Mimosa
Originally uploaded by Greygriffin.

So yesterday we signed the contract, and now Eve & I are yacht-owners. Here’s our yacht Mimosa, out of the water for the winter but ready for the spring to come…

We’ve made an offer on an H-Boat, and it’s been accepted. The contract won’t be signed until next weekend, so it’s not ours yet, but hopefully all will go OK. The boat is here.

The boat is currently in winter storage out of the water in a big ‘boat park’ at Suomenoja in Espoo, so we won’t actually be able to sail it until early May next year.

By the way, here‘s the international H-boat web page.

I’ve been saving up for a long time for a sailing boat, and this autumn I’ve finally got enough money together. The type of boat I’m planning to buy is an H-Boat, a 27-foot 4-berth fibreglass yacht. I’m planning to buy an old one, probably one built in the 1970s – a typical example is this boat called Can Can (but this particular boat is inconveniently far away from Helsinki).

The closest mooring place to me is Merihaka Sailing Club, just a few hundred metres away in Merihaka. Very basic, but it’s convenient and all I need.

Tied up
Originally uploaded by Greygriffin.

Bård & Susanne have been visiting Helsinki this weekend with their partners Line & Stefan, and we went for a cruise to Stora Herrö (a small island south-west of Espoo) in Pekka’s family’s boat. The set of photos from the cruise are here.

Cruise
Originally uploaded by Greygriffin.

We’re off on a cruise to Stora Herrö, a small island off the coast of Espoo.

Husband & wife
Originally uploaded by epoyhonen.

Last weekend we were in Cornwall for my brother Gareth’s wedding. The registry office part was done very well – definitely a sense of a shared marking of a significant community event. The Apache wedding prayer was a very well-chosen addition.

Then we had the dinner back in Keveral‘s visitors’ barn. It had been decorated beautifully, and the dinner of stuffed peppers was delicious – you can always count on good, wholesome food at Keveral.

Then in the evening there was a party with music, food & drink, and lots of people having a lot of fun.

If you’d like to see photos, see Eve’s selected photo set, or all her photos if you’re looking for the one where you’re smiling :-). If you were there and also put some photos on-line, please leave a link to them in a comment on this post.

Board games
Originally uploaded by Greygriffin.

Last Tuesday we had another board games evening, this time at Iris’s place in Vantaa. I’m afraid I didn’t record all the games that were played; I’ll try to get back into the habit of doing that. At least we finally played Save Doctor Lucky (not bad, and it finished with a climax as the ship nearly sank before he was saved).

Grilling in the cottage garden
Originally uploaded by epoyhonen.

The first weekend of September was Eve’s last chance to get to a summer cottage before the summer was truly over. We rented together with Michael & Sabine & Scott (sadly Séverine couldn’t make it) a cottage out in the countryside, and had a very fine time barbequeing and sauna-ing. The water was rather cold, but that’s all part of the fun :).

Suomenlinna picnic
Originally uploaded by Greygriffin.

In late August we went with Michael & Sabine and Scott & Séverine to Suomenlinna for a picnic, on what looked like it might be the last sunny weekend of the season. It was lovely to just sit out in the sun for a while, and we had plenty of fine things to eat and drink. Afterwards we stopped at Suomenlinnan Panimo brewery pub, where four years earlier Eve & I got married.

Well we’ve got ourselves partly sorted out with our summer holiday photos; all are uploaded, and the photos from Italy are even labelled. You can see them here:

• Malcesine
• Provence (just from Eve’s latest photos; a proper ‘set’ is coming soon)

Flickr has this rather cool ‘view as slideshow’ feature, which really helps when showing the pictures to people. Of course my Apple’s iPhoto program has an even better one, with even background music ;-).