Been a while since I've got round to posting anything new, not really sure if anyone's reading this stuff anyway but I'll try to post some updates never the less.
Once at the summer house we had about 10 days to lounge around and do typical Swedish summer house type stuff. This essentially involves eating a lot and drinking loads of wine. A big part of this though is doing a bit of hunter gathering type stuff.
We put out stömming(herring) nets in the evening and got up early to collect the catch. Someone once said to me 'you will never be a fisherman', but I can now safely say that we had the biggest haul of the season on our first attempt. As well as getting points for catching herring, you also loose points for catching simpa, a spiny bugger of a fish that is unedible and horrible to remove from the nets.
Here we are picking off the ströming from the nets.
...and the final result...
...57 ströming and 0 simpa, a fine catch indeed.
Henrik, Nina's brother in law, is a very fine cook indeed and prepared them both in the traditional 'butterflied and fried' way as well as smoking some in Nina's mum's new smoking machine to create little smoked herring, böckling in Swedish.
There was also a lot of gathering of wild strawberries, raspberries and blue berries which ended up in various deserts at the daily barbecue feast.
As well as the eating and drinking, another common Swedish summer pass time is building stuff. This is one of my favorite things about Sweden, you can buy anything you need to build anything you want in Sweden in numerous excellent DIY type stores that put Homebase to shame. The projects this year were continuing work on a new sauna, installing the electricity and finishing off the roof, and building a wooden staircase in the garden that Nina's sister, Erica, and Henrik designed and Nina and I installed.
My camera started plating up, but you can see the sauna to the left and the foundation for the stairs in the picture below.
Marie was anchored off the jetty most of the time we were there, the wind usually blows from the East in the bay where the summer house is located, but the winds picked up 20+ knots from the South, leaving Marie hanging just a few meters from a lee shore. Although the anchor did seem to be holding, it was just too close for comfort, and a neighbour very kindly let us use his mooring boy until the wind died down a bit.
One other highlight of the summer house was a visit from Nina's great uncle Rolf, who is now in his 80's. He is a lovely man, and we took him out for a short sail in Marie, his first time ever sailing which delighted him, and me for that matter.
It was a nice break from passage making every day, but in the end I had to get Marie back home.
Once at the summer house we had about 10 days to lounge around and do typical Swedish summer house type stuff. This essentially involves eating a lot and drinking loads of wine. A big part of this though is doing a bit of hunter gathering type stuff.
We put out stömming(herring) nets in the evening and got up early to collect the catch. Someone once said to me 'you will never be a fisherman', but I can now safely say that we had the biggest haul of the season on our first attempt. As well as getting points for catching herring, you also loose points for catching simpa, a spiny bugger of a fish that is unedible and horrible to remove from the nets.
Here we are picking off the ströming from the nets.
...and the final result...
...57 ströming and 0 simpa, a fine catch indeed.
Henrik, Nina's brother in law, is a very fine cook indeed and prepared them both in the traditional 'butterflied and fried' way as well as smoking some in Nina's mum's new smoking machine to create little smoked herring, böckling in Swedish.
There was also a lot of gathering of wild strawberries, raspberries and blue berries which ended up in various deserts at the daily barbecue feast.
As well as the eating and drinking, another common Swedish summer pass time is building stuff. This is one of my favorite things about Sweden, you can buy anything you need to build anything you want in Sweden in numerous excellent DIY type stores that put Homebase to shame. The projects this year were continuing work on a new sauna, installing the electricity and finishing off the roof, and building a wooden staircase in the garden that Nina's sister, Erica, and Henrik designed and Nina and I installed.
My camera started plating up, but you can see the sauna to the left and the foundation for the stairs in the picture below.
Marie was anchored off the jetty most of the time we were there, the wind usually blows from the East in the bay where the summer house is located, but the winds picked up 20+ knots from the South, leaving Marie hanging just a few meters from a lee shore. Although the anchor did seem to be holding, it was just too close for comfort, and a neighbour very kindly let us use his mooring boy until the wind died down a bit.
One other highlight of the summer house was a visit from Nina's great uncle Rolf, who is now in his 80's. He is a lovely man, and we took him out for a short sail in Marie, his first time ever sailing which delighted him, and me for that matter.
It was a nice break from passage making every day, but in the end I had to get Marie back home.
