Stockholm archipelago: our last week for 2010 :-(

26 Jul

17^th – 25 of July

As soon as our friend Beth arrived from London, we cast off for our mini cruise through the outer Stockholm archipelago, deciding to select some of the many exciting and beautiful anchorages which Madeleine hand-picked out of several guide books. Some of you may think, O.K. an anchorage is an anchorage is an anchorage, however this could not be further from the reality, at least in the Archipelago. Forest, wooded or bare rocks surrounded by reeds with nesting ducks alternating with small bays only accessible by passing through a very narrow (<10m), steep and shallow passage made the last week of our cruise memorable indeed and surely tempted us to come again next year to have ‘more of this’.

The mood on the boat was relaxed and as we were approaching the last of our anchorages after another beautiful day, when Madeleine suddenly decided to pass between two islands. Beth said she was looking forward to her sherry. Following this I mentioned to her at the helm that we had not yet arrived at our destination… I had just finished my sentence when there were three or four awful ‘klonking’ noises, indicating that we had touched the bottom and had stopped somewhat abruptly. This happened at a point where there should have been enough water (not a lot though…) for ER. A very helpful motor boater pulled us off and was rewarded with a bottle of red wine from our cave. Again, this incident reminded us of three points: it is not over until the ‘fat lady sings’, that Finnish waters are better buoyed than the Swedish and that you should not cut corners at the very last minute. Our ‘rock’ and the shallow area had not been marked in any way. We say our ‘rock’ because our rescuer told us that anybody who hits an uncharted rock is allowed to name it. Decency forbids me to divulge the name of our rock at this stage.

The sunshine continued almost to the end and even tempted everybody to have a swim, even @ 16ºC as experienced in our last anchorages, quite a change from the 22+ºC in Lake Saimaa. The beautiful weather, of course, had to come to an end sometime and after hearing the forecast of a gale the following day we rushed to our winter storage place with an exciting running sail with about 20 –24 kn of NE wind and arrived just before the downpour and strong winds commenced.

We will leave you with a kaleidoscope of our last week’s mini cruise.

For the statisticians amongst you, we covered about 1350 NM in eight weeks of sailing.

Torviken (59º23.8’N; 18º40.1’E)