Facebook is not playing nicely

Ok so this is my way round it... Facebook wont let me upload this video... HA! A short little ditty I put together... the people of Norway 2011 / 2012

The Hunt For Red October

Well the football is out of the way and so was the sun for a while, I think we had the tail end of the British summer typhoons here. Rain Rain and more Rain... which leads me nicely on to this next chapter.


It had been raining constantly for about three weeks, so bad and miserable was the weather, I couldn't be bothered to take the boat out at all. As I would drive to my hotels each day, a quick glance in the rear view mirrors would reveal Isabella's bright orange engine bobbing around in the water tied up to her quay. Driving in these conditions was much more preferable than untying the boat, bailing out the rain water, drying the seats and then spending a couple of minutes with the rain being blasted in my face as I zipped across the Fjord. No for now the car would have to do.


Ian (My product manager) had been hassling me to go and visit Eidfjord and the Vorringfossen Nature Centre, I can see his reasons, but the trip was selling well enough without my detailed knowledge of the place. I'd heard enough stories from clients who have been, to build up a mental picture and thus sell it on.


Still, it was something different, and a day out so I booked myself onto the trip. With the ferry leaving at 11:15 I had time to do my hotel visits before getting into civvi clothes ready for the off. As I drove away I did my usual backwards glance but there was no bright engine? I slowed the car down and looked back towards the quay, Isabella had gone!

Strange, maybe she had slipped her mooring and was drifting mid fjord, maybe the kind old gentleman who allows me to moor her there had moved her somewhere else. Who knows, I will investigate after my visits. One thing I was certain about, she hadn’t been stolen. Nobody steals in Norway and besides she is pretty unique, you would find it tricky getting away in a boat with a fluorescent Orange engine!

I made a few jokes with the boys at the hotel about the situation but curiosity was really getting the better of me by now and I just had to go and find out.

I parked up and walked the 10 metres or so to the edge of the quay, the first part of my investigation was to see if her mooring rope was still there or just a fraid piece left tied on.  As I looked over into the water the answer was pretty clear. There she was, still tied up albeit standing ‘bow up’ on the bottom of the fjord still tied on by the bow line! – Yes, she had sunk. I had underestimated how much rain we have really had, combine that with the constant battering of ‘wash waves’ from passing ships, she had obviously filled up with water and gloop, down she went.

I could just about make out the back of the seat miles in the distance floating its  way to Bergen.

I gave a tug on the bow line and to my surprise she rose to the top quite easily, but that’s as far as I could pull her. I needed to get her to the beach, I was never going to lift this weight straight up. After about an hour I had ‘walked’ her round to the rocky edge where I managed to tie her off. Fortunately for me the tide was in and high so I devised a plan, but it would mean getting wet.

With the bow secure, into the cold water I climbed, Seeing all the fuss the nice old gentleman had popped over and offered me a length of nylon rope with a grappling claw attached. I fixed that to the engine and secured the stern with all manor or ropes I could find. I undid her drain plug and that was that, I just had to let her hang there until the tide had gone out. My plan was that the water would drain out, I would replace the bung and float her once more. What had I got to lose now? With that done it was a quick change and off to Eidfjord for the day. I only just made the ferry.

She was in a very sorry state when I returned that evening but I managed to get her onto some sleepers / rail tracks that had been left to rot & rust for many years on the beach nearby. I stripped as much as I could from her, windscreen, fuel tank, paddles, seats etc until she was a mere shell again with a rather wet outboard on the back. Taking that off was never going to happen, its a complex job connecting the throttle and gears that have been modified to fit this 1963 Westbend as it is, and I figured I would need them attached if I had to test her.

Over the next week, I dried, cleaned and doused the engine with WD40, Talking constantly with my petrol head cousin Kyle on what to do and not to do. The most upsetting thing of it all was having to throw away 22L of petrol. The rest however was a challenge and fun too it has to be said.

I did some research and found out the Westbend 12.5hp engine was built for the US Marine Corp to power their inflatables into battle. Well are you telling me they never got wet before... na these things have got to be bullet proof. or at least waterproof. I soon had her back together and would you believe it, she fired up 3rd pull.

She took some more tweaking & cleaning and I treated her to a couple of new spark plugs from eBay. While she was out of the water I touched up her paintwork and re fitted all of the bits that had been bashed off against the quay. Only the windscreen is now more streamlined, a kind of race fairing if you will.

Using a bit of ingenuity when the tide was out, I swam down to the railway tracks and tied off a length of rope to each side, I then tied these to an empty plastic fuel can. My last piece of magic was to attach a 'bungee' cord to the can and a long length of rope to the shore, supported in the middle with a piece of floating foam sponge.

I can now motor towards the shore, grab the foam which in turn gives me the rope, hook the bungee to the back of the boat, pull myself to shore using the rope, tie off her bow line and let go. The bungee pulls her back out to sea. I even added a couple of 'knicker elastic' straps to the rails that can hook on either side of the boats paddle holders. Now she just sits there 'High or Low tide' safe from concrete walls, safe from boat wash, and hopefully safe from the sea bed.

When I need her, I just pull on the bow line and she comes in, I jump aboard, 'boing' out to the buoy, unhook her and away I go.. I know, I know... Bloody genius! I would agree, but what sort of genius lets his boat sink in the first place.. Muppet!

PS the black seats are only temporary until the white leatherette turns up in the post :-)

Eidfjord was good too, but for some reason my mind was on other things... sorry Ian, its still selling well though.

The Local Rooflawnmowers

Honestly, I'm enjoying myself

Today, I can finally say she is all fixed up an sea worthy once more.. and here is the video to prove it... enjoy

The general synopsis at 0600 UTC - Cyclonic 5 or 6, decreasing 4 at times.

I don't want to speak too soon, but the postal system here in Norway seems to have gotten a lot better this year, Mothers little food parcels are arriving within a couple of days, Izzys iPad came in 3 and my new coffee machine got here quicker than I did! Who knows how and why but lets no knock it. On that note, I'm trying to organise some rubber fendering for the boat, My best mate Wayne has found some from a company in Cambridgeshire but the fun and games he is having getting it to France is beyond a joke, Firstly I ordered a courier to collect it from their warehouse, when he turned up it wasn't ready (how long does it take to cut 9M of rubber) the 2nd attempt there was no label attached so he left again and the 3rd he was told it had already been dispatched! - I'll keep you posted if it ever turns up.

I need some fendering for Isabella as she is getting a little bashed up now, yesterday for instance, we experienced some crazy winds here in Ulvik, the drive over to the hotel was scary enough as she was flying out of the water at the crest of the wave and crashing down again as though I was riding a jet ski! After my hotel visits I noticed a ton of debris floating outside the green cafe, as I approached it turns out to be thousands of pounds worth of patio furniture that had blown into the fjord. I tried the best I could to rescue as much as possible but can you imagine trying to haul a chair with one hand whilst steering with the other and using your knee to control the throttle and your head the gears! - I guess some would see the funny side, especially with 3 foot waves chucking me around like a rag doll! Well after 5 chairs and a table safely ashore and the 6th chair falling back on top of me, smashing the windscreen, it was time to give up and go home! Even that was futile, the waves were crashing the boat against the quay so I decided to go back to the Brakanes Hotel and leave her there for the day. At least she could bob about in the open water until it all calmed down. And as if by magic the winds dropped and the water calmed just as the football finished, nice little ride home, even if Germany had just destroyed Greece.

I have discovered that the bar in the Ulvik hotel not only has the football on wide screen but I get staff prices too, meaning the beer is only twice the price of the UK and not 4X. It also has a better type of clientele even if they all support the 'other team' no matter who is playing.

Well thats about it for now, I'm preparing and looking forward to Sundays match against Italy, Who knows, we might make another stage of the game....

Gjør en annen mann en tjeneste

God Morgen

I guess since I have been back in Ulvik for three weeks now I should fire up the blog again. Everything has settled down nicely and the resort is ticking over well, Izzy has just turned 30 so we decided to throw a party on Saturday and invite her closest friends from Ulvik to come along. You could say it was my first proper Norwegian / Swedish party experience, one I won't forget in a hurry. What with Reidun and Ingrid serving Moet from their ample cleavages,

To George & Therese singing the National Anthem standing on one leg!

Young Trine and Max introducing us to some bizarre Swedish pop music and Vaiva's 'Interesting' birthday cake.... In true Norwegian style they bolted down the Vodka / Champagne / Cider & beer then shot off to the pub for a pint and 8 straws. Unfortunately for me it was a school night so I stayed back, cleaned up and crashed out.

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Isabella (the boat) is now perfect, some adjustments to the positioning of the fuel tank giving her a better weight distribution and able to 'plane' much more easily and some more tweaking to the engine, she now runs like a dream and I often 'go to work' in her. It takes me 20 minutes to walk to the hotel, 5 minutes to drive (from leaving the house to entering the hotel) and only 3 minutes by boat. My next door neighbor, Frode, has kindly let me moor her right outside my apartment on his moorings and both of my hotels have landing platforms to tie up to. Perfect.

So confident I was with her performance, I decided to take her for a long spin although I did bottle out at the T Junction to Osa & Bergen, I had enough fuel and she was running well, I just felt that if something did pack up, it would be a bloody long 'paddle' back as I was already 5 miles out! I think I'll stick to using her for 'work' use for now.

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Sunday 27th May and I get a bizarre phone call from the Brakanes, It turns out one of their clients was arriving by boat and had run out of fuel a couple of miles from the hotel and was drifting aimlessly down the Hardanger Fjord. Would I mind going to help them? Jumping at the chance to save another mariner I fired up all 12.5 horses under Isabella's bonnet and proceeded to cruise up the Fjord in search of the stricken vessel. I must admit, when I saw her I was a little concerned, she was a massive day boat with a 90HP engine and a family of 6 on board who had traveled from Bergen to Ulvik in this thing, only to run out of fuel 2 miles from port. As i approached they threw me their bow line and I hitched her up to my grab handles. It was a struggle for my tiny craft but within the hour I had successfully towed her into the harbor. Good deed done for the day but I was a little miffed by the fact they didn't even say thank you! - Googling 'salvage rights' technically their boat is now mine as they threw me the line..... I'll keep my eyes open if I ever see them again!

Oh well, in the words of our famous local poet, Olav H Hague, "Do another man a favor" It can't hurt

Isabella doing what she does best....

Isabella Unleashed

At first there was a trailer project.... then came....

The Boat Project

Having successfully retrieved Vacancier from her moorings in Annecy I was immediately faced with another problem, what am I going to do with her? I couldn't tow her home as I already had a trailer on the back, I was thinking of taking her to Norway but that would mean no trailer and also there isn't a great deal of wind there.

So I decided to have a rake around on eBay and see what was available for the little money I had left. At first I found a nice little 4 seater boat with 20hp engine and trailer but after negotiations with the owner I decided against it for two reasons, No1 was back to the trailer situation and No2 it went for £670 which was way out of my budget.

Eventually I found a 'project boat' in Biggleswade of all places. It had a trailer but it was so far gone it would be no use anyway. The beauty of this boat was its size, 9ft with only two seats. In my head I figured it would fit on my original trailer solving that problem at least, also for £250 I could collect it there and then all in with a 12.5hp West Bend Outboard.

I phoned Dad and off he went down to the marina to collect it. No sooner had he got it home he was on the case getting the paintwork done. I got back from France shortly after and the two of us set to work on getting her presentable. Colin Martin, a friend of dad's took the engine apart and gave her a good service, including some tricky engineering work on the gear shift mechanism.

Within the week she was almost finished and looking good too. We then stripped her down again and flipped her onto the trailer ready for Norway.

Initial tests in the water were fun but fraught with problems, Gavin had come up from Sweden to help out and soon discovered we had not undone the air intake for the fuel tank. This at least made the engine run constantly for a change. Further work was carried out on the spark plugs after we discovered lip balm is no substitute for grease. WD40 works much better! The HT Leads were re fitted and after some tweaking with some screw on the front of the engine she was flying across the Fjords in no time.

We are just waiting now for the rain to stop before venturing further aFjord....

Rocky Roads or Plain Sailing

I never know what I am allowed to say and not allowed to say these days, so I'll keep this blog 'non work related'

Wednesday was 'on a mission' day Up at 7am got the bus to my car park about a mile up the road, drove to Tignes to pick up Vicky, she is the boss of our ski school out here and speaks fluent french, something we needed on this mission. The plan was to collect my boat from its moorings at Dussard on lake Annecy. I say collect, more like liberate blag or steal the thing. Its been there for about 4 years and in the first two, a number of people sailed her. Dad was always coming to stay and the Judges enjoyed it so much they bought their own GP14. Nevertheless, after the crash and being stuck in the UK for the summer of 2010 and in Norway last summer, poor old Vacancier has been left to gather dust. A number of people have been to check on her and there she sits getting older and older. I had a feeling that the boat yard owners would not be too lenient towards me and may start demanding cash for her release. Hence why we took Vicky. She is not worth much (the boat not Vicky) and is going to cost me a fortune to get her home so the last thing we needed was a huge bill for the mooring. If the boat yard were to get stroppy then I would have just left her there and told them to scrap her.

We met Wayne and his little one in Moutiers and off we went on our mission. I had come up with plans to sail her away and lift the trailer over the barrier, or wait till someone went out and tailgated them, but for now we were just going to asses the situation and the lie of the land.

On arrival in Dussard, I went to the boat to see whats what while Vicky went in search of someone to practice her French upon, returning 2 minutes later saying "you are not going to believe this but" Ive just told the guy in the cabin that we want to take our boat away and he said yeah sure and opened the barrier!

I was feeling a little nervous at this point as I had to de rig her for the road, before someone changed their minds. Mast down and secure we hitched her up to the car and started to move away. Vicky went back to the shed to get the barrier up again when the guy says to her "if you are thinking of bringing her back again, you will have to go and settle your bill with the Marire" then he opened the barrier and we were away.

We stopped at the nearest garage and pumped up the tyre's, re checked the strapping and then it was off to Meribel where she sits today. Then it dawned on me... I had only planned to get a feel for how we were going to get her, not actually do it! Now I have to figure out plan B and get her home or somewhere, now she sits in an unprotected car park instead of a safe mooring, Now she needs a roadworthy trailer and not just any old thing to get her in and out of the water... Now she needs cleaning up. Could I tow her home? nope, I have a trailer on my car for that journey already... For once the French being really helpful has turned out not to be helpful at all.... Doh

If only there were some wind in Norway

.

Ever get that feeling of Deja Vous.....

Ok Ok, I know its been a while since I left Norway and started my epic journey to Val d'Isere. To be fair, i've not had time for a day off, let alone any time to write this blog.... but, things are coming together now and i'll try whenever I can to update. Todays blog comes from an inspiration I had this week (yes its half term) and for anyone seriously following this blog, there is a section about the worst clients I ever had to deal with back in 2004.... well, 3 or 4 companies later, would you believe they are back with me once more... shush.. no one knows yet... but I certainly do! I'm not entirely sure they remember me just yet... but they will, trust me.

So while they are still here, I'll keep this one short and sweet...

Guides to being a good client

1) No we really don't need any more snow - Learn to ski on what you have, you are not God, just crap at what you do.
2) Chalet staff are on primarily on a gap year - they are not trained servants, don't treat them as such
3) Boarders are just as good as Skiers, just with less style and panache - deal with it.
4) the Buckles on your boots go on the outside
5) yes we get off at the top of the chair lift
6) When carrying your skis the tips go downwards
7) English money is no use to us, neither is champagne
8) Yes we know England had 3 inches of snow last week, we had 3 meters
9) No we don't want your copy of the Sun, who wants to know what propaganda they are spinning, we came here to get away from that - Bring Marmite
10) Your money, attitude and sense of importance matters not to us, we are doing a job that few would relish, 98% of us will never return, so do we care? (its ok, i'm in the 2%)

And before you insult or belittle us... remember, we have access to every toilet and every toothbrush...

Words from tiffany-carmon-more :)

BRB with some more next bad weather / no email / no Special High Intencity Training / day I get :)