I shall carry this summer with me till the end of my life…
»Birk looked around in the twilight woods, and a strange mood came upon him; he did not know why. He did not understand that what he was feeling, almost like pain, was only the beauty and peace of the summer evening, nothing more. ›This summer,‹ he said, looking at Ronja. ›Yes, I shall carry this summer with me till the end of my life—I know that.‹«
—Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter (Astrid Lindgren)
The dream of freedom
at one with nature.
Sailing is the discovery of this feeling of beauty and peace. It means experiencing nature’s freedom and living the liberation of a minimalist, sustainable lifestyle
For me, however, it has been a long journey and a late start. For the first time at the young age of seventeen, at the German Lake Constance, as a family activity with my father, followed by a couple of occasional trips. The second time, almost twenty years later, after my expatriation to Estonia and the discovery of the sea on my doorstep. With the uneasiness of a landlubber, the first thing I did was to get an International Coastal Certificate for Operators of Pleasure Craft.
Summer 2020 and 1,300 nautical miles on the Baltic Sea later (where our skipper acknowledged the thankless grind with the quote “One day you’ll scrub your own deck”), I finally took the plunge and started the adventure with Ronja Räubertochter, a compact Avance 245 archipelago cruiser designed by legendary Swede Peter Norlin.
This blog is dedicated to her travels.
Follow the AIS position of Ronja Räubertochter live on the track page.
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If you’re curious about Ronja, find out more about the yacht.