Exter at Hallberg Rassy Owners' gallery

...today on January 14th http://www.hallberg-rassy.com/news/daily-updates/daily-updates-post/owner-gallery-33/.

Top 3 moments of the last summer - Crew's No 2a

Its the crew's turn to announce their first runner-up, the Seskarö sands. There are the two famous park-head-in-to-beach locations, Sammakkalahti and Sorttisviken. I can tell you dear reader that I get to hear regularly my crew raving about these locations, so impressed they are about them. And I agree it is a new perspective for myself too.

First some pics on Sammakkalahti. The sand bank over water is actually quite small. When arriving from the opening from the north we had to come close to see the sand, this mini-peninsula,  even with binoculars. The profile of the sand formation is wedge-like. The southern side of the bank is actually the one to moor into and it declines steeply. While moored the vessel depth measurements went gaga and showed fast changing digits between 5 to 7 meters. Maybe this was a technical anomaly rather than actual measurement, assumedly caused by the steepness or some debris. The northern side of the peninsula is very shallow and it gets the depth again slowly. Here is link to air view. In the first two pics you can see by carefully looking little buoys indicating the shallowness. In addition of the geographical uniqueness the thing my crew is so impressed about is the concept of being able to go down the ladder in the bow and set one's feet on sand. Bare feet on warm sand. Possible use the summer warm water (18C) to wash off any of it before climbing to the boat. This thought puts smile on my crew's faces specially in today's weather conditions of -8C without any snow.

I still would like to add that I do not put my feet in to water and that I do not dream about it. I rather post my own first runner-up once the crew has finished with the Seskarö sands; Sorttisviken will be posted next.

Summer vacation 2012 - Sammakkalahti

We left Huvön very early in the morning as anchor alarm woke us up - the wind had woken up and blew in exactly from the bay opening causing small but effective waves running into us.  Captain decided that we will not re-acnhor but we move to an other bay very close to Huvön, to sleep few hours and then continue to Sammakkalahti. I have never run to the cockpit as fast as then - I thought that finally the crew realized that four am is a excellent time to make day's first bird observations. But no, they just started the engine and very fast collected the anchor and motored out from the bay. Getskär-Renskär is very close to Huvön and its bay is protected by mostly underwater reef that settles the waves. We decided to check if SXK buyou would be available and it was. We settled down quickly, continued our sleep for few hours and woke up to notice that the wind was totally calmed down. We had long drive ahead of us, with engine - how unpleasant.

We arrived in Sammakalahti late afternoon and it was very warm and sunny, perfect day for enjoying a beach.The mini peninsula was full of sun bathers and swimmers - my crew told me they have never before parked the boat like this. There was also entertainment for the beach folks as the captain wanted to test how the dinghy works in anchoring business, practicing the double anchor technique. This resulted that the anchor was relocated three times. "Jobbig"(hard) was a statement from our audience on the sand.

One of the lighthouses on our way through Kalix coast.

It is possible
to have such moments in your life
that
the Sun
shines from your mast.

Sammakkalahti is located between the Seskarö's  westmost "fingers" pointing to north, here is the map.