Day 56 Kalmar

We left Figeholm yesterday and sailed to Kalmar, the only interesting thing of note was that on the way we discovered our inmost furling system was faulty. Kalmar is a proper yachtmans resort, with both chandlers and yacht services available. I had pre-ordered some new genoa sheets which I went to collect but they had not put any whippings on the end so I left them there and collected them today. They now look great on the boat, the old lines were solid blue but the new lines are white check.

This morning we had an organised trip to the castle and a guide. The guide was very interesting but it was also very short which was a shame as it was so interesting.

Later we had the last formal dinner of the rally and it was held in a historic underground bunker turned into a restaurant. The food was really excellent and there were prizes! We all had to submit photographs from the week for the photographic competition. Richard had a brilliant selection, he is becoming an accomplished photographer. However the judges awarded me a prize for the once in a life time photograph of Sapphire III (before she lost her mast) just at the point of a sunset. We had to slow the boat down to get Sapphire in the right position. For those that has never seen a sunset on the horizon the time from the sun being fully visible to gone is about 1 minute so it is really difficult to plan a photograph like this.