Thursday, May 10, 2007

2004 Summer Cruise

Finally my summer vacation had arrived and my wife and I were preparing for our summer cruise. This year we would be out sailing for two weeks, the longest consecutive time so far. The last two years we spend eight days on the boat and when we were on our way home, we both felt that we would like to try being out longer next time. So we tried. My wife had to work Friday, so we decided to use Saturday as provisioning day and set out on Sunday morning. This was not a very good decision though...more about that later. With provisions for a 14 day cruise the boat sat quite low in the water when we set out on Sunday at about 1000. However, earlier cruises had taught us that the extra ballast only improves the boat's ability to go to weather, provided that it all is stuffed in right (Trim somewhat low in the bow to compensate two people in the cockpit.) We did carry food for two weeks although we planned to stop at some places where there are restaurants and shops to get more fresh things. Mostly we carried canned food and fresh food that can live well in the somewhat cooler bilges (potatoes, paprika, carrots, pasta, apples, oranges (to make fresh juice in the mornings), onions etc.. We also had a small cooling bag which holds cold a few days. There we carried some stuff we would eat during the first few days, i e sausages and cheese.). Our plan was to get as far away from the city as possible the first, day, and then sail slowly north, as far as we would get, as we did not have been sailing up there before. Winds were about 10 knots from the south-southwest which suited us well. Forecasts also told us that these southerlies would prevail some more days.

This little lighthouse marks kind of the boundary of normal daysailing range. We now would not see it again for two weeks. This felt great! To get a bit away from the city one has to sail one of two ways. Of course, also every powerboat going out over the week-end has to do this. This is why it is not so good to start or finish a cruise on a Sunday. (There is another reason, to be told later....). After passing the famous Vaxholm castle (where the Swedish fleet waited doing nothing in 1717 while Russian warships burned the outer parts of the archipelago), we turned into Lindalssundet, also called the highway to the archipelago. Now we really learned this thing about powerboats and Sundays. It got very bumpy... But finally we made it through and into more open water. I did, of course, forget to take a picture of the castle, as I have seen it so often. I know you haven't, so I promise I will sail there soon again and take a picture. However I photographed some nice houses along Lindalssundet.

At 1800 we hade reached out first nightstop. This was actually the whole cruise's longest leg, but we really wanted to get away from town.... We stayed at a nice little cove, actually it's a sound, as there is an island blocking the southern entry of the cove. This makes it very sheltered although there is heavy boat traffic in the lane south of it. But almost no swells reaches in. There were a few other boats there, among them a big German sailing yacht that had anchored in the middle. Everybody else was mooring bow to land and anchor aft, as we usually do it here.

We were so hungry after the long sailing day that we skipped any advanced cooking projects and had pasta.... The next day it was overcast, and later on we would get some rain. We decided to leave anyway, as we wanted to put some distance between us and the city (and the powerboats...). Winds were still from the south and about 10 knots. We sailed for five hours until arriving at the next stop. Around lunchtime, we had some instant noodles (the kind that comes in a cup and you only pour hot water over it which we had pre-prepared in a thermos). We passed a funny little island with a lot of Cormorants in dead trees on it...

Finally we arrived at Träskö, where we stayed the night. Most of the time it was drizzling.

This is the anchorage at Träskö in the evening. Quite a few boats here, too. Tuesday brought better weather and winds still from the south at the usual 10-12 knots. We happily continued north, with the wind, not knowing what would happen in a few days. So far we always listened the the forecast on the radion two times a day. I did not yet bother to check medium range forecasts via WAP, which I soon should learn is a good idea.... We now sailed in much more open water, at least to the east.

After four hours we arrived at Själbottna. Here I took this season's first bath.

The water was a bit cold, but it felt good. I liked this little cove which is not so sheltered to te east, but works in all other winds.

Now the weather forecast changed. They talked about the wind veering into the north and increasing to about 20 knots in the evening. We decided to make an early start and sail to Blidö. This would mean tacking up all the way through Blidö sound, but I thought that it would be easier there to get shelter if the wind increased further. This decision I would not have made if I had checked the medium term forecast now, as it already would have told me that the wind would stay in the north (it stayed there almost a week!) and that there would be a small craft varning for winds of up to 28 knots the day after. However, we still were headed north, as was our plan and so we did the tacking. After seven hours we got to Blidö. Here we at least could have a shower, eat at a restaurant and buy some fresh food. We also, I thought, could stay here an extra day if the wind was trying to build to a gale.

Blidö visitor's pontoon in the evening. Here I finally checked the medium range forecast. Having learned that the wind was to stay in the north at least three more days (this being the WAP-forecast's time range) and the fact that the next day would give us winds up to 28 knots and the day after not much less, we had a problem. Additonally the night at Blidö was not at all quiet with swell from passing boats and roaring kids from the village half of the night. So when the next morning's forecast talked about the 28 knots of wind being delayed to the next day, it for now being around 20-24 knots, we decided to leave anyway. We would, however, change our plans and not try to fight against this wind to get further north. There are almost no anchorages there than can offer protection from northerlies. Instead we would fly south with the wind and eventually be heading east towards the outer parts of the archipelago. So at 1030 I put a reef in the main and hoisted the small jib and off we went. It was a bit scary in the beginning, but we soon learned that the boat handled it very well and that there was almost no powerboats to be seen! We also hit a new speed record of 6.1 knots and that with a reef in and the small jib... The sailing was too exciting, so we forgot to take any pictures. In the afternoon, we arrived at the very sheltered anchorage at Finnhamn (called The Paradise). There were already a lot of boats here waiting for better weather.

We did not get a very good spot, not wanting to anchor out with all the others, but with a spring line to shore and an extra anchor out aft, the first night everything worked well. It turned out that the strong winds stayed for one more day, so we stayed too, resting.

The next day we also got some rain. On Saturday winsd finally got weaker. It was still blowing from the north though, so we stayed with the plan to go east to the outer parts of the archipelago. We picked a small island called Tistronskäret as a starting point for the eventual jump across open water to Björkskär.

This was perfect sailing. A beam reach over quite open water in perfect weather.

And here were almost no other boats! Below is the view from the other side of the little island (facing north...)

The one bad thing with having the open sea to the east and north is that I never will be able to take these beautiful sunset pics....this is the closest I can get. This is my wife looking at the sea. The weather was to stay quite stable with northerly winds, so we decided to sail to Björkskär the next day.

With a few days of half a gale from the north, there was quite some swell left, but of course nothing an Alacrity even would blink at.... In fact we sailed out with full main and genoa, but had to take down the genoa after an hour or so, as the wind increased. I did not bother to put up the jib as we still made 5 knots with main alone.

Landfall at Björkskär. It's really not that far out, but it is open water sailing, the same as it would be to sail to Finland or Estonia, only that would take much longer...

The entrance to the anchorage at Björkskär. There is only one house on the whole island. But there is a small harbour which of course, an Alacrity can use. Here of all places we were approached by a guy who recognized our boat and told us that he was sailing here with an Alacrity 30 years ago. He also took his wife along and they came aboard Discovery and got this special look in their eyes remembering former days of simpler sailing. They once sailed their Alacrity over the Baltic to Åland and found it easily done. They even had to tack the whole way back, which took them 15 hours...

Discovery at Björkskär. There was a lot of wildlife here, frogs, the usual mosquitoes and an amazingly great amount of swallows! They even sat on our spreaders and docklines!

We sailed back the next day as the forecast talked about a rain front coming in. But we did not catch any rain at all. And the sea was much calmer...

There is no fresh water to be had on Björkskär and we were now somewhat low on supplies. So we decided to head back to civilisation. This time it would be the small fishing port of Möja. The island of Möja is one of the biggest in the outer archipelago. There are three fishing villages on the island's eastern coast. The good thing about Möja is that the local people have resisted the transformation into a tourism-only-island. Here people live all year round and there are still some active fishermen.

The harbour at Möja is very small and we were lucky to get a spot in the inner part which is most sheltered. However it got very crowded. Here we bought some supplies and had a good meal at the restaurant. (This time it was really good food. I had been somewhat disappointed with the food at Blidö and Finnhamn). Our plan was to leave the next day and sail on to some less crowded place. But this plan did not work. The high pressure centre everybody was talking about for weeks finally was about to hit Scandinavia (we had had a very rainy and quite unusually cold summer this far), and with it there was a lot of moist, warm air coming over a cold Baltic Sea.

We got fog. if you look very carefully you can actually see a sail in the middle of it. The whole day boats were coming into this tiny harbour to wait for better visibility. There where everywhere, anochored out, tied to private docks and to each other.

Here maybe a note is apropriate to our Canadian friends. Well I know, you always sail in this kind of weather. And yes, maybe I am squeamish about this visibility thing..... However the fog lifted in the early afternoon. We decided to stay the nigh anyway and sail the next day. With the high pressure being here, now we got it very hot, and very light winds. This would unfortunately stay until the end of the trip. So we planned to sail homeward slowly. At first this worked great. We found an anchorage at Lådna that was almost empty. After a day's sailing in light air and bright sunshine we swam quite a lot and afterwards we agreed that this was one of the best anchorages we found. We will certainly remember this one.

On our way there we saw this nice little boat.

The next moring we really wanted to stay another day, but the winds being so light, we were afraid we would not make it home in time so we proceeded to Gällnö. We still had some wind, so we made the whole trip under sail alone.

Om our way we discovered some cows on the beach. How did they get there?

At Gällnö we got in the middle of some kind of open wooden boat meeting. They only stayed for a late lunch though. Gällnö once again is poweboat country. Here poweboaters can easily drive from town to take a swim and get home in time for the evening news. At Gällnö there are quite a lot of dragonflies. And some curious duck like birds.

This one is sitting on the tiller.

Now the less successful part of the trip begins. Our plan was to stay two more nights out, first at the marina at Grinda, where we would eat at the restaurant and then at Vaxholm, a small town from where we knew we would make it home in one day whatever the circumstances. But we did not think of it being Friday night. Last year we had stayed at Grinda and liked it very much, but then it was not at week-end. This was horrible. There were so many powerboats from town creating swell in the harbour, leaving and arriving at all times during the night and dragging half drunk girls from the pub to their boat's to "complete the task". We had one such incident in the boat moored next to us, and we heared every word. It was like a TV show. Of course, we did not get any sleep at all. And the next day we did not get any wind. We motorsailed quite a lot as it was impossible to wait for wind in the horrible powerboat swell. When we approached Vaxholm the wind picked up but we were so tired that we decided to put into the marina anyway. This, too was a mistake. We should have continued all the way home in the light evening breeze, because the next day, there was even lesser wind and we had to motorsail almost all the way back home. However, now I do know that the Honda 2hp 4-stroke works perfectly well indeed. I did actually take a picture of the Vaxholm castle, but it's at nigh....

Despite the last two days this was a very successful cruise. We now know that we can live onboard Discovery for two whole weeks without any problems at all. Even when it was raining, we could live inside the boat or under the makeskift cockpit tent. We also sailed all the time, except the last two days. At many occasions we sailed out of the anchorage not using the outboard at all, and at one time we sailed in half a gale and got a new speed record. My wife now has been sailing in moderate open sea swells and liked it. Actutally she liked the open parts best. We have also learned a few things. Mostly not to leave and come back on a week-end if this could be avoided, and to use the wind that is during high pressure periods. In fact, the day after we arrived home there would have been a perfect wind to sail home from Vaxholm. But being so near home, and so tired after the sleepless night at Grinda, we wanted to get home and did not bother to wait another day for better wind. Also my mother in law who had lived at our place to take care of the cat was leaving. Finally here is a map of the trip.

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