days, we’ve been organising all of our “stuff” and doing nothing else except walk Senna, our dog.
Senna, our dog, finding her place on the boat.
Mission number two is to acclimatise Senna to living on the boat. We are moored alongside the dock at the moment, so getting off and on is reasonably easy. She’s a big dog that weighs around 35 kgs, so we can’t just carry her under one arm to get her onboard. We do have a gangway, but at the moment we are getting by with just placing her two front paws onboard and then lifting her back end onto the deck. She seems to have no problem with the limited space on the boat. She’s eating her usual dog food, which is a good sign. She gets several walks a day around the island of Vindön, but she isn’t keen on swimming yet. Perhaps because the water temperature is only 7°C at the moment.
Senna feels confortable on the foredeck
Which brings us to the weather. Sweden is not known for having summery weather in early April — a fact than I tried to explain to Jacques. As it’s usually springtime warm in Geneva in April, he couldn’t quite believe me. Well, he does now. Our first 2 days were a “balmy” 13°, but then it started raining. This morning it was only 3° — that’s close to freezing.
We do have heating on the boat, of course. In fact, we have there different ways to heat the boat — the diesel powered Eberspächer marine heater, two Dyson heaters for when we are hooked up to shore power, and the reverse cycle on the air-conditioning system which can heat up to 30°, also for when we are on shore power. So we are at least not going to freeze!
We use Command Strips to hang our paintings. They come right off if you decide you don’t want the artwork there anymore.
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