Autumn sailing and a boat transport

Current location: Waxholm, Sweden

“Oh man, it’s really dark” my friend says as we head out of the harbor. “Sure” I say, “it’s October”. I’m helping my friend Fredrik to move his 31 ft. boat 130 nm from Öregrund to Uppsala. At this point it’s 10.30 pm and we’re up for a long night. Personally, I wouldn’t have planned to go out that late in those weather conditions, but Fredrik wanted to get some practice with navigating in the dark. With a SOG of 5 knots we slowly but surely made our way down south, with gusts of wind of up to 30 knots. Once I’d gotten accustomed to the idea that I’d be pulling an all-nighter, I quite enjoyed navigating with the lighthouses and lights. We made it to our first bridge at Dragets kanal around 4 am, and stopped for some sleep. The day after was a beautiful autumn morning that I enjoyed with some coffee. At around 6 pm I received an email saying that I could come help sail a cat from Italy to Spain starting two days from then. Having to sort out laundry and last-minute packing and airplane ticket purchase, I got off the boat once we hit Stockholm, and left her in the hands of the other crewmembers. It was a nice little journey, but Italy trumps a rainy October any day.