A final season in the Baltic
It’s been a wonderful summer and the last week of sailing had everything. A fabulous wind sped us homeward in the perfect direction for fast cruising at over 9 knots, with a helpful current. Balmy weather, beautiful sunsets , warm water for the last swims of the summer plus a visit to a favourite fish […]
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It was different sailing south from Göteborg towards Copenhagen. The water is again saline, there is a bit of tide and swell and there are real fishing harbours where the boats leave at sunset to fish all night. The weather was lovely, and the wind just right to carry us along. A pod of dolphins […]
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The route out of Lake Vanern into the Skagerrak at Göteborg is through the Trollhätte Canal. Unlike the delightful old Göta canal, used entirely by tourists, the Trollhätte exists for commercial cargo ships to load and unload goods to the centre of Sweden, and we little sailing yachts are merely tolerated, when the locks aren’t […]
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One morning, we woke up, having planned our coming week travelling south along the Swedish coast, back the way we came in May. The wind was going to be ‘on our nose’, and we were likely going to be motoring through the islands for much of the way. All very pretty. It suddenly occurred to […]
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25th July saw us back on board Melodrama, with our great friend and crew member Brendan. Brendan has cruised most of the Swedish and Danish coast with us, but never the Stockholm Archipelago, so the cruise plan took us on a tour of the islands. The weather has been excellent, with light sailing breezes and […]
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We left the boat swinging on a mooring overlooked by the Royal Swedish Sailing Club Grand Hotel in Saltsjöbaden, south of Stockholm. We flew home for a gathering of the Scott family clan, a postponed Irish wedding in Enniskillen for William’s cousin Richard and his wife Choyeon. Sadly, our flights were cancelled at the last […]
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We’ve just come from a wonderful harbour surrounded by little islands in Finnhamn which is known as Paradiset. It is a busy and happy place, with yachts tied to the shore or anchored, and kids shrieking with delight as they played in the water – it really did live up to its name. We treated […]
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How generous to be called ‘new crew’; I’d say ‘new liability’ as the fella with the big grin limped on with his walking stick. The sun was shining and we started with a shore trip to the Vasa Museum – wow! After nearly 400 years at the bottom of Stockholm harbour, they refloated this 200 […]
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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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