Looking forward to getting away.

Our dry food has arrived, I finished  72+ waypoints over 725 km all the way to Riga marked in both GPS and maps so we can find our way with ease. Although some of thousands of Islands along the Finnish coast will make for interesting navigation.

The weather is still looking good for Fridays open crossing of 30 km to the first Islands before Åland. But the winds change that night to more head or side winds at 6-12 metres per second, so this will be a bit slower the following days. Some low pressure systems are due over the next week, so thats not such great news either.

One other small problem is my ear has an small infection, but I had it seen to yesterday and hope to have it under control.

Babs is in good shape, after paddling around the South Island of New Zealand I guess Ill be following her later on in the days when we start getting tired. I experienced this before after Norway's circumnavigation :-)

Cheers

James & Babs

Hope the good weather holds.

Its just a few days and we have amazing weather right now in Sweden, we just hope it holds for a while longer. See how it looks for Mariehamn in Åland at the moment!

Busy with sorting maps, routes and waypoints into our Garmin 60 cxs GPS, plus getting the two Barracuda´s ready. This included for example:

-  Built in  drinking system using a 3 litre Source Widepac bladder behind the seat with a tube through the deck reaching forward.

-  Compasses mounted to the front hatch covers.

- Securing the rudder lines so as they cant come loose in the middle of the Åland sea.

So we are just waiting on the dry food to arrive from Naturkompaniet, this is a mix of Wildlife and Real. We have learnt to take the best of the two, these will be mainly for lunches, dinners will be fresher food such as tortelini with pesto, mashed potato with beef or Rice, vegetables and Tuna.

Cheers

James 

7 days till we leave..

Its a week before we will leave Dala-Floda, and I have now found a way we can blog on the water via my mobile phone when ever we have a GSM connection. So Babs and I hope to keep you updated with some text and photos. 

As soon as we get home we will have some photos and possibly some film to upload.

So we are now busy finishing up jobs around work and starting to pack. We were hoping for a new model kayak from Prijon, but decided to take some fast sleek Prijon Barracuda´s that we have been using for training the last 2 weeks.

The Tracking function will start working the 1st of August, it will follow us for the last 24 hours, so you will be able to follow our progress.

Have a great day.

James & Babs.