5/30/03 – To Vlaskavie Nature Preserve.
We have a small refrigerator on board that has a tiny freezer. So today we bought tiny ice cube trays. It’s a true luxury that we now have ice cubes whenever we want them. They are rare in Sweden. Grocery stores just don’t sell ice cubes and restaurants often don’t serve them. In hot weather, a Coke with ice is a wonderful thing.
Here’s a great idea – why don’t we call Mai-Ling at our office and have her book Jan’s flight to China. Then we won’t have to overcome the language problems if we put her to the task.
We continued to read Dashew’s book on Seamanship and were learning lots of new techniques. One of the most useful was Dashew’s description of powering against a set spring line to move away from a dock, while the prevailing wind was blowing you into the dock. We had tried this a couple of times previously and we used it again successfully to leave Oskarshamn. It probably was an overkill process, but we considered it practice and it really “takes the drama out of the situation” to paraphrase John Neal.
We moved further north up the coast to a nature preserve called Vlaskavie. Although you can see in the pictures that the sunset was incredible, the pictures can’t even begin to reproduce reality. A truly memorable evening. This anchoring offered us a new opportunity to test out some of the electronics. The GPS has the ability to sound an alarm if the boat moves farther than about 60 feet. We decided to set it and had the opportunity to turn it off a couple of times during the night. Finally we increased the distance to 120 feet and slept the rest of the night.
5/31/03 – To Arkosund.
We were scheduled to pick up Gene Neuberger, our second visitor on June 1st. We had planned to meet him in Stockholm, but we were still at least three days away. Gene had arrived in Stockholm this afternoon and called us on the cell phone. We arranged for him to take the train down to the city of Nyköping and we would meet him their about noon the next day.
We sailed north all day, motoring when there was no wind, sailing when there was. We arrived late in the day at Arkosund but spent the night anchored in the harbor. We didn’t even go into the town. The harbor wasn’t anything special.
6/1/03 – To Trosa
Nyköping is situated up a river about 10 miles. From Arkosund, you cross a bay, then turn inland up the river. It was shallow and muddy, but with bucolic scenery the entire way. On one side you had cows feeding in meadows backed with trees and on the other side of the channel an expanded wetland filled with waterfowl. We were about 10 minutes from the marina, when the phone rang and Gene was calling saying he had just arrived and was at the train station.
We decided to walk to the station, but it turned out that it was on the other side of the city, and it took us about an hour to get there. We decided to take a cab for the return trip. Then we jumped back on the boat, backed out of the slip and headed for Trosa about 20 miles up the coast.
Trosa is one of those elegant seaside towns that is a favorite of the local population. It is very “cutesy” with lots of flowers and freshly painted buildings. It was still early in the season, but you could tell that this was a first rate tourist town. Not for international tourists, but for the Swedish ones wanting to get away from Stockholm for the weekend. We had a great dinner and found a yummy bakery for morning treats. We thoroughly enjoyed our short visit and can concur that it lives up to the high recommendations we receive from several people along the way.
Both the Nykoping and Trosa harbors were quite shallow. In both places we got stuck in the mud while trying to dock. Sugilite draws about 1.7 meters (5½ ft.) so we need to be careful to pick only harbors with sufficient depth.
6/2/03 – To Stockholm
We left Trosa at 2:00pm and headed up the canal for Stockholm. Stockholm is a very large city situated on several islands at the head of a large inland lake named Lake Malaren. On the outside of Stockholm is a large archipelago of island which extends out into the Baltic Sea about 50 miles or so. You have the choice to arrive in Stockholm through the front door (via the archipelago) or the back door (via the Södertälje Canal and Lake Malaren). The front door was still a two day trip and the back door a one day trip. We opted for the back door.
The Canal Operating Procedures printed on the charts, required us to make radio contact with the lock operator prior to entering a certain section of the waterway. This canal is primarily used by commercial vessels, and the chart instructions were quite precise. The canal operators all speak English, but Swedish names are still pronounced in Swedish, much to our chagrin. It took several attempts to reach them on the radio by trying to pronounce in Swedish “Södertälje.” Eventually they responded to our botched attempts. Fortunately the canal only had one lock on it, and I don’t think we were raised more than a couple of inches. But we were now through it, in fresh water, and on our way to Stockholm.
We arrived in Stockholm after dark, nearly 10:00pm. This was a big city and we weren’t sure where we should moor for the night. There were lots of private marinas, but it didn’t seem proper to just pick an empty slip. Finally we found a marina with a dock that was vacant on the outside. We moored up next to it and spent a very rough night as wakes from passing boats rocked us all night long.