Home Port!

The Journeyman has arrived in it’s home port, Stockholm. The trip was quite eventful. We started motoring in rather rough weather, 20-25 knots of wind and choppy seas. After 7 or 8 hours it was obvious that the engine was going to give us troubles again. I can remember how many times I have cleaned out the fuel filters now. Four? Seems one more time will be needed.

I also noticed that the steering was feeling like it had lots of air in it, and as the sun came up I started hunting for a leak. The hunt was successful, but the result was problematic: The steering oil was running out through the air ventilation hole in the top. This hole is supposed to be there, so I can’t really call it a leak. But it is not supposed to be possible to loose all oil out of the system this way. But we did, anyway. So as we were arriving at Landsort, we had no steering and almost no engine… The situation got a little bit hectic for a while, but I stole some hydraulic oil from the rigging hydraulics and poured it into the steering to make it work again. And a quick filter flush made the engine come a little bit alive again.

The rest of the journey was made under sail, with 1 crew member sitting at the steering pump and keeping the air vent hole blocked with a thumb! The sailing was downwind, and since the rigging is not fully installed yet it was not a good test of how the yacht sails. But it was enough to tell me that there are no disasters in the sailplane balance anyway, which is very very nice.

The sails fit very well, so far I can only see a couple of small details that will need some modifications. Excellent work from Hamel Sails!

I have no Internet access from my own computer at the moment, so no photos from me, sorry! But here is a short clip from one of the boats that met us: https://journeyman.se/wp-content/uploads/jm60-baggen.mp4