24/07/09 Stockholm to Utö, the shortest route…

The last days with Regina were spent exploring the beautiful sights of Stokholm.

The night before leaving Stockholm demonstrated that not everything in Sweden during the summer is ‘plain sailing’. Lightning, thunder, increasing wind and downpours made me turn around in my bunk at about 3:00 thinking we would give our trip to Utö a miss for this day. However in the morning there were only residual downpours, some bluish streaks on the horizon and the skipper – guessed it already – insisted on leaving. And of course we had one of our most exciting trips to Utö, an island south-west of Stockholm in the archipelago. Distances from Stockholm in the pilot were given at about 44 NM. Madeleine managed to shave off about 8 miles by weaving through the skärgård finding new shortcuts.

We opted for the South harbour of Utö, not affected by the busy ferries, the only other means for tourists and supplies to reach the island – which is a real natural treasure!

Mooring is usually by stern anchor and the first attempt on our journey in a very full harbour went smoothly – as if done several times before. We moored directly in front of our Swedish/English friends, Tony and Ann-Helen, who invited us back in 2007 in London to their newly built wonderful house overlooking the harbour. We pledged at the time to come by boat.

While exploring the surroundings we came across another method of avoiding contacts with rocks or other obstacles – flying with a sea plane and mooring it like a boat!

Cycling is the method of transport on the island - although not necessarily for Madeleine :-) and the amount of beautiful scenery and sandy beaches is staggering.

On the 28^th we will be leaving for our laying-up destination. Arranging it has proven more difficult as we anticipated. More about this when Easy Rider is taken care of for the winter.