“Well, we have decided to head for Tunisia in the boat”, says Harry as he grinds the coffee beans with his traditional manual grinder. “We want to get there in time to see the solar eclipse in August 2027.”

We are at Harry and Beate’s place in Germany. Beate previously shared a flat with the First Mate when they were both single, and we have kept in touch with them since then. We share a mutual interest in sailing, and, indeed, had previously visited them on their boat in Makkum in Holland.

“The plan is to start off this year from Holland and enter the French canal system”, says Beate. “We’ll see how far we will get in the canals, leave her somewhere over the winter, then carry on in 2026 down to the Mediterranean.”

“Then in 2027 we’ll sail across the Mediterranean to Tunisia”, continues Harry. “I have just finished rewiring the whole boat, so she is in pretty good shape now. Everything works the way I want it to.”

Harry is used to doing such things. When we first met, he was in the process of converting a double-decker bus into a mobile home, with the kitchen and living room downstairs, and the bedroom upstairs.

“I’ve even been taking celestial navigation classes”, he continues. “Look here’s the sextant I have just bought.”

We go out on the balcony and I measure the angle between a block of flats and the power station cooling towers. It’s 87°. It could be useful.

“It all sounds very exciting”, says the First Mate. “Although don’t forget that it gets terribly hot in the Mediterranean in August. We were there a few years ago, and it was almost unbearable. I couldn’t sleep at night. But good luck anyway.”

We spend the next few days in the First Mate’s home town, visiting her family and friends. Her mother is now 91 and in a care home. The plan is that I then drive up to Ruby Tuesday in Malmö and start preparing her for the new season. The First Mate will then come up by train a week later and we will set off.

On the way up, I stop for the night with our friends Hans and Gisela in Denmark. Their son Arne and his girlfriend Evie are also there for a few days, back from Holland where they live.

“Perfect timing”, says Gisela, as I arrive. “Dinner’s almost ready. We’re having garfish that Arne caught today in the sea.”

I have never eaten garfish before, but I remember that they have a long nose.

“And the bones are green”, says Arne. “They contain some stuff related to haemoglobin called biliverdin that is bright green in colour. I hope it doesn’t put you off. Green bones look rather weird.”

Continuing the colour theme over dinner, the subject of Greenland comes up.

“What do the Danes think about America’s plan to annex it?”, I ask.

“Most people think that it is ludicrous”, says Hans, almost choking on a green fish bone. “America is supposed to be one of our allies, and here they are talking about taking Greenland by force just to extract minerals. The most ridiculous thing is that as an ally, they could have want they wanted through joint ventures anyway. No need to annex the place.”

“And it is also not true to say that Denmark has not done anything for Greenland”, says Gisela. “Of course, mistakes have been made in the past, but in recent years the Danes have spent a lot of money improving services in Greenland. And it is completely untrue to say that Greenland is not defended against the Russians. Greenland is part of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of NATO, so Greenland is well defended by NATO.”

“People are also trying to work out what it means for NATO”, says Hans. “Article 5 states that if one NATO country is attacked then the others would all help to defend it. The US is a member of NATO, so does that mean the US would help to defend Denmark against itself?”

Welcome to the new world order, I think.

The next morning, after breakfast, we decide to visit the Trelleborg Ring Fortress not far from Slagelse.

“The fortress was built by Harald Bluetooth in the mid-980s”, one of the museum guides dressed as a Viking tells us. “Harald is credited with introducing Christianity to the Viking world, and with consolidating Denmark into one kingdom. For a short time he also ruled parts of Norway. He built his capital at Jelling, and constructed a series of ring fortresses to demonstrate his power to the German Emperor to the south. But he didn’t live long to enjoy it all – in 987 he was killed in a civil uprising led by his own son Svein, who was the one that invaded Britain.”

We wander out of the museum and head towards the Ring Fortress. On the way is a reconstructed longhouse.

“Apparently there were quite a few of these inside the fortress itself”, says Hans. “Families must have been living here, but there never was a town associated with it. Presumably they were the soldiers’ families.”

Back at the small café, we sit in the sun and eat our ice creams.

“We haven’t been here for a while”, says Gisela. “It’s interesting to see the progress they are making in developing the museum.”

In the evening, I arrive at Ruby Tuesday. Spencer is there to greet me. Both he and the boat appear to have weathered the winter well. There is no mould inside and the air smells fresh. I check the data loggers that I had left running and find that the temperatures inside her had not dropped below zero over the winter. Our worries about snow and ice seem to have been unfounded.

I spend the next few days preparing for the voyage. I had taken the heat exchanger home to clean and service it – just as well, as I had found that nearly half of the small cooling tubes had been blocked by scale. Soaking the unit in vinegar had helped to dissolve that and left it coppery clean. The job of the heat exchanger is for saltwater from the sea to absorb the heat from the coolant running through the engine, so it is essential that it functions properly to prevent overheating.

I also decide to check the anode inside the hot-water heater. We have never done that since we had bought the boat, so it is high time. Extracting the heater from under one of the seats isn’t too difficult, but undoing the nut on top of the cylinder is. It is corroded in position, and none of the tools I have are up to the job of freeing it. In the end, I have to borrow some larger ones from the harbourmaster. With a combination of these and brute force, it slowly comes undone. There is no anode left! No wonder it has corroded. I am sure that no-one has looked inside the cylinder since it was made. I decide to replace not only the anode, but also the heating element, thermostat and pressure relief valve while I am at it.

The First Mate arrives in due course. I collect her from the train station.

“I hope that you have got everything clean and tidy for me?”, she says, as I load her bags into the car. “I don’t want to start cleaning as soon as I arrive.”

Luckily it is dark when we arrive back at the boat.

The next evening, we drive over for dinner to some friends, Martin and Mia, who live just north of Malmö. We had first met them on the Swedish island of Borgholm when Martin had kindly given us a hand tying up, as well as a list of must-see places on the east coast of Sweden, which we had now seen most of. He had offered to kept an eye on Ruby Tuesday over the winter, visiting her from time to time to check that everything was OK and that the batteries were kept charged.

“That’s his second wife”, says Mia with a wink as we walk past the Porsche in the garage as we arrive.

“Well, a man has to have a few pleasures in life”, says Martin, grinning.

Over dinner, the conversation turns to Swedish politics. When we were sailing near Stockholm two years previously, it had been the time of the national elections, and the far-right Sweden Democrats had won a sizeable share of the votes, giving them a strong influence in government. I am curious as to how they have performed since then.

“Well they have lost some popularity since then”, Martin says, as he serves the salmon. “Last year, for example, they were found to be using social media to spread disinformation and attack political opponents online. People were put off by that. Then, this year, the government proposed stricter gun control after the country’s worst mass shooting in Örebro, but the Sweden Democrats opposed that, saying that they had concerns for hunters and farmers. That further eroded a lot of people’s confidence in them.”

“People also think they focus too much on immigration and crime”, says Mia. “Sure, it was a concern two years ago when they were elected, but overall it is less so now. But the Sweden Democrats don’t seem to be able to move on from then.”

“The next national elections are next year”, says Martin. “It will be interesting to see whether they still have the same amount of support then.”

We have booked a slot to have Ruby Tuesday lifted out of the water to have her bottom seen to.

The next few days are spent washing, scraping, sanding and painting, and replacing the anodes. I am astounded at the state of the propeller anode – I fitted a new one only a year ago, and it has almost completed eroded away.

“Sometimes if you are tied up next to a steel boat, that can happen”, explains Peder, the harbourmaster. “But at least it is doing its job.”

Soon Ruby Tuesday is back in the water to complete the preparations. In the afternoon, we receive a WhatsApp message from Simon and Louise, whom we had met on the Cruising Association Rally in 2023, and with whom we had explored Gotland together in 2024.

“Are you still in Malmö?”, they ask. “We have a rip in our sail, and need to have it fixed. Is there a sailmaker there? We’ll be there in the afternoon tomorrow.”

They arrive in time for coffee and cakes.

“I am not quite sure how it happened”, explains Louise. “I was sailing, and I wanted to tack, and I think the sail must have got stuck on something sharp on the self-tacking mechanism.”

We give them a hand in taking down the sail, packing it in a bag, and putting it in our car to take it to the sailmaker in the morning. The tear is quite small, but unless repaired such rips have a habit of getting much bigger quickly. It’s always better to get them fixed as soon as you can.

In the evening, we have dinner on their boat.

“As soon as we get back from this trip in October, I’m setting off for a motorcycle trip in Nepal”, Simon tells us. “It’s a sort of spiritual motorcycle ride with a group of other like-minded bikers. I came across this chap who organises trips combining motorbiking and discussions on spirituality. It sounded interesting, so I thought I would give it a go. I even had to be interviewed by him to see if I would fit into the group.”

“It sounds like something you could write a book on”, I say. “Did you ever read Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenance? In it, the author, Robert Pirsig, writes about a motorcycle trip he made from Minnesota to California in the 1960s with his son. The trip is interspersed with philosophical discussions on the pursuit of truth. He developed his theory of the Metaphysics of Quality in which quality is the driving force of the universe.”

“I like these philosophical discussions”, Louise says. “I am not religious now, but I was brought up as a Quaker. Both of my parents were members. We were taught that God doesn’t exist as a supreme being, but that something of what you might call God exists in everyone and emerges when people interact. Just meeting and having an interesting conversation like we are now is being part of God. Quakers believe that you find spiritual truth through your own inner experience of every-day life and human relationships, and for that reason we don’t have any need for ritual, ceremony or even clergy. They just get in the way of the relationship between yourself and God.”

“It all sounds very logical”, I say. “But I always thought that Quakers were a sect of Christianity. This sounds more like Humanism, I think.”

“Yes, they do follow many Christian traditions”, says Louise. “But a lot of Quakers wouldn’t describe themselves as Christians, more as members of a universal religion. And they don’t believe that the Bible, or any other book for that matter, is the ‘Word of God’, although they do think that it provides inspiration along with many others. So yes, a lot of their concepts are similar to humanist ideas, and in fact, a branch of the Quakers are actually affiliated to the Humanist Association.

“Wasn’t there a lot of resistance to them at one stage?”, asks the First Mate.

“Yes”, answers Simon. “George Fox, who was one of the founders, taught that all people have equal value. This didn’t go down too well with the rich landed gentry at the time, who saw it as a challenge to the established social order, and he was brought before the magistrates several times for blasphemy. His followers were officially persecuted for a time.”

“Well, that was interesting”, says the First Mate as we walk back to Ruby Tuesday. “I didn’t know much about the Quakers. You don’t hear much about them these days.”

“That’s true”, I say. “But their ideas certainly contributed a lot to the Enlightenment and to the way we think nowadays. Their condemnation of slavery, their campaigns for social justice, and focus on individual conscience and spiritual experience all align with the Enlightenment values of human rights, social reform, and reason. Quite an impact.”