Going to the island

[ soundtrack : Emil i Lönneberga - Idas sommarvisa ]

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It’s a beautiful day and I need to collect some stuff from my boat. I’ll bring my camera along so I can show you an old job and a bit of what my town looks like. If you’ve got nothing better to do? scroll through! I’ll try to shut up for most of the time. Let’s hop on a tram, they go every 10 or 15 minutes ...

… and the ferry is only three stops down the line. Pictured here is one of the old ones, of a class built in a small boatyard on the island south of the one we’re visiting; at Lindøya Slipp. The ferry I’m on is a new, battery-powered thing that looks like what you get when a hairdryer rapes a bar of soap.

The ferries leave from Aker Brygge, one of the basins / waterfronts that make up the inner harbour of Oslo. From the ferry we get a choice view of our new National Museum. It’s that thing that looks like a U-Boot-Bunker from WWII.

A prime example of what I call Fuck! You! Architecture. If you don’t like the look of it that’s just because you’re an ignorant peasant who still has to pay, through your taxes, for the privilege of being intellectually and visually insulted. First they piss on us, then they tell us we stink. German architect.

This is Aker Brygge. It used to be a shipyard. They built ships and oil rigs as part of a working harbour. By the nineties it had become too expensive to do anything other than trade, administer and organize the good times, so the new money moved in and the sweaty people moved out. Now it’s a shopping district with luxury apartments. It’s called gentrification, or the inevitable march of progress … whatever you want to call it. OK … I’ll stop pontificating.

Now we’re on the island — Hovedøya, the Head or Main Island.

Aaaahhh!

First, we have to pass through the boatyard and slipways.

This is our slipway. Hardcore old school. We grease the skids with the tears of broken dreams. This is my cradle:

Pine, plywood and oak keel-beam. That’s not camouflage, it’s stealth paint.

After the boatyard we come to the harbour:

The Yacht Club (too pretentious … think of it rather as a caravan site for boats :-) is called Revierhavnens Baatforening anno 1853 and has some useful buildings for its members; Let me show you some of them. This is the mast-shed. Just outside we have a crane for erecting and striking our sailing sticks.

I made these mast-horses (?) about 10 years ago. Oak, stainess and boatpaint:

I just love pottering about in this unkempt paradise …

This is the Western Harbour …

… and this is the bigger, Eastern Harbour:

In the middle is the walkway over to ‘Denmark’ — not much more than a shoal of sand in the sea — where we find our Boathouse and Club House:

In the Boathouse every member has a cupboard for sundry sailing gear …

… and upstairs is the sail-loft for dry storage.

You’ll also find some serious sewing machines for repairing sails, spray-hoods and soft furnishings.

This is the view out the gable window — isn’t it lovely?

Behind the Boathouse we find the Restaurant — our Club House. It’s open to outsiders, provided they arrive by boat. There’s a guest-pier they can belay at.

This is the members only section — we don’t want to get too friendly with the hoi polloi, now do we? I used to live here in my younger days. Good times.

We have the best view in town — of the town.

And we have a bar and kitchen:

This extension I built one winter roughly 15 years ago:

Enough nostalgia!

This little islet is called Shetland. It is Norwegian, as you can see :-)

I guess it’s time to head home. So long, island!

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