When we return to the farm, I announces the news about the ship, and if the restoration goes well, that we will sail to Skiringsalr in two days. They all already know the reasons for the trip, and several of us are really looking forward to the primary goal of the trip.

I take off my sword and change my belt as soon as I return to my room. Walking around with a 85 cm long and 1.2kg piece of metal hanging in a belt, quickly becomes annoying and cumbersome. Sure, I'm unaccustomed to it, but it sticks out and I never liked tight belts around my waist, and neither does my stomach. And I have to tighten it up, because my waist isn't slim, although its not overly fat. I will have to get used to carrying a sword, but I will probably only carry the sword on special occasions and when I need to. I can't really use it, and prefer to rely on my Boomstick instead, and it can be beneficial that I look unarmed. My Boomstick is pretty much the same length and weight, but I can change hands, hang it on my back, and move it around or lean it against something, so overall the Boomstick feels less in the way. I need to get swords and other combat lessons from one of my guards, because walking around with a deadly weapon in the belt without training to be able to handle it, is both stupid and disrespectful. I have honestly practiced more with my Boomstick than with my sword, and I'm far more comfortable handling a firearm too.

Before I sit down to work on the ship compass and sextant, I decide to give Ciara her presents. Make sure we are alone in my room, and sitting on the bed, I tell her that I will give both her and Kari knives in the future, and new necklaces when they are finished, but Iselin got the first knife, which Ciara agree is propper. But I wanted to do something special for her, so I start by giving her the two rings in rose gold. She gets so overjoyed and wants me to replace them for her, so soon I sit there with Ciara naked in front of me, and very carefully and tenderly I replace them after cleaning both the rings and her nipples in hand sanitizer gel. Her piercings seem to be healing well. Her face is so adorable when she happily plays with and shakes her breasts so the rings wiggle, and she admires her breasts and her new rings, and I get several happy tender kisses. Why does it still feel like we are fumbling teenagers?

Asks if she's carrying her wooden buttplug, but she shakes her head and says it shouldn't be worn too much. Sounds good, so I ask her to only carry it when she wants, but I want her to know that she is special to me, and that I wish her to feel special and luxurious. I take out the small piece of cloth, unfold and give her the little rose gold buttplug.

Ciara's whole face focuses on it as she reverently picks it up and examines it, move to the windows to see its shimmer and how the glass crystal is sparkling in the sunlight. Ciara have a similar face and look that Alith had when she examined my sword or Boomstick. Without a word, she fetch the oil bottle off the shelf, and hands me both with an expectant smile before turning around, bends and grabs her ankles to position her butt in front of my face. After I kissed and caressed her body, buttocks, and clitoris for a while, Ciara gets her new anointed jewelled plug. In a loud orgasm, she loses all strength in her legs and collapse in my lap, and I hold her and lay us down in bed, while she pant and calm down. I feel pretty good too, because I think it was the preparation, and how I enjoy her, that made her orgasm, more than the plug itself. She seems to mostly enjoy that we can give each other sexual pleasure, and that I enjoy having any sexual contact with her. I just try to remember to keep my mouth shut about how skinny she is.

I kiss her neck and we cuddle a bit, and I gently poke and wiggle her plug a bit while we do, as her smile and happy face is really gratifying. We share more kisses. I tell her that the plug isn't solid gold, but instead hollow silver on the inside to keep the weight down so its not too heavy, but gold is prettier and much easier to keep clean. Ciara is happy that I thought about that too. That I thought of her.

Ciara says its time for her to prepare and fetch the food, so I get one last kiss, before she steps up and puts on her clothes, gives me another tender kiss, straightens her dress and goes out.

When I go out to eat just a little while later, I'm not surprised to see Alith with a crooked smile on her face, because the whole farm probably heard Ciara, and Ciara walks around with a happy smile. I feel that I need to take some high ground in the verbal duels between us, so when I sit down beside Alith I just whisper with my own confident smile; 'I only used my fingers and mouth.' Alith's smile falls and she just stares in front of her, before regaining her composure. I won that round.

While we eat, I mention that I need sword lessons, and general combat lessons, and hope that one of my guards might volunteer to teach me. It turns out that everyone is, and they start discussing who is best for teaching what. I almost get worried when they reckon I need to learn the sword, shield, knife, axe, spear and bow, in that order, and above all learn to fight in duel form. I hadn't really considered that I might need that knowledge here. How many modern North European Midgard men have ever considered having to fight with swords and shields in a duel to have the law on their side? Thank goodness I'm a Furste on my islands.

In my head I do my best Stallone 'Judge Dredd' voice: "I am... the LAW!". That movie was so stupid. 'Dredd' with Karl Urban was much better, and he played Dredd better.

I finish building the first ship compass. There isn't much left to do, just assemble it together, and I complete the compass disc. The disc have deep grooves and sixteen directions with 360 degree markings on the outside. I fill them with paint. As it dries, I take out the piece of iron that is the compass needle itself, and I file a little until I can push a ruby into its small conical hole. Make the last fit and adjustment, magnetize, and then rivet the compass disc to the iron piece with brass rivets, and balance the finished solution on the needle in the puck.

Spinn the compass disc and it rotates freely, and long, before it stabilizes, and I can read the bearing from the small metall arrow pointing on the scale. Of course it has quite a bit of mass in motion and the magnetic force is relatively low. I can move the mounting arm and the gimbaled puck stays fairly stable and the ringmounts works as it should. I carefully heat the whole puck and with a stick I put some melted pitch on the whole edge around and then quickly but carefully place the cleaned ground glass plate, and make sure its lined up and gently push the plate down on top so its goes down toward the compass disc but doesn't touch the compass discs middle dome. The lid is to prevent the compass writing from jumping off in the event of violent shocks and to provide a closed container, and the needle/dome is so that the disc can move a little at the outer edge without hitting the glass or bottom of the puck.

I will try using it as a dry compass first, and then fill it to see the difference and whether it is worth doing in the future. The bottom of the puck has a threaded hole in the bottom so a small M6 screw with leather gasket can seal and to make filling possible. Filling liquid can't be water, as water will freeze and organism will grow in it, but it could be some kind of oil or alcohol. The last thing I do is to clean the outside and lubricate all arm joints. It will be fun to test this shipcompass while sailing.

The rest of the afternoon and evening is spent putting the sextant together, and my girlfriends just have to accept that I sometimes prioritize work rather than, for example, swimming with them. This need to be finished. Its a lot of work, but the only thing that really takes time is the exact engraving of degree lines. I mark to whole degrees, but engrave a small nonie/vernier scale for tenths. No so easy to get it right. If I have to make many, I should make an accurate angle guide in metal I can use, with a long arm to increase precision. The monocular part and the angle measurement should work fine, if I get it good enough, and minimize everything I can think of introducing faults, and I need to finished the sun filter glass. I have focused on glasses that dampens light the most without diffusing light, and have the least distortion, so dark red and blue. I probably need to combine them so that the eye isn't damaged by IR or UV radiation, but double filters give double distortion. The brass mirror do affect the light spectrum by removing a bit of bluer light, but I don't know if it limits UV enough. I should probably silvercoat the mirror in the future to help with light transmission, but then they will oxidize. I wonder if I can nickelplate them? Its not that hard if I could get a hold of reasonably pure nickel. I just need to have vinegar in a jar, add a couple of pinches of salt, and a low voltage DC power source to electro disolve nickel. If it turns green, its ready, other colors and its not pure Nickel. But the next step is electro plate copper or brass in the solution. Another future project. And then I have the bigger problem of making a halfmirror. How do I silver glass? I know there is some kind of chemical etching process to add silver, but I don't remember any more than that. My halfmirror is a glassplate with a thin brass mirror on top. Not ideal.

Well, its easy for the mind to wander when I'm doing something boring like drilling holes in glass by grinding down with a modified drillbit. Heh, boring. Its just tedious and time consuming. Its equally boring, to polish the glass as flat as I can, to minimize distortion effect on the measurement, but the filters are placed as close to the joining mirror as I can without being in the way, and folding out of the lightpath. I wonder how well the mirrorfinish will stay mirrorfinished. Nickelplating them would really help, especially in a marine environment and using stars. Atleast metalmirrors are first surface mirrors. A normal glass mirror with the reflective surface on the back wouldn't really work.

But my brass cast screws and taps work surprisingly well, even if they need a little love with a file. M4 is thankfully useful, and M6 / M8 works fine, so I use M6 for the glass filters, to hold the arm against the sextant frame, and also mount the monocular against the frame and as a clamping solution. I should probably try and replace the sextant monocular with a simple aperature sight system in the future. It might work well enough and it would make it cheaper and easier to build. Also easier to maintain, and aperature sights doesn't fog or mist up. I doubt that I will have enough precision and light gathering in the monocular that it actually matter. A larger aperature might work well enough even with stars.

I'm not sure that this sextant works exactly right, or what precision it will have, and I will need to correct the angle of everything, especially the mirrors to reset the sextant to zero. While waiting for the sunset, I prepare for the sextant calibration by measuring the exact distance to the barn with the help of a long straight pole, and calculate the angle from the barn roofs skyline, and the ground where I place a light colored paper. This will be my reference angle. I will probably verify it much more carefully tomorrow after the crew is hopefully employed. I reset the sextant by using the horizon just after sundown, when the contrast between the sea and sky is higher and very visible through the two mirror surfaces. Then I measure the barn reference angle.

YES! It works! I let Iselin and Kari try my funny contraption, and with my description they arrive at the same angle, although I have to read the scale for them.

I spends a large part of the evening thinking out the trigonometry and tables for correction for time of day, day of the year, angle size of the sun, etc. Urk. I will need to measure to make the right correction for the sun as well, and eventually measure and calculate a celestial sphere and a lot of stars zenith position. But thats in the future, and probably after I make the sextant good enough to use stars, and as long as the measurements are close to each other on a daily basis, it will be less of a problem for this first test. What is really important is a measurement in Borgarsandr, one at the Academy, and last at Skiringsalr, so I can partly see the error and partly decide if the sextant is useful and correct. Improvements will come later. I should order more lenses and monoculars casings tomorrow, since even if I don't use them for sextants, they can be sold as monoculars. Ciara is also finished with the ship's maps, so a good day with good progress.

Ciara is so happy when shes lying down to sleep while feeling Roberts embrace. This day is number three in her life after the unbeatable day when she became Robert's concubine, and the second is when she became Robert's slave. This day only became better by ending here, in Robert's bed and embrace after they had sex, and he came twice. She made his day end well.

Robert made her day so very very good. Robert has given her something so much more valuable than knives and necklaces. A wonderful little jewel in warm red-toned gold. Just for her. Specifically for her. The only one in the world. Because Robert thinks her health and pleasure is worth so much, and a piece of wood isn't good enough for her. Robert even made it as luxurious as he could with a small red glass jewel, while thinking about its weight and make keeping it clean easy. A small plug with a red jewel for her with only one purpose, and Ciara loves that she will always have the opportunity to feel a small part of Robert inside her. It feels naughty to have something so valuable there, and even more naughty that she carried it all afternoon.

She loves the matching breast rings, and that they are slightly larger and thicker than Alith's. But now, not only is her breasts decorated with special gold, but her butt have its own special decoration, and its so much more valuable. She have shown Alith. Shown how valuable and special Robert thinks she is.