How we became sailors

 «I just met this amazing guy at Makerspace who was trying to fix a sail.They are docked here with a boat that they built on a farm and I am helping them with some IT problems. And guess who is sailing with them to Scotland?”

Hmmmm. I wonder.

Less than two weeks later, my husband was off sailing on a homemade boat – Sailing the Farm – to Scotland. A week later, he was back. And he was smitten. This was in 2015 - a short time after my last blog (How to marry an entrepreneur) ended.

He soon afterwards bought a small Junker to learn to sail around Flekkerøya and then Grimstad once we moved there. Then he discovered “Find a crew” and set out on a few trips with strangers, including taking a boat from Brazil to the Canary Islands. He signed up for a trip from Chile to French Polynesia and another from Hawaii to Alaska. This was in 2020. 

And then everything changed. The pandemic prevented both of these trips from happening and the Junker was no longer enough of a challenge. With home office from the cabin in the mountains, the mouse started wandering and Reidar found himself looking at larger sailboats he could captain himself. We looked at a few before he fell for an old, RELATIVELY affordable Hallberg Rassy docked near Oslo. The Mabu Hay.

When we bought the Mabu Hay, we knew that the motor was close to the end of its life, and this meshed well with Reidar’s idea of attempting to electrify a sailboat. However, we did not realise just HOW close to the end of its life the motor was. We had trouble even sailing it out from Oslo and it was clear by the time that we got it back to Arendal that the electrification project could not wait. The journey from Oslo to Arendal was the only trip in 2020. We pulled the boat up and Reidar started the process of electrification in collaboration with Green Waves. The Mabu Hay became a living lab while Reidar’s company, Utleieboksen, was developing a control system for boat rental at the same time.

As the summer holidays of 2021 started approaching, the battery packs were in place and connected to the motor, but the rest of the electrical system had been ripped out and there was no oven, no working toilet, no lights, no lamps and no nothing.

I may or may not have said something like, “What the hell is the point of having such an expensive boat if we are not going to use it?” and then a few days later, but long after Midsummer, we were off.

I did not start out wanting to sail. In fact, I get seasick on the ferry to Denmark. I am not a strong swimmer. I am scared of the ocean and most things in it. I love to travel by plane and to far away places. I like to be warm. I wasn’t interested in learning a new skill that could potentially mean the difference between life or death. I was OK with Reidar having a boat that he could sail himself while I cooked and served drinks, and I was pretty clear about that.

We left Arendal in the early hours of the morning in a type of a fog or haze unlike anything I have ever experienced before or since. I understand while I am writing this that I don’t have the words to describe it. I remember understanding for the first time why artists are drawn to painting the sea – to trying to capture it. I don’t know of any other way that you could possibly even attempt to capture the nuances of the color, the light and the lack of both. The stillness was extraordinary. It must be experienced.

In 2021, we sailed from Arendal to Egersund and back primarily to test the batteries, propulsion and control systems. For anyone interested in elecrification, there was a lot of fact-finding and product development. There were a few moments of terror for me as we navigated around the southern tip of Norway in waves and wind. If you have an electric car and think you know what range anxiety is, try an electric boat.

I kept a log of this trip in our Harbour Guide books and documented it all in an album on Facebook while Reidar kept technical logs and continued work on Utleieboksen. He worked all day while we were in harbor while I went on long hikes in beautiful southern Norway, discovering Egersund, Båly and my new favorite: Hidra. I really enjoyed sharing the experience with friends and family. Three years, a few more experiences and a deleted Facebook account later, I am starting this blog as we soon set sail for Stockholm. 

So, why the clicheed title of the blog? Well, to be honest: despite my not wanting to learn to sail, be cold, be frightened or be sleeping in a tiny bedroom for four weeks, all Reidar would have had to have done to get me on board was to play me this song:

Come sail away

It's by Styx and it was on the first mixed tape a boy ever gave me.