Chapter 7

I looked up and saw one of the sailors standing close to Wendy. His posture was threatening so I switched on the autopilot setting the unit to follow the magnet structure ahead of us. I took up the heaviest instrument I could find.

These sailboats built in Oulu were typical of the period; long bow and stern overhangs with slab sided rectangles for deck cabins with curved cabin tops.

This one had a long sunken cockpit with two steps down and a real door opening into a roomy salon. There were access hatches on either side of the forward galley and a single hatch to one side at the aft end of the salon with ladders fore and aft to cabins and the engine room under the salon deck. The engine room deck also held all or most of the stores.

At a length on deck of seventy five feet and 25 feet of beam the full keel welded rolled steel hull had two decks with three cabins forward and the stateroom aft. Nothing was very big or roomy but still, the heavy displacement hull featured nearly 9 feet below the waterline. With an all up weight of 30 tons, she was no lightweight racer. For a civilian Yacht she was of medium length but very heavy.