Safety first: Life vest!

We have a golden rule on board of our boat: "safety first", all the crew members, including guests, have to wear life vests when the boat is in motion. We have several spare ones of different sizes for the visitors and the ones that we always use ourselves.

 "Modern" life vests are quite small in size and wearing them is quite easy, you often forget at all that you have it on. At the same time they are very efficient,  they will inflate automatically by releasing the gas when submerged, thanks to a small dissolvable stopper.
It is a good practice to check their condition at the beginning of the season. Normally checking the air leakage and changing the gas cartridge if necessary is enough. Though  this spring we realized that we need to get a new one for the captain :) Venemessut was the right place to shop, they had rather wide choice and you could try them on. We ended up purchasing this one:

When choosing it we had several characteristics we kept it mind:

1. The locker should be made of metal. In worst weather conditions you trust your life to this thingy, you don't want it to get broken. Ever. 

2. It should have a metal "loop", where you can attach the safety rope. It should be metal for the same reason as above. 

3. There should be the belt that can be attached from back to front. In worst case scenario it will ensure that the vest stays on and will not slip off in the water. 

4. It should be comfortable to wear.

This one fulfilled our requirements, and as a bonus had a special indicator, that will remind you when the gas cartridge needs to be changed.

Remember to wear your life vests and have a safe sailing season! 

Coats and Shoes - entrance furniture

When we moved to the new flat the only "major" fixing we did was changing the wallpapers in the entrance. And of course, they could picture nothing else but little blue sailing boats :) Once the wallpapers were in place, big challenge was to find the suitable entrance furniture. I was all the time having in mind some sort of entrance bench & coat rack. Probably this was imposed to my imagination by the white wall cabinet, which would serve as a niche for the bench . Furniture color was also predetermined by the white wallpaper background, white wall cabinet and white doors.

We have checked plenty of furniture shops and online pages and were surprised to see, that generally the choice of entrance benches is extremely small... Not to mention that I wanted it white and embracing the general style of the room. At last, the dream bench was found in Riviera Maison online catalogue (Riviera Mason is the shop where I could live, it deserves a separate post! :) ), but the price was totally absurd and out of our budget for this item.

Browsing online one day I bumped into the pages suggested to me by FB. How huge my surprise was to find there THE-bench-and-rack-of-my-dreams for 1/4 of the original price! It lacks the Riviera Maison logo, but otherwise is simply perfect! And honestly, I am not ready to pay 600€ for the logo.
Look at this :) I think the final outcome is awesome. At least I am very happy with this :)

Coats & Shoes: Wihonen online store

Rug: Kodin1

Pictures: me 

Tips for boat stuff shopping

Now that the season is approaching, many boat owners have the same problem: buying the needed accessories or spares for their boats. Most likely we will use again already familiar to us SVB service. After visiting their webpage we found many things we did not know we needed :)
This will not be the first order, 2 years ago among other boat parts we ordered there Henri Lloyd sailing gear for both of us and have been very happy with the price and quality. In any Finnish shop the price is normally about double.

 Delivery from Germany is not a problem at all, they have a fixed fee for delivery within EU at a very moderate price!  And you will have the goods delivered to your door by the courier. Overall a positive experience.

One more place to be considered for boat parts online shopping, particularly for mast and rigging, is Benn's. Same feedback as for SVB: good prices, easy delivery, good quality. Some time ago we ordered there several parts, not lately though. But currently one item is on the wish list: a rope clutch

For shopping in Helsinki we have also used Veneilijän Verkkokauppa, Marinea, John Nurminen Marine and Maritim. For the best price it is always worth it to check the needed item in different places and find the best offer.

For "all-in-1" shopping a popular place is yearly Venemessut (Boat Exhibition) and Uiva. They offer a good chance to check the products hands-on and often have quite good bargains.

Pictures taken from the respective web-pages.

Your good tips for boat stuff shopping are more than welcome in comments :)