The summer voyage has finally got underway, but it got off to a slow start. It took nearly two weeks to defuse a 'ticking bomb' (the gearbox), which was on the verge of serious malfunction. Read more about it here. The captain is alone on board; Katrine has to stay at work for the first half of the summer. A brisk southwesterly wind is providing good headwinds as I sail north along the Helgeland coast. I just need to make it there in time for when Katrine and her crew arrive by plane to sign on in Tromsø. A nice cup of tea and a slice of Katrines "Expedition Cacke" (Mormors recipe), higly helps on the motivation of a singlehanded sailor.

Nedriness Qoutient: 4/10 Over the winter, a good deal of the equipment has been stored at home. Now it must find its place aboard again, and John (Wind)Waine is being refitted. Wind wanes are the preserve of long-distance sailors, since they are designed for use on the open sea. We have had nothing but good experiences with this clever and reliable device for many years. This means that we would rather not be without it, even though Moon has two separate electric autopilots. The great strength of the wind rudder is that it does not use any electricity and is completely silent. The latter is very important when the person off-duty is trying to rest and sleep during a multi-day voyage. Once set, it keeps the boat on course according to the relative wind angle. However, it does restrict our manoeuvrability in narrow harbours, as it has an auxilliary rudder hanging at the very back of the boat and impedes movement when we need to manoeuvre carefully. That is why we do not mount the auxilia

Koopman boats are renowned for being excellent long-distance sailing vessels, yet surprisingly, there aren’t many of them in Norway. A special gathering recently took place at Moon’s home port in Elnesvågen when Hans Valderhaug’s ‘Anna’ paid a visit. Anna and Moon have clear similarities in terms of their design and rigging. Both boats have classic lines and a cutter rig. Anna is 39-foot buildt in aluminium, and based in the Oslo area. Over the years, the boat has proven its sturdiness as Hans and his wife Eli, have sailed it up and down the Norwegian coast several times, to Svalbard, and even crossed the Atlantic on their voyage to the Caribbean.

Nerdiness Quotient: 1/10 During 7 weeks this summer, we completed a 2,600 nautical mile round trip from our home port Elnesvågen located on the west coast of Central Norway to the world´s largest fjord system Scoresbysund, at the east cost of Greenland. Here we circumnavigated the largest island in Greenland, Milne Land. The voyage went directly from Norway via Iceland to Scoresbysund. Back home we went via Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Read about it in English here... Les om hele turen på norsk her...

Nerdiness Quotient: 5/10 Freeze-dried and vacuum-packed ready to be stowed away on board. In addition to ready-made casseroles, we also had packages of freeze-dried minced meat, for use in pizza etc., scrambled eggs, sour cream, mushrooms, various vegetables and fruit. The freeze-drying means that it does not need to be kept cold.

Nerdiness Quotient: 8/10 Internet has become a must wherever you go. Onboard there are two systems that keep us online most of the time. 4GXtream is a 4G router, which is used along the coast out to about 25 nautical miles from land. Starlink covers virtually all other locations. Both systems are connected to the same router with a "failover"so that 4G automatically takes over if Starlink goes offline. This way we don't have to switch manually on each device depending on which network provides coverage. Read about it here..