Viking Boats and Beds

Well it's Wednesday and we just finished both our individual and group presentations this past week. The past few days have been extremely busy and action-filled, so I'll try to go back and recap some of the highlights.

On Saturday, a group of us from the program went sailing on the Baltic. Together, we had a small motorboat, two smaller sail boats (dinghy's), and one large 'viking' sailboat capable of holding 12 people (I'm not kidding, the boat is actually an old Viking-style boat that looks pretty sweet).

Check out our pictures at our picasa site.

We started off in the late morning and after figuring out how to get the sails up (we did have one native sailing Swede with us, thanks Sven, that knew what he was doing), we were towed out to the open water (relatively, we were still among the many islands surrounding Karlskrona) by the motor boat. Once on our own, we managed to sail towards the local Yacht Club to meet up with the two dinghy's. Now there was one instance where we had to spin around in a full circle to avoid a rocky island fairly close to us - not exactly the most efficient way of sailing but it got us to where we wanted to go.

For the next few hours, we sailed out to an island called Aspo that has an old naval fortress built on it. We spent lunch there and explored many of the random rooms and hallways throughout the fortress. Then coming back to Karlskrona, Matt and I both switched over to the smaller dinghy's. And boy was that an experience. For those of you unfamiliar with sailing, the main sail has a very large (and pretty solid) bar that swings out along the bottom to support the sail. This bar is known as the boom. Now the boom is named the boom for one main reason - and new sailors quickly come to understand this. I was no exception.

I was sailing with two other guys, one of which has done some sailing in the past and was able to help guide us back home. Wyeth was in charge of steering, Dylan was on the front sail, and I was tasked with operating the boom. Immediately as we left the dock, we quickly realized how important it was to properly align both the sails. After a bit of commotion trying to figure out how to move the sails, we began to get the hang of what to do.

And that's when I learned how the boom sail got it's name.

So one of the important parts of sailing is a move called tacking. When sailing with the wind, t's fairly easy to get to where you want to go. However when you are sailing into the wind, you need to strategically zig-zag back and forth to eventually get you in the right direction. This is known as tacking.

So the captain, or the guy steering, is the one responsible for announcing when to tack. When he states 'come about,' both the people on the sails release the ropes holding the sail down and then let the sails swing to the other side of the boat. Now this isn't that difficult to do with the front sail, but the boom sail requires some concentration. Once you release your rope and the boat begins to turn around, the boom sail rather quickly comes swinging around to the other side.

Now, to be fair, I really didn't know this was about to happen (at least so quickly). But I quickly found out that when the boom starts to swing, you better be ducking. Sadly, this was not the case for the first time, and my forehead quickly met the boom sail (or more exactly, the boom bar). Fortunately, I had a hat on and the bar caught part of the rim and slightly ricocheted off my head. So it could have been worse, but I most deffinitely did not make that mistake again.

The rest of the sail back was pretty easy going and we ended up getting back first to meet up with the rest of the crew coming in the Viking boat. After sitting in the port for about 45 minutes, we finally saw the motorboat peak around one of the islands with the Viking boat towed behind. Unsure why it had taken them so long to return, we at the dock were slightly confused when we finally saw the boat pull into port with many of the people on the boat wearing dripping wet pants.

What we soon found out was that on the way home, the Viking boat apparently steered themselves straight into a shallow cove and beached themselves on an uninhabited island. 30 minutes later and after half of the group had got into the water to try and push the boat out, they finally found the motorboat who helped them get pulled to port.

So needless to say, it was an eventful day. So we decided to celebrate and grab pizza at one of the local shops. As with any other incident where we have to try and order from a Swedish menu, we had no idea what we were about to eat. So I was pleasantly surprised when I found in the center of my pizza a hardboiled egg. Way to go Swedes!

So that was Saturday, then on Sunday we got some different and sadly disappointing news. So our class held a large garage sale to raise some money for the program. From this sale, one of our roomates Lea got a bed (which she was quite thrilled about). On Sunday however, she came to the realization that not only did she get just a bed, but she got a few friendly bug beds who decided to catch a ride.

As great as that was for the bed bugs, it wasn't so great for all of us. So the last few days have been spent washing and cleaning and washing and cleaning (and throwing out the critter carrying bed). Now, Matt wasn't too thrilled about having to touch the bed to throw it out, fearful that the bed bugs might find him more attractive than the bed them came on. So, in another brilliant idea, we poked two holes in a plastic shopping bag for him to wear as an additional protective layer. Granted a trash bag may have been a more appropriate size, but the shopping bag sufficed for the time being.

So that's been the last week. This Friday we are heading with the program on a weekend field trip to Vaxjo. This community has been classified as the greenest city in all of europe. So I'm sure there will be lots of thoughts and stories to share after this weekend.

Hope everyone back home is doing well!!

-Spud