A final season in the Baltic
Timeline posts
Destination Stockholm, and a new crew. But first we had to exit the lock keeping the water level stable in Lake Mälaren. Not being sure of timings for little yachts to go through, we anchored in a stunningly beautiful bay nearby, directly opposite Drottningham Slott, home of the King and Queen of Sweden. The royal […]
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Lake Mälaren was a great decision. The long fjord to the canal entrance is truly lovely. At the southerly end is the little town of Trosa, quite a shallow harbour, with a canal that runs upriver to the town centre. It was such a lovely day that we inflated the dinghy and set off under […]
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Northwards, along the coast towards our June destination in Stockholm. The coastline north of Kalmar is quite literally awash with islands and rocks, and navigation is something else! There are charted routes ‘guaranteed’ to be 3-5 metres which weave between and around the obstacles, and are marked with red and green spar buoys to indicate […]
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Neither of us has ever had a GPS chart plotter before, except an iPad. And we are both such tech nuts that the instrumentation was definitely one of the more exciting things about the new boat back in 2018. We still buy and use paper charts too. You never know when there might be a […]
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….or ‘Still Baltic in the Baltic’ Here we are in Kalmar, which is a really cool town with a great sheltered inner harbour. It’s raining today, so we are once more huddled down below, venturing out to visit the nearby chandlery (always a treat). William bought a new pump for the toilet system and fitted […]
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Ystad is a regular stopover for us when traveling to and from Sweden. It is of course famous as the setting for multiple murder mysteries, solved by Inspector Kurt Wallander, and is a pretty Hanseatic town, full of cobbled streets and little rows of brick and wooden cottages. The Harbour wall has some berthing alongside, […]
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Following two summers of Covid restrictions, at last we have plans to spend the whole season exploring the Baltic Sea again. Originally, our intention had been to sail North and explore Finland and Estonia and leave Melodrama in Tallinn over the winter. But now, the geo-political situation has changed, and we’ve taken the decision to […]
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It’s nearly 4pm and a week after my trip to Malta. At 4pm, it’s time for my watch to get 4 hrs sleep before first night watch, and I seem still to want that siesta! I’ve only just stopped dreaming about the boat, and swaying from side to side as I walk. It was a […]
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And just when you think it’s all over, Karen signed up for a week sailing a Volvo Ocean 70 racing yacht from Sardinia to Malta next week. These boats are stripped of all comforts to stay light, and the food is generally dry rations. It should be interesting, probably in a ‘character building’ way. There […]
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It’s late September and we really should be back at Fahan. The boat is back in Augustenborg marina, and we’ve spent the last four days scrubbing the decks, laundry, cleaning the cabins, removing sails and generally leaving the boat spic and span over the winter, safe in Anders’ warm shed. It’s all been very satisfactory. […]
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Ærøskøbing harbour is next to a wonderful natural anchorage, with room for over 100 boats, and little bathing huts all along the sandy shore. It’s very pretty. But in September, there were only four other boats. We took what was most likely our last swim from the boat, and cooked what was most likely our […]
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One of the upsides of our restricted sailing waters this summer has been the chance to visit lots of little harbours and islands and take the time to visit them, as they are not just an overnight stop on a longer passage. They do all have their own special character, and now that it is […]
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