Nissan Leaf – Life Four Point Zero

Each summer, it feels a bit like returning to grade school. I guess you could call it summer school. There is the excitement, coupled with a bit of unease, about the new classroom. We are headed north into Norway this summer, far beyond the comfort and warm waters of the Med where we started this whole affair. So far, we have yet to retrace our steps. Even when we headed back out of the Med in 2021, we made a point of visiting new harbors, going around the opposite sides of islands we had been to before, and rounding peninsulas like the Peloponnese instead of running the shortcut through the Corinth Canal of Greece again. No two classrooms are exactly the same, and that can be invigorating and it can be a nail-biter.

There is often a new bus to ride. We were ferried across the Atlantic by SAS to the city of Copenhagen onboard an Airbus A321, with 3×3 seating. Oh, how I miss those grand ol’ widebody 747’s with enough space inside to make you think you were sitting in an auditorium. But I get it. Widebody versus narrowbody means a lot more fuel versus a little bit less than a lot of fuel. Which means a little bit lower fare prices if by chance you beat the post-Covid ‘I’m-not-going-to-postpone-my-European-vacation-one-more-time’ surge. When we landed, Karen and I were trying to work through the unique cerebral fog that is jet-lag, this time from a 12 hour time difference after attending a family member’s wedding in Hawaii. You have to be careful on the first day. If you show too much vulnerability, the school yard bully will make you his mark.

The time had come to wrap up the season. Karen and I took one more day on the water, on a beautiful blue sky day without a stitch of wind, to bring Sea Rose down from Borgholm to Kalmar. Earlier in the summer we had secured a spot at Baltic Kalmar Marina for the winter. To my surprise, it wasn’t easy to find a place to haul out. A few boater friends recommended the north coast of Germany, another couple of days south from Kalmar, and probably easier to fly in and out of, but every yard was either booked up or couldn’t take our size of boat. We had also looked at several well regarded yards in Denmark, to no avail. It’s always a juggling match midway through summer to find a place. We have to guess how far we will go in the remaining months, what yard has a good combination of technical skills and a friendly nature, and where the best travel connections can be found. When we found Baltic Kalmar in July, it was a huge relief. We could plan on that destination and set our pacing and range of adventure accordingly. The one challenge we had was the winter weather. This would be the first time we hauled out in a freezing climate with Sea Rose. We had plenty of experience with this on our old boat, Thalia, in the Northeast U.S. But here in Sweden, we would need to figure out how to winterize this boat and source the materials needed. The marina encouraged us to store the boat inside – in what everyone in the area refers to just as a ‘hall’. In a heated space, we wouldn’t need to winterize the boat. But at twice the price, it was a budget buster. So, instead, our baby Sea Rose would sit outside, but at least we had a nice, heavy-duty cover for her, and from every indication the winters in Kalmar were fairly mild, at least compared to our experience in the Northeast U.S.

The Kalmar Guesthamn, a traffic jam of boats when we first visited in early July, looked like Times Square the morning after New Years Eve – a few of us boaters showing signs of weariness from too much fun earlier in the summer, and a few stalwart boaters that didn’t get the memo that summer was over. We were pleased to see that our newfound buddy boat Pinocchio pulled into Kalmar as well. After finding, like we did, that so many other yards were full, Pinocchio’s captain decided to haul out at Baltic Kalmar marina too. It’s good to have a buddy when you are staring down a to-do list that will take a full week to grind through before you can head home. Some might even call such a relationship ‘priceless’!

Tag: Nissan Leaf

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