Sea Scout Ship Columbia Ranger

Sweden According to Tim M.

Day 1 - 8/4/01 - Saturday

We arrive. The Swedish scouts haven't returned from Jamboree yet. Pizza for dinner. Lots of unusual toppings, mussels and shrimp!? Oh, gas is about $4.50/gal here.

Day 2 - 8/5/01 - Sunday

Tried sour milk for breakfast. Went to the Vasa museum. 350 year old boat that sunk and was brought up in the 60's. Toured Stockholm, getting used to the subway. Swedish scouts came home. Had Tacos for dinner.

Day 3 - 8/6/01 - Monday

Left for the boats at 11:30, left the dock around 1:00, in the rain. Rained until evening. Very little wind. The water is very deep here, 20m on average. It drops off quickly too, we can pull the boats up to shore. The moss on the forest floor is very soft and about a foot thick. We had pork chops and sausage for dinner. Played Yatzee until 11:00, when the sun went down.

Day 4 - 8/7/01 - Tuesday

Rained all night. My side of the boat is the only place that doesn't leak. Rain stopped about mid-morning, had great wind in the wrong direction. We are going to pick up another person today. Rain started again. Caught the anchor line in the prop. I swam under the boat to untangle it. The water is very cold, but clear and fresh. The new crew member's name is Richard. We played some games in the evening, a new game called 'Vampire' in which someone draws a card designating them the vampire and then picks victims and the others have to figure out who the vampire is.

Day 5 - 8/8/01 - Wednesday

We sailed different boats today. The wind was better and we made good time. I was on Eric's boat, the biggest. I was with Melanie, Maja, Alex, Skip, Mrs. Skip, and Eric. We stayed in a small cove. One of the other boats sailed with their spinnaker. There were goats on the island as well as some sort of poisonous snake. It rained late in the evening again. Played another game, hard to describe.

Day 6 - 8/9/01 - Thursday

Today I am on Rudolf's boat. Bumped some rocks on the way out. Sailed with Ulle, Melanie, Klara and Rudolf. Very fast today. Took the lead early and kept it. Heeled 30°, nice wind all day. Played some more games. Stayed up until about 1am watching meteors. Did not rain.

Day 7 - 8/10/01 - Friday

On Rudolf's boat again, was afraid he wouldn't want me back after running his boat into the rocks. Sailing was even better today. Made 8.5 - 9 knots. Heeling at 40°, I made a hiking strap and was able to stand on the side of the boat without much difficulty. Sailed with Charlie, Klara, Anton and Maja. Stopped to get food and then continued on to another island. I am moving here, it is perfect. I can have a little cabin in the woods and pull my 37' sailboat right up to the shore. We will be putting out later for a long night sail. Be back later, need to tend the sheep.

Sweden according to Alex

The Swedes were an intricate part of our journey, and in my opinion the most important. The scenery and the buildings with their unique architecture and old age, but they would not have been fully enjoyed without the good company of the Swedish scouts.

When we arrived there seemed to be an awkward silence that loomed over us the first evening the Swedish scouts arrived. I'm not sure if they weren't sure what to do with us, or if they were just exhausted from their week long jamboree "Scout 2001". But luckily when we began sailing the next day were all on common territory. The wind fills the sails no matter what country your in. After that a closer bond started to grow between us. They taught us as much Swedish as we could possibly learn, from parts of the boats to things I won't repeat. We discovered children's songs that we shared, read to them trashy magazines in their own native tongue murdering the pronunciations at first and getting surprisingly good at the end. My skills were tested in a round of Swedish Trivial Pursuit. I did not win.

Our Swedish counterparts were extremely kind to us. I feel guilty that almost the entire world teaches their children English, whereas we study other languages maybe a few years in high school. I thought they would hold it against us, to my surprise, I found out later that some of them were scared to speak English out of fear we would think it was terrible, on the contrary it was in many cases better than ours.

We all shared many laughs and good times, only hope we can return their generosity.

Sweden according to Tim C. and Melanie

Sailing -

It seemed unusual to us that we could pull the boats right up to the islands and tie them without running aground. The water depth was very deep. The coast line was very steep.

The water was very cold but also really clean, you could see down 3-4 meters. It was great fun to go swimming, after a few minutes it no longer felt cold as everything went numb.

It was an interesting new experience to use a spinnaker.

Public Transport -

The busses were very clean, comfortable, inexpensive, and went very far out into the countryside where almost each house or farm had its own stop. The bus tickets also worked on the subway which was very efficient. They had beautiful subway stations, they each had their own theme, the deeper you went the more ancient and cave like they became.

The subway trains were very nice, clean, new looking, nice upholstery, hardly any graffiti. And were very safe. People were very nice and helpful and we felt safe out in public and in the city even after midnight.

Food -

Potato and ham one sided sandwiches. Always one sided. You had to hold them together in the wind or pieces would fly off and hit the guy beside you. We had moose that Eric had hunted on Vässarö (one of the small islands) the scout island. (see Melanie's shirt). Spaghetti Carbanara with raw egg. One (Once?) we dropped a raw egg on the deck and Rudolf sucked it up.

Tim and Tim got to try sour milk for breakfast rather than regular milk. It was thick, sour and yogurt-like, but better with a lot of sugar. Breakfast was more like lunch. You might have a ham or salami and cheese sandwich for breakfast. They have cheese with almost every meal and they had a great variety of bread. Sunflower seed bread was a favorite.

Sweden According to Greg

We arrived in Sweden. Due to time moving quickly we chose not to sleep all night. The Vasa was very interesting. I was glad I finally got to see it after watching the History Channel's Program on it at least, say 10 times. The sailing was truly exciting and memorable. Great people, great boats, great God lets go back and do it again. The Swedish scouts were easy to get along with, fun to be around, and only slightly annoyed with American laziness.

The Log book from Sweet Adeline