Arrived in Visby around 6 am. Not a soul in sight for a moment. Found the gest harbour without difficulty and moored in. The free watch, Fuss and Consultant carried on sleeping, Law, I and Chief Eng snapped a few photos and walked over to the passenger terminal of the Visby - Stockholm ferries for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. The café opened at 0630 as the ferry was preparing to leave around 7.05 and the terminal started getting busier.
The others woke up and Fuss added to our sandwiches with a fry, which upon our request was a little smaller than usual. Soon the services opened too and we rushed for the showers and refuelled 74.9 litres of diesel, confirming the consumption of our trusty Yanmar 3GM 30F at about 2 litres per hour, mostly driven at 2200 revs. Very reasonable against the winds and waves that we had pushed.
It would have been rude not to have a look around Visby, and the old part of it with medieval walls and beautiful churches and narrow alleys, so Fuss and Consultant went on a walkabout and Chief Eng and I hired bicycles for an hour, snapping photos as we went. Chief Eng then gave his bike to Law for half an hour to ride, so everybody got a feel of this place, well worth seeing.
Then we bought takeaway lunches and giving our chef a rest, enjoyed the lunches onboard. Law showed solidarity to Fuss and did the dishes and tidied up in the pentry too. Cast off was called at 1200 and without delay we set sail finding a North-Northwesterly beat at 340 degrees against a 30 degree NNE wind, which was blowing at 13.5 knots. After a couple of hours of fun sailing it became evident that until the NNE wind changed our progress would not meet the demands of the timetable. We tacked, started the engine and set a 53 degree course towards the Gulf of Finland.
Soon we will lose the mobile network coverage and will not be able to post updates until much closer to Helsinki, where we’d like to arrive on Saturday afternoon, the latest. It will be a tough ask with over 250 nautical miles to go, but we will give it a go. The wind direction should change by Saturday the latest, so we hope to finish the Viking Quest with our sails up, in a South-Southwesterly breeze.
There will probably be one final chapter in this blog in Helsinki and some photos posted a few days later. Life at sea isn’t too bad when you’ve got a great crew, good provisions and very importantly a great yacht, like Slender Delta. So the toughest task ahead will be settling back into reality and forgetting about Moby Dick for a while.
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