Lokala.org

Contrary to jny’s earlier posting, I presume that the fatigue we suffered of this morning was caused by the hotter-than-hell chili hash of yesterday, rather than than the bad air of Hangö. But this is just a theory.

Today’s trip was no more than 21 nautical miles in 2,5 hours. The weather was quite nice for a while. We outran some dark clouds outside Hangö (Hanko) and actually enjoyed a sunny warm weather with the wind at our backs. But as we now sit in Kasnäs guest harbour the clouds have caught us and it looks like we’ll get some rain tonight. And as usual, we took the traditional harbour-beer.

Our captain is missing from the picture. He didn’t take part in the tradition this time, since he took the harbour-beer (beers) in advance yesterday. As did the rest of the crew too, but the crew is so superstitious that they don’t dare to miss a good tradition. :)

Here’s a picture of the nerd central. The geek factor on this boat is quite high, as you may see. The phones and the digital cameras are missing from the picture since we can’t charge all batteries at once…

That’s Kasnäs.

We are enjoying the traditional beer. The tradition is one cold one when we reach the harbour of the night.

Wind E 3-7 m/s. Speed 10 kn. Course 287.

Hangö (Hanko) is disappearing behind us at the speed of about 9 knots as we head west. Due to the slow morning and late start we’ve decided to make this a short day on the sea. Our target is Kasnäs.

The weather is usually dull and it is quite windy. We manage to pass the tower without incidents. The first time we passed it (the 2001 odyssey) the left roof hatch blew into the sea. The rescue operation lasted for about 15 minutes.

The toll officers probably had their day’s laugh as we were circling the floating hatch trying to get the boat into position for grabbing and lifting it up. The boat has a long keel and the turning radius is probably around 50 meters so precise positioning, especially in strong wind, is not easy.

It turns out that DNA provides WLAN access in the guest harbour on Smultrongrundet. Sadly you cannot get access for one day or so but have to be a subscriber. The service is not cheap. The fee for flat rate is 90 euros per month. There are cheaper alternatives, but they are not flat rate.

Public WLAN doesn’t seem to be a big thing here in Finland. At least not affordable WLAN. Perhaps the good GPRS access slows down the WLAN expansion. Many WLAN operators offer GSM and GPRS access too. Maybe they don’t want to eat market share of their lucrative GPRS traffic (mine is over 2 euros per megabyte).

The air in Hangö must be bad. It kept us awake until early morning and now we are suffering from extreme fatigue.