Carra Tidings

18th July

The car was full to the gunnels with all sorts of boat stuff which we had been gathering in the house. I am a regular shopper at West Marine in Seattle – so amongst our boat goodies was a second anchor which I am sure must have raised a few eyebrows in American Security. We were taking the overnight ferry from Turku to Stockholm – which is a beautiful crossing through the Turku and Stockholm Archipelagos and the Aland Islands.

We had planned to sail that day – but both of us were shattered after numerous drunks decided to argue/ yodel outside our cabin on the ferry – plus it was raining and there was thunder. Neither of which made the idea of a sail very appealing. So we decided to stay put and chill- after all it was a holiday. We provisioned the boat and found the local chandlery ( as clearly we didn’t have enough boat stuff), and I spent the rest of the afternoon making up some permanent mooring lines.

We emptied the car – only to fill it up again – as Carra had acted as a big waterborne Ocado Van from the UK and every spare space had been crammed with everything from bottles of wine through to washing liquid – all at a fraction of the price of Finland.