Downhill all the way to our final destination…

a boat hidden behind every rock in the Ecken archipelago

…could be the heading for our last posting before ER will be put to sleep in Henån on the island of Orust, north of Gothenburg.

But first something more ‘upbeat’. After we had been spat out into lake Vänern we proceeded from Mariestad through another beautiful skärgård, the Ecken archipelago

 to Vänersborg, the start of our downhill journey down the Göta Alv, through the Trollhättan canal. The canal locks between lake Vänern and the Baltic Sea are designed for large commercial shipping. Therefore they are huge and can accommodate freighters up the 90m in length. They don’t necessarily cater for pleasure craft and the facilities to hold on to something while going down were sparse. This required some quick thinking and long lines since the best places with iron ladders and hooks were often immediately taken by boats from …(decency forbids me to say from which country ;-) but overall the camaraderie amongst the sailors was usually great! After five big locks, which took us down 32m we turned after the last lock into an idyllic overnight stay close to the old locks from 1800 and 1844 which are now not longer in use.

The whole setup and network of the old and new canals was fascinating and, although the landscape bears a lot of scars, showed the immense endeavour of the builders of the canals. In the 19^th century the Trollhättan canal was considered to be the 8^th wonder of the world. The last big lock opened in 1916. While walking up the hill it was really humbling to see the old canal route mostly built by hand.

the torrent is released..

here it comes!

The Göta Alv(river) is also the place of one of the first large water power stations built in the 19^th century. For this huge project of canals and power stations to be possible and to keep the water level even in the locks, the engineers had to come up with a way to tame the wild waterfalls in that area. Still today, at exactly 15:00 hrs about 1 million cubic meters of water flowing from lake Vänern into the Göta Alv are released within 5 minutes. A fascinating sight!

ER in Lilla Bommen

After this exciting spectacle, we headed down the river another 45 NM. All we had to do was wait for several railway and road bridges to open until our final destination: Gothenburg.

We will stay here until Christian arrives from San Francisco.

Looking at the recent weather patterns and Christian’s and somewhat tight schedule, we decided to leave Oslo for the beginning of our next cruise in 2014.

The verdict of having crossed the 240NM divorce ditch is below:

what divorce ditch?

Thanks for looking and commenting!

Until 2014!