Luleå archipelago – beautiful, with many rocks and quite challenging

5^th – 8^th of July

As soon as we had returned from our three country trip to Sweden, Norway and Finland, we continued our sail through the Luleå and Haparanda archipelagos with the promise of remote islands, stone labyrinths, small fishing villages and well kept nature reserves – and lots of rocks everywhere - all of which materialised on the way.

After the helmsman’s (female) excellent exit manoeuvre from a narrow and tight space in Luleå with onshore winds, we motored through the large ship channel to Kluntarna. We arrived early at a quite full harbour and had a wonderful walk through the dense forest, rubble fields and saw several ancient magic labyrinths on the island.

Labyrinths dotted around these islands

Squeezed into a tiny harbour

Next day, after a leisurely start with a sauna and a swim in the sea (by now it is +18ºC) – again with little wind – we hopped to Brändöskär, to the north-east. These very beautiful islands get really full in July. Luckily we met ‘old’ Swedish sailing friends who invited us to come and squeeze our bow in between two of them with the help of our stern anchor (I actually hate deploying this anchor, it is very heavy and usually very muddy when ‘weighing it’ – but it is admittedly very useful…).

This nature reserve again was well protected and had a calming and invigorating feel to it. We celebrated with reindeer carpaccio and a bottle of a French sparkling wine – it was delicious and festive!

winding down after a leisurely day

Brändöskär fishing village

Today, as the weather was very settled so we headed for Malören, a tiny island in the shape of a horse-shoe with a lighthouse, a church and loads of rocks, which on the aerial photograph in the pilot book looked like sand…. the most southern spot of the Haparanda skärgard. We knew that despite the 2m depth predicted (like many of the harbours in this area) on all charts it might become shallow, but  Easy Rider has a shallow draft (1,5m) and normally can squeeze into tiny harbours.

We were exactly on the leading line to approach the harbour when our depth sounder suddenly dropped to 1.5m and I saw a number of rocks and underwater boulders contemplating to attack our beautiful hull. We immediately retreated – without any attack. It really seems that the 'land lift' theory is correct – the harbours are getting shallower.

Renskär-Getskär

Renskär-Getskär (16M north-west) became our alternative and a very nice one too! A well kept nature reserve, a sandy beach, and it seems that there are more labyrinths (~14^th century).