Brother Goran (Göran) arrived in time for a nice lunch on the dock. We left Nykoping around 1 pm well fed, and, motored the channel to sea. A fresh southerly was blowing gusting 25 -30 knots as we headed east behind the islands.

It is interesting to sail behind these islands that has this forests growing on them. Sometimes you are totally becalmed behind a wall of trees and five minutes later you are doing 7 knots in strong winds. The waters are protected so no swell and hardly any wind waves as you glide along.

We sailed the winding fairway of this beautiful archipelago for a couple of hours before reaching a stretch of open water south of Sodertalje (Södertälje). Here was open horizon and free wing and we made good and bumpy speed across to the archipelago north of Landsort. Friends of ours who live nearby and sail a lot in this area gave us some alternatives for anchoring.

We opted for “the woods” and sailed strait north and far inland.

A narrow and shallow (2 m) channel leads to a number of bays with many anchoring and mooring options.

Rassavikarna are extremely well protected, we felt like we were on a lake.

We had some well-deserved beers and a light dinner in the nice summer evening before sundown but, we disappeared below to our bunks when the mosquitoes came out in force.

Patrik with family left yesterday after breakfast. Hakan set sails after some preparations (and restoring a lot of things that had been moved from their normal places in the starboard aft cabin to allow space for the family).

It was a lovely sunny day with a strong following wind and Sally made good progress north through the archipelago. Lots of islands and markers keeps you busy navigating. The crossing of Braviken was the only part were the autopilot could be left without attention long enough to allow for preparing and eating lunch.

There is a nice bay with a buoys south of Nykoping (Nyköping) for a quiet night. Hakan left early next morning to go to Nykoping to pick up his brother who would sail with him for a week.

Nykoping is at a river mouth. The water level was three meters higher when Nykoping started to develop in the 12^th and 13^th century and the city was then by the see. Land uplift and silting has now mode the city inland with quite a long dredged (and well-marked) channel leading up to it. We skipped the marina and tied up along the old dock in the river.

There is a lot of history over the centuries. Most well-known is probably the Nyköping Banquet (Nyköpings gästabud), the Christmas celebration 11 December 1317 at Nyköping Castle by King Birger of Sweden. Among the guests were his two brothers Duke Valdemar and Duke Eric, who later that night were imprisoned and subsequently starved to death in the dungeon of Nyköping Castle.

The castle still stands proud by the river and I am surprised that my brother suggested this place to meet up as I have heard that there are still keys in the locks to the dungeon… The walk along the river is very nice and takes you to the centre of town where Hakan provisioned for the coming week.

Sally is back for the fifth time. The last week has been lovely. We have sailed up and down the coast using Fyrudden as a parking place for the respective cars. First trip was with youngest son and his two small boys. We had some lovely days filled with adventures for the boys.

After that Hakan had a shitty day as the toilet had broken down and spilled things that should not be spilled inside a boat. Eva came up with spares on Saturday morning and once the toilet was back in shape we could leave for a lovely but short sail. Eva drove home on Sunday afternoon to go back to work on Monday. She has less than two weeks left and we (at least Hakan) are counting the days.

On Monday, it was time for the oldest son with his family to come on board for three nights. Three kids between one and a half and five makes life interesting. It was really nice to be able to spend some time with them, and their parents. They have just left for other adventures and Hakan is preparing to start sailing north on his own.

We left Vestervik after breakfast in a light northerly (nignt/morning thermal breeze) But, it did not last long into Gudingen. Gudingen is a deep fjord/bay just north of Vastervik stretching 15 miles NW.

We sailed about half of it through a nice wooded archipelago with farms and homesteads on the larger islands.

As usual in this part of Sweden some of the nice stretches include narrow and rather shallow waters. Our Navionics chars are very detailed and accurate and most parts are also well marked.

We were headed by the sea-breeze (SE wearing S in these parts) as we were leaving the bay and had some nice upwind tacks before we could turn north and run up the coast in a following wind.

We spent the night at Stugviken on Stora Alo (Stora Ålö). This is the centre for the local section of the Swedish Cruising Ass. (SXK). Some docks with nice new red stern buoys and a number of buoys provide plenty of room for members and guests in a beautiful and well protected bay.

We had a nice BBQ and dinner on the dock with fellow sailors. And, as usual, we picked their brains on the coast ahead of us.

We motored early next morning to Fyrudden where we took on fuel before mooring up for the day. Jesper caught an early buss to the train that would take him home. Friends visited on their way to their boat that has been stuck in Berlin for more than a year due to Corona. Hakans younger son with two small boys (1.5 and 4 years old) arrived for some days of adventure in the area.

Today has been another sunny and warm day with light and variable winds however, by noon it settled into a reasonable thermal wind. We have had a lot of gennaker practise unfurling and furling in changing winds and jibes.

We have followed descriptions from fellow sailors and valuable advice from our local support. Leif and Bengt have been most helpful on their respective home waters. Instead of joining the main fairway north we started by very slowly sailing west into the archipelago up a sound that felt more like a river.

Then turning north behind the island. These waters appeared unmarked both in the guides we had an on our electronic charts. Luckily, real life proved to be better with some very helpful markers part of the way. AL this was done under sails in light breeze or motoring. The gennaker was then unfurled in the more open and straight main fairway.

The archipelago is very beautiful and still quiet as the summer season has not yet started. We did not see any other sailboats on our detours and only a handful in the main fairways.

The second detour cold bee done entirely under sail as we had a following wind by then.

Vastervik (Västervik) is a nice small town. We went all the way up to the marina at Slotsholmen. Very conveniently located near the city where we treated ourselves to burgers and beers.

We had another early start today leaving the harbour at 7 am. The gennaker came up just outside the pier. We had breakfast at the table in the cockpit whilst ghosting along at a few knots in a light following breeze and in extremely calm waters.

We crossed over to the mainland and the beginning of the archipelago south of Vållö. This is the start of a 250 nm long almost uninterrupted archipelago with protected fairways and thousands of anchorages. Some say it starts further south but not for reasonably sized keelboats.

We followed Enegatan, a historic fairway used by the small sailing crafts in coastal trade over the centuries. It is in parts quite narrow winding its way through the rocks. It is very well-marked in most parts.

It passes the old stone quarry in Vanevik (Vånevik). The query was once commissioned to deliver the stones for Hitlers large victory monument, a delivery that never took place.

The winds were light but stayed this far around south. The gennaker was furled and then unfurled as the wind shifted and sometimes died down behind the wooded islands. We also used the engine to motor through the trickiest parts of the route.

We decided to leave the narrow fairway and to take a shortcut across the bay outside Oskarshamn directly to Krakelund (Kråkelund). The wind had become stronger and more varying by then sometimes giving us a 7 knot reach under gennaker and shortly thereafter less wind on the nose.

It finally settled in NE and around 8 knots giving us a close reach and some short tacks the rest of the way. We were lucky to find the SXK buoy at Krakelund free so we tied up for the night after 10 hours of interesting and very varying sailing. Nice sunny summer weather all day and a glorious evening in dying breeze.

Today has been the first realy warm summer day this season. Unfortunately, the day was almost completely without wind from any direction. We managed to sail some spells in very light and varying breeze with our Code 0 but most of the distance were cover by utilising the “iron genny”.

We past the narrows and the bridge between mainland and Oland, without any problems (height 35 meters), and continued north to Bornholm.

Bornholm is a popular summer town with a lot of people partying during the popular summer holiday weeks. We saw a slow start and Bornholm has by far been the most lively place we have visited so far during this trip but, that does not say a lot as all the others have been more or less deserted.

Hakan returned to Karlskrona yesterday evening with a friend. Wakeup today was early and we left the marina by 7 am. Motoring and then gently sailing east whilst eating breakfast took us to the first adventure. There is a nice shortcut going east from Karslkrona. Hakan had sailed it in the 1970-ties. The old bridge was an opening bridge and no problems but, the bridge today is fixed with a nominal clearance of 18 meters – our mast is 19.5.

Summer time low water, safety margins and the arch of the bridge played in our favour and, as with similar bridges, we cleared the bridge by at least half a meter. Following the bridge are some nice and well-marked narrow passages through rock-strewn shallow waters. Kind of scary at 7.5 knots…

We made it safely to open waters and had a beautiful, sunny and warm close reach (a first this year) up the sound between Oland (Öland) and the mainland in light winds. Our bellowed, and now restored, Code 0 gave us reasonable speeds almost all the way to Morbylanga (Mörbylånga).

We left all our sails to our sailmaker for service last fall. After some days he called and told us that he, for the first time, has seen a Code 0 that was worn out. We have used it a lot and it has been left hoisted in periods during longer sails. Sun is not kind to the special cloth used in the sail so he had remove the outmost panels, Now we have nice new bright white tapes along the leech and foot and a slightly smaller sail than before.

Morbylanga is a quiet little village with some shops and restaurants. We took a short walk and ended up with drinks by the harbour.

A light breeze gave us a nice gennaker reach half way to the Blekinge archipelago yesterday afternoon. We were headed for Karon (Karön) outside Ronneby on good advice. Also this day forced us to motor but this time due to lack of wind. The archipelago is small with narrow channels and often shallow waters. But, it is well marked and beautiful. We motored carefully a long way in shallow water and had no problems at the guest pontoon at Karon.

Karon is an old summer island now owned by the city. It is home to some nice summer houses and a restaurant from the early 20^th century. It offers nice walks on well-marked paths and interesting houses. By tradition, and recently more strongly regulated, the properties have not been allowed to put up fences or in other ways block passage.

We sailed to Karlskrona this morning and picked up a car to take us home for work and Corona vaccination. Hakan will return shortly to continue sailing nort.

If you would like to subscribe to our blog in order to have E-mail notifications when we post something, please go to the bottom of the page and enter your mail address, then klick om “Subscribe”/”Prenumerera”.

Yesterday started early. We left the harbour of Smygehuk at half past six in order to catch a nice NW breeze. We made good speed eastwards averaging close to 7 knots. But it was a very cold wind. Our tactic played out and the wind did not die out until we had rounded the SE corner of Skane – Sandhammaren.

After some motoring a new breeze from E picked up and we were again doing 6-7 knots. The gennaker came up as the wind gradually turned S and lost some of its pressure. We had the sun in the cockpit by then and had shred most of our clothes. It was really nice as long as you stayed behind the sprayhood. But the nose got a frost bite it you stuck it outside into the wind.

We were by now a bit into the bay of Hano (Hanöbukten). It is infamous for its waves and we had a really confused swell from different directions. It completely knocked the waning wind out of the sails. So, instead of a quiet afternoon reach, we had to motor the last few hours to Hano. 12 hours at sea had taken us 74 nm.

That evening we experienced a first for us. We heard someone call “Hello Sally” from the dock as we finished our dinner. “We saw you come in just had to come and see you.” Johanna and Marcus told us about how they have been following our blog for several years. They were on a weekend sail from their home port in nearby Ahus and were themselves planning a similar trip to the Med as the one we have done. We had some nice chats over wine that evening. Over coffee the next day, we asked for local advice on the area and where to go next.

Thus, todays walk got a bit delayed before we eventually headed off to explore the island. Hano has a long history. It was the Baltic base for the English navy during the Napoleon war 1810-12 and there is an old English graveyard on the hill. Our first goal was the northern tip of the island. It is very unusual with its pebble reef. It is called the bean sack and legend has it that a troll living ion the island was going to visit her children on the main lad bringing beans but the sack broke and spilled the beans.

A more plausible explanation is the retreating ice cover at the end of the last ice age. The wonder is that the pebbles stay in place. They are moved back and forth in the braking waves and pushed around by the winter ice. Still they remain in place. The nature of the island is in places quite barren. It has a considerable population of red deer and we saw some hidden among the trees later on our walk. The view from the lighthouse 60 above the sea is magnificent.