Story 21DX/016GG 21DX/016GG - Norrutharet island 21DX/029GG - myringsharet island 21DX/016GG - tunnharet island Island Festival 2015 weekend. Shortly after IF2014 i, David 21DX102, began to look for islands for 2015. In my early plans i started look very close to where i live. Several islands were found as targets. Up until this point i was still not sure of how the team was going look like. Or if i would do another IF on my own. But it did not take long before Loic 21DX014 had signed up as a team member. So, where would we go... Loic thought it would be difficult for him to go 700 km south over the weekend this year. So we started look up north. At this time there was a third member in the plans and he convinced us to go even more north to a lovely lake in his area where there were plenty of IWI's that we could activate. There was also the fact that he had a nice boat in the lake, which always makes things easier. However, after some time of slow planning, let's say sometime during winter, Loic and i drastically changed the plans again. Now we were looking at IOTA's on the east coast near Loic's home QTH. The weeks went by very fast and slowly we had decided to activate four islands in Gavleborg archipelago. According to the plans there was going to be three new islands and one island where Loic had been before but with just a few in the log. 014, 015 and i was going to leave mainland on friday afternoon. 015 couldn't join us so we were one man short during the weekend. I left home at 06:00 local time. After a short stop and a little detour on the way to pick up a new radio for Loic i arrived at Loic's home... Shortly after the car was well packed up with probably too much stuff. We left his home and went for some food, some grossery shopping and to fill up our fuel tanks. After packing the boat with way too much things, we left mainland a bit later than we planned but not too late to cause any problem. We arrived to Norrutharet island (021GG) before sunset and started to look for a place were we could set up our base camp. Unfortunately there was only one place on the island where it was possible to set up the tents, and it was a long way to walk over stones and rocks with all the equipment. At 00.00utc the camp was set. Everything but the antennas. We were exhausted. A long day had to come to its end and we decided to sleep a few hours before setting up the antenna early morning. The night was cold and the next day it started to rain, 9c - 13c during the day and we started to call CQ under a temporary cover. Extremly bad conditions on the radio during the day but we did all we could to get as many as possible in the log. Due to the bad weather with rain and hard winds we decided to wait until sunday morning before going to the next island. This cost us a lot of time which meant we wouldn't be able to activate all four islands. One had to go. 028GG was cancelled. First stop on sunday was Myringsharet, 029GG, and all went well. During our stay there the water level went up a bit, enough to hide the stones we walked on to get on to the island. We had to struggle a bit to get off the island but it went ok. Second stop on sunday was Tunnharet, 016GG, and after looking for somewhere to land we actually found a pier. When entering the island we were very surprised to what we found. Many years ago someone had built bridges, walking boards, a wooden nest on top of the island and even a urinal out of wood. The "pirate nest" was the perfect place for us. We even found a sofa. We wished we had gone here much earlier, because of the facilities and the fact that the island was very high above the sea. We stayed for as long as possible before we had to go back to mainland with the boat. On our way back we had the honour to see a beautiful sunset which became the perfect ending of a great weekend. The conditions on the radio could have been better but it is always a lottery. 120km later we were back at Loic's place for some sleep. The next morning i began my journey back home. A total of 1580 km with my car and four full days. One day of rest and then i guess we start the planning for next year. We hope you are in our small log! Thank you for your kind words and support. Se you next year! 73 de nordic islanders 21DX102 David & 21DX014 Loic return