hrtsailor wrote:
Age shouldn't be a problem. I started sailing the Hobie when I was over 50 and turned the boat over to my daghter when I turned 82. Weight is another question. How much do you weigh? It usually takes 2 people to right an H-16 and it takes some weight when sailing to counter balance the boat..
Couldn't find enough fresh batteries for person scale, but would say something like 66kg, not more quite sure.
hrtsailor wrote:
Another side light. I don't know my grandfather's real name. When he immigrated to the US, his papers were in Cyrillic Russian since Russia then controlled Finland. American officials couldn't read it so they just assigned him a name. The papers were lost. I have been trying to figure out how to trace it back but so far no luck.
Wow, what an interesting piece of immigration history in your family. Sad all the ties for old country is lost so totally that you don't even know grand dads orginal family. Family was important thing in Scandinavia and Finland old days, family ties were the base of respect and justice. Even in murder cases families of victim and murderer negotiated compensations for human life lost before court meeting themselves. That is if the family of murdered victim didn't kill the killer as revenge during next three days after murder which they had all the right to do by the law.
Nowadays social security system had made Northern countries quite sad when looking at family ties. Old people are put into retirement homes, relatives don't visit, ties between generations become weaker, and old people more lonely and unhappy. Don't get me wrong, strong social security by the society is an excellent thing, because not everyone have relatives to take care at old age, but it also gives otherwise good and loving children an opportunity to focus on career and nuclear family and forgot old relatives in the care of society.
All the Finns are listed by church very carefully since 1500's. Before that all the land owning families are listed among their houses paying taxes for church. For long time natural products like crop, fish, butter, hemp etc. Since reformation everyone was obligated to learn Katekismus and soon also read enough to understand bible. To keep record of these skills church started to have examinations and listed all people no matter how much they ówn to keep record of their bible and reading skills.
My fathers last name was Kauppi, but actually Kauppi was the name of the house, quite large farm with fields and forest, and own two mans piece hunting land over 60 km more north from Tavastia, wilderness with no permanent habitation yet. The house of Kauppi comes visible into history in taxation records in the late 1400's.
Seg is my mothers fathers fathers name. It's a solder name given by crown meaning though and persistent. Names were given by personal properties under the service.
But I'm not man line Kauppi nor my father. During the centuries the house of Kauppi was 4 times without male inheritor, and the daughter of the house married a man to get a master for the house.
One thouse married to house of Kauppi was my fathers man line relative. That family kept the house of Kyynärö 10 generations after another. Probably that was recommendations enough for the house of Kauppi to take one younger boys from Kyynärö to run the bisnes.
Although lately I have come to think about the inevitable genetic curse of the house of Kauppi, thouse daughters of wealthy house selecting a husband and master not purely by agricultural and hunting merits four times over the years.
But the records of the Finland, first part of Sweden and then autonomic part of Russia since 1810, are excellent.
You may be able to study your family history very long backwards like my father did, if just find the family name. If you lucky some family researcher has done all the work for you.
I take your grand father did not get any letters from old country, or those are lost?
If there was no one to write him left in the old country, you would not find living relatives in Finland, but you will surely be able to find long history.
But if you take a genetic sample and send you DNA tested you might find a relative among the other people made the test. A good chance to find a relative because Finns are very eager for DNA testing themselves.
Is the name of the ship your grand father sailed known?
By the way, that friend of mine will not become a part owner of Windmill, but she is eager to learn some sailing with Hobie later.
Now I go to sleep. Have already made a deal with a friend to borrow his Peugeot Boxer mobile home van when taking a trip to Sweden or Denmark to get the catamaran when the deal is clear.