What made it up for me

If you wanna know what made me move aboard this boat, read my story on Sailing Anarchy today. And don't ask me why they haven't thought of making an easy solution with trackbacks to each of the SA articles, it's a pain-in-the-a to find what you need, but scroll down a bit and you'll find it a couple of posts down. /T

Pic has nothing to do with the story, it's just a sweet memory of my first summer on board. And some of my beautiful friends on a visit.

Let's go!!

Cake time. I'm taking a break! Oh my freakin' lord what a mess it is down here. The boat is inside out with things everywhere, everywhere where they're not supposed to be and there's tools in every nook and cranny and I can barely keep my mind sane in this d i s a s t e r, also called our home. Trying to clean up the mess and five minutes later it looks like someone turned the boat completely up side down. Alex tells me it is not time for baking when there is millions of things to finish before the sun goes down, I claim that he doesn't know me by now.. I need my cake therapy to be able to go through this! I need to put on some Portishead on very high volume, put my hands in a bowl full of eggs and distract myself with delicate measurements.

I also told him that we should cast off and leave Barcelona tonight. Let's forget the missing things and let them be sent to some other harbor along the way. I can't stand this goddamn stress no more. If only, if only... It is not the amount of tasks that's stressing me most, it is the knowledge of that the freedom is awaiting us just around the corner. In not so many hours, we'll be free, unbound, released and that is what is most disturbing, frustrating, exhilarating, nerve-breaking, exciting in the life of moi, at the moment.

Will add the recipe for the cake here later on when Alex stops insisting on me to do this and that and this....

And yes, I can clearly see that it looks like a christmas cake and associated winter ambience, just another reason why we should leave. NOW! It's too f-cking cold over here!! Give me the Caribbean! Or at least take me to Morocco! /T

Sponsors

Someone was asking us what is the idea with the sponsors and what influence do they have on this journey so I'll tell you about it. We decided, already in the very beginning of the preparations, that it would be suitable with some sponsors. Simply because, as you might be aware of, it is not totally inexpensive to quit working and cast off for a two year long circumnavigation. Some of the companies to whom we've been customers for a while, offered discounts on their products and we thought it would be nice if we, in return, could take the chance to mention them in one way or the other, on this blog. The other sponsors listed are companies which we've approached with an offer to sponsor our tour. We had a list of things that required greater investments and for those we've been interested to discuss sponsor opportunities - and we're glad that almost all of the brands that we've been in touch with, have been keen to participate in some way. They've agreed on participating simply because they believed in our project/us, and because they understood what the journey/blog might generate in marketing value for their brand, on a longer perspective.

We've decided to not bring in any brands to this project that does not fit our style/lifestyle/values and all of the companies we are and will be working with in the future must be such as we honestly want to be connected with. Things we would invest in anyway. As we are not in desperate need of sponsorships, we can set the rules as we like and there will never be such things as putting brands and their logos all over our boat and never would we wear nor promote brands we wouldn't spend money on, ourselves.

On the picture above, I'm wearing a cap from one of my favorite Swedish brands 'Permanent Vacation' - which is one of the lines I picked up for my fashion boutique some years ago. I was in touch with one of the designers very recently and she loved the idea of having their caps and clothes sailing around the world so they've decided to sponsor our tour with some fashionable clothing for both me and Alex. I'm happy to both wear and promote them once again, as that is a brand that I truthfully value and would wear even in the case they didn't gave us the stuff for free.

I cannot say we've only been lucky to get such great sponsors as we have, as there's obviously great work behind this project - but we're blessed to have achieved such a strong position that some of the greatest brands within, and outside of, the sailing industry - have believed in us/this project and the future of it.

Right now we're happy to announce that these brands are sponsoring The World Tour: North Sails (sails), Sperry Top Sider (shoes), Sailomat (windvane), Katadyn (watermaker), Accastillage Diffusion Barcelona (boat gear and electronics), Remoska (electrical oven), Permanent Vacation (clothing), Carol (technical production of our new website, coming up soon). Other brands mentioned in the list to the right: Hallberg Rassy and The Barcelona Guide, they're simply there as we have a personal interest in them and we would like to promote them to the extent we can.

We are thankful for the collaborations and we're anxious to bring above mentioned products and services with us around the world. Looking forward to long lasting relations with all of the companies participating.

/Taru

Fresh water tank

Other funny things we're messing around with.. The inspection plates on the water tank were badly oxidized, so we needed to take them out, clean the tank and change the plates. Not sure of how these type of things are mounted in newer boats but this was a bit of a tricky thing to sort out. The screw holders which were holding the aluminum plates needed to get cut out with the grinder in order to get the plates out and the cleaning of the tanks inside weren't that easy as it might sound. Alex will now make new plates in stainless steel to minimize the risk of getting new oxidation in the tank. Glad to have it all done before the watermaker is getting installed. /T

THE list

We're checking off thing after thing on our lists. But with only 19 days left, we still have a crazy amount of things to accomplish before we can leave Barcelona. Here we go:

• Deck and exterior refit - Including replacement of hatches, new 46ST genoa winches in cockpit, the teak needs to get refitted (that goddamn teak's still not done and the rain doesn't quite help the process!!), portholes (will arrive this week), wind-vane installation's under development, bathing platform needs to get mounted. The watermaker is ordered and on the way. A new set of sails is also ordered and will probably not be here on time, but await us in Gibraltar. Need to haul out the boat to install new seacocks and at the same time we'll need to make some serious polishing of the hull.
• Interior refit - Including new mahogany for the galley working area, new curtains up, need to invent a better system for storing the kitchenware and glasses.
• Book order from Amazon - There will come plenty of times when one needs to get entertained and also times when one needs to fill up the knowledge bank - so books have been/will be ordered with a wide variety of subjects such as: Globalization, Nihilism, Kite Surfing, World War I & II, Fruits in the tropics, Film Noir, French/Swedish lexicon, The philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Cruising in the Windward islands, Islands of the Pacific, Introduction to capitalism, Cooking with sprouts, Ocean fishing, Haruki Murakami collection etc...
• Music list - One thing we'll seriously be missing is the access to Spotify. The detachment from this little digital wonder requires us to download millions of cd's to our ipod's and computers. A major time-consuming task, that's for sure..
• Provisioning - The boat needs to get filled up with food and wine of course, most of it done.
• Movie downloading - All those classics and everything we still haven't had the time to watch.
• Documentation equipment - We'll need to upgrade our equipment and this is under progress as well. Just ordered our dream camera from Canon with HD video possibility and it will hopefully arrive in next week. Some new lenses to that and we're all set.
• Sport section - Kite gear, new cylinders for diving, two foldable bikes... holy shit, where's that bigger boat when we need it!
• Medicine section - Not even started.
• Insurance - Under development.
• Internet - Under development...

We have exactly 27.360 minutes to fulfill these tasks, shouldn't be impossible, what do you think?

Time for a break

It is a ridiculous amount of rain that is showering Barcelona and nearby regions at the moment. Perfect in time for the current mounting of our new Lewmar hatches and the associated applying of new fiber glass around them. Not!! Although we should worry about how much water there's actually leaking in through the not-yet-sealed-hatch-openings, we have totally decided to leave that project aside for some hours and instead we're chilling down with a couple of (not homemade) pizzas and a movie on the laptop. /T

The perfect mix between sweet and salt

Fried chicken with a sweet bean salad

Pan fry your marinated chicken and prepare the salad in the meanwhile.

I've used these ingredients:

A handful of rucola

A handful of baby spinach

A bunch of mung bean sprouts

1 Comice pear (whatever pear goes, it's the sweet taste and the firm, grainy texture you're after)

Some red pepper

Blue cheese

I've chosen to made the dressing very sweet and refreshing as there's a lot of taste in the chicken. My sweet dressing is simply made of some raspberry vinaigrette, which can be found in well-assorted grocery stores, and virgin olive oil.

Chicken's marinated in soy, salt, black pepper, sesame oil, chili pepper and a bit of fresh garlic.

Serve as a starter or a lunch salad. It is very, very delicious. /T