Spring Break - Part 4
By Dave and Jaja

The Sunday we moved aboard was a real spring day. Sunshine, no wind, no offshore ground swell, and bright, white mountains. Our first stop was two miles south of Svolvaer, in one of the oldest ports in Lofoten called Kablevag. The Vikings had used the natural coves over a thousand years earlier.

The reason we went to Kablevag was to see a marine trade show which was being held at the indoor soccer stadium. Our friend Thorvardur had his commercial fishing gear and fish processing machinery on display and he had given us complimentary tickets. There weren't any boats on display, but there was a lot of equipment. You might think that Yachtsmen have the market cornered on electronic gadgetry and gear, but the stuff the fishermen use make the items in the West Marine catalog look like items in a flyer for Toys R Us. It's no surprise that the oceans are becoming depleted. The fish don't stand a chance.

At first, Chris, Holly, and Teiga were bored with the show. Then they discovered the freebees. We now have enough ball point pens and cigarette lighters to last until the next millennium.

There were the usual show enticements. One booth had a large GPS on display and you had to guess how many grams it weighed. You put your guess on a ticket, along with your name, then stuffed it into a cardboard box with a narrow slit in the top. I picked the unit up. It weighed a couple of pounds. How many grams was that? 16 ounces to the pound, times 28 grams to the ounce...the hell with it. Another booth had a large glass bowl filled to the brim with candy gummy fish. Guess how many fish and win a state-of-the-art cellular telephone with infrared link and internet capabilities.

Chris and Holly had tickets. "We want to win a telephone!" they said in unison.

"What would you do with a telephone?" Jaja asked.

"Games!"

We each made a guess. Ten fish was about the volume of a glass of water...how many cups would it take to fill the bowl...It's always more than you think so double it...add ten for luck...386...that's my guess.

45 minutes later, while we were having coffee and a sandwich, a man got on the intercom and announced that the number of fish in the bowl was 384.

"The winner is Dave Martin."

"Daddy!" Holly screamed. "You won the phone!"

The only other time I have won anything was on board DIRECTION before Jaja and I met. I was sitting alone at anchor in the Caribbean when I opened one of the many cans of coffee that I had provisioned with before leaving the States. This can had a gold plastic scooper inside of it. The next day I read on the can that if you got a gold scooper you were the lucky winner of an automatic coffee maker. Offer only valid in the United States. I sent the prize to my dad who was living in Los Angeles. Later, I learned from my dad that the "automatic coffee maker" was a porcelain mug, and one of those single-cup, plastic funnels that use a paper filter.

The mobile phone was for real, so we brought it back to DRIVER, untied our dock lines, and began our spring cruise. We steamed out of Kablevag bound for the mountainous island of Store Molla, ten miles north. This day would be our last taste of clear weather until we got to Troll Fjord four days later. The weather to come would make the launching day seem almost tropical.