Changing your life

When Boat Names Matter…

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SV Sänna
It sometimes happens that we’re asked about our boat name and its origins, we are an English vessel and the spelling often seems a little strange to some. Sänna. It’s patently not English and when registering with confused harbourmasters in foreign harbours we are usually taken to be Swedes or Danes or maybe Norwegians, perhaps of some mysterious viking descent. In fact the origins are unusual and you might be interested to know a little more – the reason why our sailboat Sänna carries such a curious name. I can’t tell you everything though, not the whole story, not the sad bit…

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On Matters of Laundry

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Getting your whites whiter than white is no mean feat when living onboard a sailing boat and crossing oceans. It’s not just a question of your favourite wash powder brand…

 

Let’s face it, we stink! Well, no, not really, but most people assume we do and that we disguise our rancid body smells by using exotic lotions, just like the olden days during the Middle Ages. You see, we don’t have the modern day laundry appliances onboard Sänna that are found in even the most humblest of homes nowadays.

Whenever we get into any landlubber conversation with anyone remotely interested in how we manage our lives onboard a sailing boat, the first question we are asked in almost every instance is “How do you do your laundry?”…

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Is It Possible to Simply Disappear?

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In Thailand, in a bar, I met a guy who told me he’d eaten his brother. A few moments later he passed out drunk with his head on the bar. I looked down and his dog was unconscious too, lying spreadeagled on its back with its feet half in the air.

As we left, one of the young Thai girls working the bar slipped into my seat to patiently wait for the fellow to wake up. The guy was an old sea salt, complete with obligatory wild hair and long white wizened beard, a solo sailor who’d sailed into Thailand for one common reason. Nearly all lone round-the-world sailors end up in Ao Chalong at some point, usually with their dogs. Within a few short days he’d depart on his battered sail boat with a new Thai bride and the dog would be gone. We never found out what happened to their dogs…

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