Today just when lunch was over for my shift, someone came down to the messroom and said that there were a couple of whales really close by. So I took my cup of coffee, fetched a jacket and went up to see if it was possible to get a glimpse of them. There were two humpback whales and a playful sealion maybe 25 yards away from the ship.  I managed to get a picture and a decent video of one of the whales and the sealion sort of photobombed all the videos I tried to take. :-) It is awe-inspiring to see such a huge animal so close by. And almost equally impressive to watch a sealion scoo ..read more

 During the hurricane we had last time I was on board, we lost a couple of drain grates.  The drain grates help to keep large objects out of the drain pipes from the gutter on the main deck. Large objects could be stuff like an apple or an orange or a water bottle. If they would fall into a drain pipe it would take quite some job to get them free again, so it is much better for us to prevent the blocking from happening.  The first time I was on board this ship, I made 4 drain grates, so I took upon myself to make a couple of replacements this time also. But instead of following ..read more

 After thinking about it for many years, I started a business today together with Gustav. The business is called Hest & Hus ApS, meaning Horse & House ltd. Our major plan is to invest in a house that we can refurbish and then rent it out. But given that we are now officially a company also means that we can legitimately sell labour such as in carpentry jobs or woodwork projects or leatherwork projects.  The idea is that since we both have a regular income, we are planning on letting all the money we make in the company stay there for further development of the company. The ha ..read more

 I have been doing a bit of organizing and clearing out in the workshop, mostly still to accommodate lots of stuff from my dads shop. On one of the shelves in the shop I found the remnants of the Gerstner inspired tool chest that I started 8 years ago. I took a close look at it and decided that either I should throw it out, or I should invest the needed few hours and complete the project.  After a bit of discussion with myself I decided that even if the project wasn't super good looking, it still deserved to be completed, and I could potentially use the tool chest for small stuff. A ..read more

 I have helped a lot of my colleagues turning marlinspikes out here, and I have made some myself as well, but those have either been for the ship's bosun shop, or as gifts to other colleagues. I have however never made one for myself.  Probably since I don't need a marlinspike, but this time I decided to make one for myself anyway. I found an old steel bolt for the cylinder heads of the main engine, and I deemed that it would be perfect for the purpose. The shape is the one I usually help the trainees to achieve, a long sleek body with a mushroom shaped head. The conical body gradual ..read more

 A couple of days ago we had a regular storm out here. We had gusts of hurricane strength and waves that corresponded to the rest of the weather. We ended up blowing out 3 of our stay sails, and we still did 12 knots on just two square sails. So apart from it being a bit difficult to sleep, it was great fun, and awe inspiring as always to see the full force of the sea. When one of the stay sails had to be taken down, it hit the brass top of one of the old magnetic compasses. The sergeant quickly saved it and brought it inside. But the small top lid was missing. We all take great pride in ..read more

 It is nice to find out that someone apparently have noticed that I have started to blog again, though I much prefer regular readers and comments from those instead of all those fake comments that once in a while seem to flood in. Today I had 37 comments, all pretty much using the same words, and all completely irrelevant to the blog post where the comment was posted. It seems that Ted McGraths 16000 woodworking plans have changed its name to woodbex. I guess it is the same scam, and I sincerely doubt that all the plans are some that he made himself. Here's an earlier warning about the si ..read more

We had made a draft of who should give who Christmas presents on board. And my recipient had earlier on wished for a belt, so I made a nice wide belt that would fit in a set of jeans for her. I decided that I could make a keepsake box for her as well. That way it would also be easier to make a decent gift wrapping. :-) I found a piece of birch that I had milled a couple of years ago, and I decided that it would be a fine material. I have never really worked birch before, other than for firewood, so I thought that it would be interesting to do a nice little project with it. I settled on some me ..read more

Last time I was out here, I ordered a reprint of an old German book on leatherwork. It is written in 1908 by a master saddler and covers everything you could wish to know about leatherwork including how to set up your own business with suggestions for various types of letters that you could be interested in sending out to e.g. customers, people who owe you money, newspapers etc.  In that book there are some suggestions on how to make halters. And I thought that t would be interesting to make something from a set of plans instead of just copying one of the old halters like I have done prev ..read more

 In February when I had to sign on the ship, the Covid 19 restrictions required that I had to go to Norway and sit for 10 days in a quarantine hotel before flying with the rest of the crew down to Tenerife to meet the ship.  As you might remember, I made a breastplate of leather instead of sitting idle all the time. When I came back, Gustav tested it and found that a few of the pieces were a bit too long. This time while at home I found the time to fix those small things, and I snapped a couple of glamour shots of the breastplate mounted on Caj. For some reason my inadequate camera s ..read more