A final season in the Baltic
Karlskrona has been Sweden’s main naval base since 1680, and until recently was off limits to passing sailors. Now it has a large marina, with smart glazed buildings and lots of glossy brochures, a fabulous maritime museum, and is working hard to build a tourism industry. But it is all run on a shoestring by […]
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With all Olaf’s talk of high winds and shipwrecks, we rigged the storm sail to try it out, and marked off our reefing positions on the halyards. The sail wraps around a furled genoa in its sewn-in storage bag, and pulls out when it is hoisted on the spinnaker halyard. In 8-10 knots of wind, […]
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A spanking sail to windward with one reef took us to the lighthouse island of Utklippan. We were charmed immediately, as the harbourmaster hoisted an Irish flag to welcome us in. The inner harbour was constructed in wartime, and is very sheltered. There are actually two islands making up the harbour, and public […]
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A perfect beat in 12 -16 kts of summer breeze took us to the buoyed channel to Arpo island. There we picked up a Swedish Cruising Club mooring buoy in the late afternoon, and relaxed in the sunshine. The plan was to row ashore to barbecue on a small island, but the wind did not […]
read moreThe forecast today was 24C and sunny! We were determined now to attempt the challenge of navigating through the Archipelago, or Skargard, thousands of little islands and rocks (the locals call them stones) with sheltered anchorages and jetties everywhere, dotted with wooden houses and huts. Surely we would now find a deserted idyll for an […]
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Hano was our next ‘not to be missed’ location, a small island off the coast of Sweden. To get there we had to pass through a major shipping channel, a firing range, the invisible Denmark-Sweden border, and despite the sunny forecast, sea fog. We did get to test our radar. Being early in the season […]
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Everyone we have met has said we must not miss Christianso Island, so we left Allinge with a good breeze to windward, probably half an hour behind our 9 Polish neighbours in their chartered 50 foot Bavaria. We were determined to get there ahead of them 🙂 Despite their extra size, we did have the […]
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We had a great sail up to Allinge on the NE Coast of Bornholm, having altered course (again!) at the request of NATO Warship A090 exercising in the area. We could not see what they were doing, but we think it involved a man fishing from a dinghy. Meet the harbour master: Fill in the […]
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Our first stop was a totally charming little wharf at Seedorf in among the reeds, and our first experience of the dreaded box berth. This consists only of thick wooden, metal or plastic posts stuck into the water, a few metres away from the shore. First we have to pick two posts which are wide […]
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Saturday morning and we are filling up with water, plotting our route and making ready to leave Greifswald. All the work was completed yesterday, pretty much on our schedule, amazingly, and thanks to the huge efforts by everyone from the yard, rigger, sailmaker, chandlery – Ollie, Ollie, Paul, Stefan and Sebastian and our agents at […]
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