Monthly Archives: February 2007

Photo special: The departure of Elida IV

Monday, February 26, 2007 – 11:34

A few days later than expected, D-day has come for the Elida and Next Wave team. Kristoffer and Leif from KVA worked long into the night to get everything ready, and many of our folks didn’t get to bed until 4:30 in the morning.

The toilet system took a long time to get finished, since several additional toilets were installed and therefore the vacuum pump needed to be replaced for a bigger one. The ship was planned to depart on Monday, but the toilet system delayed that until Thursday.

Oh noes!

The toilets were nonfunctional for several days.

On Tuesday we had “Fettisdagen” on board combined with a leave-taking dinner. In Sweden, Fettisdagen, Shrove Tuesday in English, is the day when you eat “Semla“, a cardamom-spiced wheat bun filled with almond paste topped off with whipped cream. The foreigners on board seemed to appreciate this classic Swedish pastry.

So finally Thursday came, and even though it was freezing cold and the wind shoveled small frozen snowflakes everywhere the Next Wave crew started to fasten the sails for departure.

Bowsprit

Greg

Snow and icy winds

Cold swan

Time for departure! Slowly, Elida IV let go of her moorings and turned around in the harbour. After waving all spectators good bye, she turned her bow to the lane and paced off towards the North Sea.

Let go of the harbor

Off Fiskebäck

Fiskebäck

Leaving Sweden

Waving

The last voyage

I stood and watched the beautiful ship leave Sweden for the last time in many years, ending the tall ship epoch of Elida. In a few weeks, Elida V will be ready to take over the role, as soon as we finish constructing.

Fiskebäck

Kristoffer (far left) has done a tremendous amount of work to get everything finished in time. After one week of continuous overtime working, his toil made it possible to leave for England. A big “Thank you” to all of the metalworkers from KVA (pictured) from both Team Elida and Team Next Wave!

Elida and Next Wave crew

All of us (Team Elida + Team Next Wave from YWAM Marine Reach) together on the foredeck (I was the photographer, therefore my absence)

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Photos | Tagged | Comments (0)

Nationwide demonstrations against governmental bugging in Sweden

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 – 14:31

In Saturday, demonstrations were held in four major cities in Sweden to protest against the bill to allow a governmental authority, the FRA, to bug data traffic of any Swedish citizen at will. Surpassing the United States in privacy abolishment, this bill allows the government to spy on any data traffic, including phone calls, SMS, e-mail, web traffic etc.

Demonstrators

Götaplatsen

Demonstrations were held in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Umeå. I participated in the Gothenburg demonstrations that were held at Götaplatsen in central Gothenburg. The Piracy Party, together with the youth organization of the Liberal Party and the youth organization of the Left Party were represented with speakers.

Balder Lindegård and a pirate flag

About 200 people showed up, quite a good number given the fact that there was only a few day’s notice. There was quite a diversion in age of the people clad in clothes that said “Piratpartiet”

Young pirate

Many people brought their cameras and took photographs, but almost all of them just stood in the middle of the crowd and shooting photos of the speakers from there.

To take interesting photos of an event like this, remember to walk around the place and look for interesting perspectives! More people than me should have walked up the stairs on the end of the square to get some bird’s perspective photos of the crowd.

Balder Lindegård

Balder Lindegård, Piratpartiet (Pirate Party)

Johanna Nylander

Johanna Nylander, Liberala Ungdomsförbundet (Youth Organization of the Liberal Party)

Pirate Party/Piratpartiet

After all the planned speakers were finished, Balder Lindegård asked if there was anybody else in the crowd who had anything to add. A guy named Thom Kiraly then went up and read an interesting poem about bugging. I liked the last line, it sounded “Listen to the citizens – but do it in the right way!”. (my translation)

Random speaker

Pirate demonstrators

In the end, I found the demonstrations a success. A fair number of people showed up, and I think we got the message up. There should have been more banners up, showing who we were and what we wanted. None of the speakers gave concrete examples of what we want to do today, just a lot of talk why this was wrong etc. Media coverage in Gothenburg, was completely absent, but the demonstrations in Malmö were on the Swedish news the same night.

Götaplatsen

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Life | Tagged , | Comments (0)

17th of February – Demonstrations in Gothenburg

Friday, February 16, 2007 – 09:00

Demonstration flyer 17 february

Fight for the right of privacy! There’s currently a law about to be ratified in Sweden that will allow the military to bug any traffic for any citizen in the country. E-mail, SMS, phone calls etc. This abolishment of the right of privacy is a horrible step in the wrong direction for the Swedish government, and actions must be taken.

Join us tomorrow in one of the following places:

  • Stockholm – Mynttorget, at 14.00 o’clock
  • Göteborg – Götaplatsen, at 14.00 o’clock
  • Malmö – Stortorget, at 13.00 o’clock
  • Umeå – Rådhustorget, at 15.00 o’clock

I will take part of the demonstrations in Gothenburg. Meet me there!

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Life | Tagged , | Comments (0)

QOTM

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 – 12:19

(quote of the month) for February:

Jimmy said:

I have prayed to God that I should not get a girlfriend. That prayer is being fulfilled every day!

Oh, Jimmy. We love you.

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Misc | Comments (0)

Fifteen socks and other news

Monday, February 12, 2007 – 23:17

Back to Elida again, and here cometh a lot of photos.

Big-time shopping

Shopping takes a lot of energy

Daniel

Daniel, my friend from Västerås, came by this weekend

Bob

Bob, from State Michigan

Mr. Mjölby

Rickard, from Mjölby

Metalworkers

One of the Polish metalworkers (left) and Kristofer (right), next to the shower they just built on the deck.

But why do we leave the safe harbour of Fiskebäck to venture onto a icy cold journey in the archipelago? The answer is spelled s-h-i-p-y-a-r-d. Elida IV is being sold to YWAM in Britain and will continue as the “Next Wave”. Therefore, we take up the ship on dock to scrape rust and paint the hull.

Elida IV

Elida IV/Next Wave on the dock

I and the propeller

Me and the propeller

Rust hacking

Bob fighting rust

The hull

Bob and Rickard

The girls help out

Girl power! Matilda and Rachel worked the hardest of them all

250 tons overhead

Robert asks the girls if they realize that they have 250 tonnes of ship above them

Elida IV

Elida IV

And for the title: I and Robert together bought fifteen pairs of socks for 100 Swedish crowns on the boat expo. Cheap, and they are good, too. We paid 50 crowns each and then split the socks, so we got 7,5 pairs each.

It’s funny. Laugh.

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Photos | Tagged | Comments (1)

The almighty watermaker

Thursday, February 1, 2007 – 20:10

I am working with the watermaker system on Elida V now. The watermaker is a device that purifies seawater into drinking water by using reverse osmosis. The system is quite complicated, and I and Robert have both been working in preparation and figuring out the best way to install the various components.

Watermaker filters

First of all, the sea waters enters through a series of filters to remove metal and chlorine as well as dirt and other impurities. The reverse osmosis filter is very sensitive to these pollutions and it is very important that these filters work well.

ENWA watermaker

The water is then pumped via high-pressure pumps into a “pressure booster”, a device I not yet have figured out what it does, and then is purified in the osmosis rods (pictured above).

This week we also got seats and mattresses for the ship. The seats in the different passenger cabins are color-coded to match the name of the cabin (Blue, red, yellow and green). In the saloon, the seat color is of a deep red-brown color. All seats are made of leather of the finest quality. BMW is supposed to use the exact same type of material for their most expensive cars. That’s interesting.

New seats in place

Jared from YWAM has been continuing his work on Elida IV (soon to be called the Next Wave) . He is, with aid from a local workshop, installing a lot of toilets and showers everywhere around the ship. The British MCA (shipping authorities) require six finctional toilets and showers up and running before the ship can be sold to YWAM. As a part of this, I had to move from the aft cabin down to the lower cabin deck and share cabin with Jimmy and Greg. I will miss my old bed, I have found the aft cabin very comfortable and spacey.

Jarod and Greg seem to think that the weather is very hot in Sweden during January. Someone tell them it’s only five degrees above zero.

January sunbathing
The Californian and the Canadian
Of course, these are a bit dated. Now, Greg (to the left in the picture) has both his hands cast and is unable to do any work at all.
Greg with the double cast

I will leave Gothenburg for a few days to be in Västerås. Among other things, I will congratulate my sister to her 16th birthday, play at a service in Bäckbykyrkan and plan the spring with my boss at ABB.

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Life | Tagged , | Comments (0)