With the only solid point in my life gone, I did what I usually do in those situations: Moored the boats in Moss (where I am forbidden to visit), curled up in a ball of apathy and cried about it. That got old after a week or two (I've sort of lost track of some of the time), so I started sanitizing Nemi for a spot of illegal dumping. While I was extracting the last drops of diesel from the tank, a guy turned up and bought her for 15k. That's less than 10% of what I've spent, and I haven't seen a cent of it yet, but I do have a piece of paper saying that she's not mine, which is worth a hell of a lot to me.
While I was still giddy with the joy of having one of the deeper shadows lifted from my life, Dad offered me a job in Hundested, Denmark. I jumped at the chance, and got busy readying Nemi for her first major voyage. I enlisted Chris as crew, which turned out to be a major mistake. He's been fucked up in the head lately, I think from getting dumped repeatedly by Kaja, and he had no inhibitions towards taking it out on me. It started with bitching about everything, to disobeying direct orders while taking his turns at the helm, etc. It ended in Hundested, with him on a train and me single handing it home.
Meanwhile, the recent turn of events has given me back my urge to write. Sadly, my internet hardware has yet again committed harakiri, in yet another interesting way, so I've been prevented from updating since I left Moss. I'm now in Rörö, where The Nice People have made a spectacular entrance, shitting their idea of architecture all over the waterfront. While the looks of things are nearly enough to make me puke, at least they have given me a plethora of Wifi connections to choose from. I guess there's a silver lining in this one, too, but the weather it's brought is such that I don't care if it was solid gold. So-called progress can be an abhorrence.
I finally figured out what's wrong with the Autopilot. The fluxgate sensor, which for some reason was mounted in the mast, was half filled with water. Amazingly, after I drained it, shook out a few components that had corroded off the PCB and let it dry out in the sun for a few days, it's started generating a signal again. Sadly, the resolution seems to be about ten degrees, which is hardly sufficient for autopiloting. So far I've done most of the helming inside, using the wheel for steering and the radar as a turn rate indicator (it is more accurate than the human eye), but today the weather was so spectacular that I steered most of the way from the flybridge. With push button steering and no rudder indicator i've made a shamefully meandering track, but it was worth the extra fuel spent. What a day!
When I checked in here today, I expected my readership to have imploded on itself in my absence. Strangely, that was not so. I thank you for your patience. Twelve hour days take their toll, and the local hospitality is outstanding in the off-season, so I shall now proceed to hit the sack. I will be back, though. Promise.
