Many Moons ago -combining football and sailing

 

Football (Soccer) and Sailing is a great combination.  At least if you´re OK to watch the game rather than play yourself and if your sailing area covers television screens actually sending what you look for. Getting a bit nostalgic – we browsed through some old pictures from when we started sailing.

Since we started sailing 30 years ago, we have been fortunate to been able to see  European and World Championships games, at least from the quarter finals to the finals. Late eighties no one knew about streaming live video on a “smartphone”, in fact very few mobile phones were around and if so, they were heavy and not very smart. As we are now in a football friendly part of the world we are able to watch the games (of course focussing on Swedish games) at a restaurant/bar with a 60 inch screen, delivering the game in HD quality. As we have been here close to four weeks in the “Dutch Caribbean” we can almost understand the Dutch speaker, if nothing else he includes “Zlatan” in every other word. Enough about here and now. Tomorrow it is judgement day. Sweden has not a very impressive European Championship performance so far this year. But “Bollen är rund”, meaning everything can happen in football and hopefully we make it to the next round.

Highlights that we forever remember:

First year with our Becker 27 (1994) in Norway, we were at an island south from Kristiansand, and started to listen to the radio in the middle of the night, to follow the football, listening intensively to the games, forgetting to look around and understood afterwards that we anchored on an Island restricted as a military zone(!). Since Sweden were good this year, we followed up with a very late night in Mosterhamn (heavy morning the day after) and the quarter finals/semi-finals in Korsör together with a lot of other nationalities. As a matter of fact Sweden got a world championship bronze medal!!!!

Another fabulous memory is the football during 1998 when we were sailing in Scotland, around the Hebrides’. When the semi-finals were played, we were at a mooring in Loch Maddy. A gale was blowing and there was little to be seen in the proximity of the harbour. North Uist was at that time tea total during Sundays, children’s playground chained down, but the hotel owner opened up a “garage/snooker” room, put in a TV and all of us stranded sailors and gave us the possibility to buy canned beer. We gathered together to follow the game, Germans, Swedes and French. The final we saw together (!) in Harris, Stornoway. France won.

In Almerimar, we of course followed “El Classico” (Real Madrid vs. Barcelona) on a local bar. It is very important to check out who the locals support as to avoid embarrassment and angry looks.

So now we are anchored at Bonaire in the Dutch Caribbean Islands. Following the games on a local bar, checking that they really show the Swedish match against the Belgium tomorrow. The Italians are playing at the same time so it is a matter of which games has most people watching. Since we are only 2 Swedes around on the island, we have to beg for assistance and the bartender will start 2 TV Screens so we can see our game!  We are not real nerds…but close to…

Keep the fingers crossed for us tomorrow. Zlatan (the captain of the Swedish national team) will retire after these games so tomorrow could be a historic event.

By the way – tomorrow is a hectic day. Peter has a doctor’s appointment in the morning, the Match is at 3 pm and at 5 pm we are joining around 20 sailors for the famous happy hour hamburger and beer treat at the Harbour Village Restaurant. Hectic Days indeed….