Uusikaupunki Summer!

I have just written a long post, and it has disappeared, not sent. Grrrrrrrr!! Try again. 

Yesterday evening, at nearly nine o’clock, the outside and inside temperatures were both 28,5 degrees, and that was in the ‘cool’ of the evening. Yes, summer is here. 

A motorsail yesterday north up the main channel, not relaay enough wind, and then lots of navigating in to this charming town with the unpronounceable name. The charts and lanes are peppered with markers, and the depth, or shallowth, of the lane one is negotiating. Need to pay attention, otherwise surprises. Pressing need to find a chart-shop, as we are now almost off the edge of the present ones. 

If you look at the map of this place, you will see that it is all in rectangles, about fifty meters each. All houses are similar, of wood, painted in a variety of colours, some fading, so must have been built all about the same time. A placard on the hard here tells of much maritime activity, customs, smuggling and prosperity. Probably to do with timber, as there are trees everywhere still. A large factory area, outside the town on the way in here, was belching both white and brown smoke, luckily out to sea, so there is still prosperity.

The heat sent me to the supermarket, air conditioned of course. Reckon that a lot of others had done the same. Anothr country, another system in the ‘super’. You pick up, for example, your carrots, and take them to the weighing machine. Behind is a large tablet of, not icons as in Sweden, numbers, a hundred of them. Help! Nobody could, until a young teenager showed me how. The carrot-shelf has a number. So, back to the carrot shelf, find and remember it and return to the weighing machine. Wait in queue. My turn. What was that number again? Whatever, the machine squirts out a sticky lable to be stuck onto a suitable carrot. No problem when you know how, but it taxes the number-remember part of the brain a bit. Shopping priority had to be strict, as it had to be carried the halfhour back to the boat. Choose the shady route. Find a bench half way. Sit and watch. Smalls in prams not happy. Pram-pushing mums none too happy either.

WiFi here is intermittent, and free, but only if you sit in everybody’s way outside the cafe. Roaring trade in cooling drinks and ice creams. One small boy angry because his favourite one was sold out. 

Goal for the day is not Rauma, the next largish place, but a lighthouse, Kylmäpihlaja, with small harbour, out to sea a bit. 61 09 / 21 18. Praised by the harbour-book, it will avoid the long navigational-knitting to and from the town. 

There is a breeze, from the SW, which will be perfect for a sail today if it holds. All’s well, from SailorJohn.