Josin’s 2022 cruise, #14

Gale-forced in Degerøhamn, (60 01.8N 20 22.9E)

We hop over a few days. Will fill in later.

Starting to explore the Åland islands, first stop from the capital Mariehamn was Degerø, after a gentle genaker sail the 18 nm in the strong sunshine and a small breeze. I’d been recommended that things would be hopping at the Summer Fair at Degerö. We arrived at much the same time as a group-sail of nearly a dozen boats sailing sort-of together, so much milling around and spaghetti of ropes until all were tied up, Josin in a narrow space at the end of the pontoon. Plenty people, plenty booths, plenty ice cream tents, plenty canned music, (loud), a local bakery with delicious fresh sourdough bread and an old shed absolutely loaded, shelves-to-the-roof, with second hand books, of which only three were in English. Finnish is hopeless, but Swedish is possible, if the author is not too advanced. Main attraction on the village green was a robot rodeo bull, considerately controlled by a joystick operator outside the «ring». Much laughter and a few cheers. There was a bakedpotato stall doing good trade, and a (fresh?)fish booth, doing some. Bought a couple of fillets of unpronouncable localfish for dinner, which tasted good.

As the day wore on, the canned music was replaced by a real dance band, which answered to expectations in getting enthusiastic feet and bodies moving to the insistant, throbbing, decibels. I retired to Josin, luckily at a low-decibel distance.

I slept, to the gentle sound of small wavelets lapping at the stern. Then, at a head-confusing, middle-of-the-night hour, the wind rushed upon our innocent selves, whipping up bobbing-and-rocking waves, accompanied by un-musical tones in rigging. Steady 20 knots (40 km/t), gusting to 25 and more. People appeared, in pyjams and maybe a jacket, rushing around assessing the situation. Fenders and ropes were dug out of lockers and chaos was gradually returned to semi-order. Sleep after that didn’t happen much, though the wind abated a little after dawn. It returned with renewed strength during the morning, and a new fenders-and-ropes session developed. My neighbour to starboard dispensed countless fenders, (I had used all mine), and my neighbour to port, fortunately a substantial Finn, was most helpful in adding stability by adding ropes to more of the mooring buoys aft, after extending the boat hook with the inevitable grey stickytape.

Rest of the day was intermittantly spent trying to get some more sleep. Difficult with the bobbling motion and the noisy slapping of waves on the stern. Forecast said that things would quieten down in the late afternoon, so we´’ll wait and see.

Alls wooblywell.