SPICA

SPICA is "Axel's boat," Mia & Andy's family boat here in Sweden. This is our third personal boat (the first, ARCTURUS, was a 1966 Allied Seabreeze yawl, which we sailed across the Atlantic from Annapolis to Sweden in 2011/12; the second family boat, and the first SPICA, was a 1977 Norlin 34). 

The name SPICA is one of the 57 navigational stars commonly used in celestial nav. One afternoon after we first bought the Norlin 34 and were looking for a name, I was browsing the star list in the nautical almanac, came to SPICA and that was it. There is a star-finding rhyme that goes 'follow the arc to Arcturus and speed on to Spica!' The 'arc' being the curving handle of the Big Dipper constellation. So it was a natural fit for our new family boat name.

We sold the Norlin in the fall of 2024 and found this magnificently refit Olle Enderlein ("OE") 36, another Swedish designed and built classic and just couldn't resist. She's hull number 4, the first of the series to be built in Sweden (the first 3 were built in Norway), and she underwent a massive rebuild about 15 years ago by a prior owner. The interior was re-built by the same boatbuilders who do the interiors on the Najad yachts; the teak was re-laid on deck, after fixing several fiberglass deck issues; the Perkins engine rebuilt, a complete new electrical system installed and on.

The OE 36 out of the water looks like a mini ISBJØRN with a sleek fin keel, skeg-hung rudder aft and vee-shaped hull sections forward, which make for a wonderfully seagoing boat. And at 36-ft LOA, she's just the right size for navigating the narrow channels in the Stockholm Archipelago, where we mainly sail her, but she's seaworthy enough for longer Baltic passages, and indeed we have friends who sailed an OE 36 across the Atlantic!

We can't wait to share our family boat with the select few crew who can join us here in our backyard in Sweden.