2 Cats 1 Boat

After sailing on other people’s boats for a while, I finally got my own. I’m planning to live aboard and travel. It seems like a good way to have more comfort than most ways of travelling - you take your bed, kitchen, etc. with you - but you are not stuck in one place as you are with a house. For the moment the boat is on land in Stockholm, but in the Spring we should be ready to go.

The boat is a Shipman Scampi, better known as Albin Scampi, as Albin also built them. 30ft, made in Sweden around 40 years ago. Quite light displacement and meant for racing, but hopefully will serve for cruising. She needs some work, but overall not a bad deal.

I bought this boat after hitchhiking around Sweden, looking mostly at the Albin Vega, until Autumn when prices on larger boats like this dropped. I heard Sweden is a good place to buy a boat, and they certainly do seem cheaper here than in the UK and probably most of Europe. Swedish boats do not, however, seem to be well equipped to go to sea, as British ones more often are. I think this is because they are usually just used around the islands here, so there is more work to do, like adding anchors, tender, vhf radio!