Big news in Ulsteinvik.

Whew. You'll never imagine. News event of the year.

Kaffe Baren has been sold!

I know - shocking, isn't it? The institution around which this town was built... Well, not really. Okay, the most popular bar in town... Maybe, though perhaps fading to classier new places that have opened recently. Okay, the place that's closest to Ashley & Kes's place... Well, that can't be argued.

Seriously, though, it is big news here - Kaffe Baren is an institution, where anyone who grew up here has probably been ejected at least once, and is the only real live music venue in town, other than the theatre. Even more shockingly, it's been sold from a late-50s man probably looking to retire, to a mid-20s woman. This has been the topic of at least 50% of all non-work conversations I've been part of here in the last week. Of course, opinions on where she got the money abound, theories that the place is going to change significantly are alternately supported and shot down and sure enough, one of my friends claims to have slept with her (not confirmed by independent reports).

I can certainly imagine a similar general rhubarb of gossip if such a thing happened in Bella Coola. Once again, the more I learn about this place, the more it seems just like home!

Things are going well at work, with the "crack team of ex-pats" putting out a lot of work. It's been neat to see, for the first time, serious work on the detailed design of my vessel advancing. Up until now, my work has been primarily concerned with navigating purchasing and suppliers, structuring the work to be done, and a lot of co-ordination with other departments. I feel like that groundwork has been well laid, and now the real churning out of drawings and details has begun. We're now getting into things as detailed as where smoke detectors will be placed, and how many breakers in specific distribution cabinets. It's a bit surreal to be doing this before a single piece of steel has been cut for the hull, but there's really an overwhelming number of such details on a boat this big.

I once had shipbuilding described to me as a series of "divebombs" - you have to be able to float along at 40,000 feet, with a comprehensive overview of the project, managing generalities such as the number of employees assigned to specific categories of work and the mains voltage. Then, when something seems to be going slightly off-course, you have to be able to zoom into six inches away, identifying the terminal block that has been put in backwards, or the component that was supplied with the wrong mounting bolts, before those problems multiply. I'm finding that to be the case, and I really enjoy it.

Anyway, there's really not all that much happening here, so I'm going to keep this short.

Next weekend, I'm off to Fredrikstad, for a Scandinavian Under-20 Men's tournament. It's more than just the tournament, though, it's also a big workshop, with referees from Norway, Demark & Sweden, a whole bunch of Under-17 players, and some coaching workshops, too. I am definitely looking forward to the opportunity.

...and the weekend after that, I meet Kes in Copenhagen! Finally!