The Best Laid Plans - 59° 50' 38" N 19° 07' 24" E

It took just phone call for the best laid plans - our plan for the summer - to be thrown out the window, or the porthole in this case.  Tossed away in favour of a different adventure, for one more daring, more thrilling and much, much more scary.  An adventure that doesn't even include Chinook!  Oh my, what are we doing??

Our Swedish friend Niklas is planning a trip to Svalbard.  Svalbard is described in the Norway Cruising Guide, not as The North, nor The Far North but The Farthest North!  Due to the lingering effects of the Gulf Stream, the west coast is generally ice free and one is able to sail to 80°N - a mere 600nm from the North Pole.  It will be an amazing adventure but he has some time constraints that means he cannot do a return trip aboard his yacht Myrca this year. 

His solution - he will sail Myrca to Svalbard, then have us meet him there, he will fly home and leave us to sail Myrca from Longyearbyen in Svalbard back to Bodø in Norway!  This is an adventure high above the Arctic Circle. It involves a journey of almost 600nm across the Arctic Ocean and a further 200nm wiggling down through the fjords of northern Norway.  There will be fog and ice and polar bears!

And no surprise to you, I am sure, we have agreed. 

The current plan for June/July

And so to the details of our revised plan!  We will do a loop of the northern Baltic - Stockholm, Åland, Helsinki, Tallinn then back to Stockholm where we will tie up and leave Chinook.  On June 29, we fly to Longyearbyen and join Niklas aboard Myrca. He will depart Myrca early July, leaving us as co-captains and crew. We will spend a couple of weeks there before heading south as the weather allows. We will be back on Chinook early August.

From there, we will sail Chinook to Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, then back through the Kiel Canal to the UK. Our plan is to be in Portugal by end of September so Kate can head back to Australia for Emily and Jack's wedding.  From there, the plan is for warmth - Morocco, The Canaries...

You can track us by clicking the "Where Are We" link on our blog - or simply click here!

The plan for August - December

And should you like to join us along the way this year - remember we will give you a time or a place but not both!