Maintaining a proper ship’s logbook is something that most boats should do, for practical, as well as legal and traditional reasons. The logbook can serve as a record of proper maintenance and operation of the vessel, which is potentially useful when selling the boat or handling an insurance claim. It can be a fun record of journeys made to look...

Just in time for a new cruising season to start, the story of our 2021 Baltic shakedown cruise is now online.

I haven’t mentioned this on the blog earlier, but in the end of 2018 we bought a small cruising sailboat. After some looking, we went with a Van de Stadt designed Oceaan 25, a Dutch pocket cruiser from the early 1980s. S/Y Curiosity is an affordable and comfortable boat for cruising with 2-4 people, but also needed major maintenance work....

Exactly a year ago today we flew from Berlin to Tenerife to depart on a sailing trip across the Atlantic on the Finnish sail training schooner T/S Helena. The Grid had just reached 10.000 founding members, and it was time to charge batteries before the next big push towards the beta.

It seems that with the rising oil prices the Age of Sail is returning, even if in a modified format. SkySails is a system that enables freighters to tap into high-altitude winds with a power kite to reduce fuel consumption.

Now, this one has been on my TODO list for a while:

Mika Naimark has posted his trip report of the Shnjaka sown ship expedition last summer:

2005-06-27 17:45Z: Anchored for the night at N61.49,45 E36.06,73. We have made a tent out of the sail and wait on river Vodla for the forecasted SE wind.

I’m joining the Shnjaka expedition in east Carelia this weekend. Shnjaka is a viking ship built without a single nail using the old sowing techniques.