6/13/03 – Mems

The trip from Stedoren Island to Mems, the beginning of the Göta canal is mostly an open water trip. We reviewed the charts in the morning, set the course in the chart plotter and turned on the autopilot.

Steve’s comments on the Chartplotter: “The electronic chart plotter has the ability to “look ahead” on the charts a couple of miles, compare it to your current position and course and sound an alarm if you might be heading for anything that might poke a hole in your hull. We hadn’t used it much because while we were among so many islands, it would constantly go off and was mostly an annoyance. I decided to fool with it a little and try to get a handle on how it worked. I took a look at its options and turned it on. Immediately it went off. Looking forward, I could see nothing but open water. The electronic chart however was showing a small reef about a mile ahead of us. I went and looked at the paper charts. Damn, there it was, a small reef that I had missed was directly in front of us. We made a quick turn and went around the reef, but that was a close call.”

Mems is the small hamlet at the beginning of the Göta Canal. You must work your way 15 miles up a small inlet. We arrived just before 6:00pm which was closing time. However, the lockmaster, a young college girl, let us in through the lock and arranged for us to pay our transit fee. We had dinner in the little restaurant in front of the lock. Jan and Gene had some sort of “meat pie” and Steve had herring even though we all ordered the same thing.

Göta Canal Overview

The Göta Canal was constructed in the early 1800’s as a means of transportation to get around the Danish controlled Kattegat and their tolls. It starts on the Swedish East coast and extends inland 190km from the coast. This part of the waterway ends at Lake Vänern, a large inland lake in Sweden, and the third largest lake in Europe. The Canal has 56 locks and climbs 92 meters above sea level at its highest point. Almost as soon as it was completed in 1832, it was made obsolete by new treaties with Denmark. Today, it is a major recreational area for Swedes and tourist attraction for visitors. The official nickname is the Blue Ribbon of Sweden, but we had countless Swedes remind us of its unofficial name, the “Divorce Ditch.” This second allusion is related to the 56 locks encountered during the passage which provide, at a minimum, 56 wonderful opportunities of screw-ups, a fact not lost on the numerous spectators along the route.

The passage fee of 3,300 SEK ($400) covers all your charges for nightly moorage, showers, laundry and locking fees. You can have up to two months to make the transit, unfortunately we did not have that much time to spend. It typically has a depth of 2 meters, at least if you stayed in the center of the canal. The canal width was typically 10 to 20 meters. The old oxen path paralleled one side of the canal most of the way; now it is used as a bicycle or walking path. Trees usually lined both sides of the canal and one needed to be aware of overhangs which would grab your shrouds or spreaders every time you forgot.

6/14/03 – Söderköping

Söderköping is the first large city on the Canal. It is only about 5 miles upstream from Mem and there are two locks which get you into the center of town. We were surprised to see Malcom and Sally again, who we had first met at Bornholm. They were even more surprised, because they had expected us to be finished by now, based upon our earlier estimates. Robert and Barbara had joined them for the Canal transit. Robert and Barbara have a boat in the Med, and had traveled through the French canals several years ago with Malcom and Sally.

The Swedes have a proclivity for Ice Cream. The frequency of shops selling Ice Cream in Sweden is reminiscent of the number of latté stands in Seattle. Several per block. One parlor in Söderköping bills itself as the largest Ice Cream purveyor in Sweden. They had a menu of at least 200 concoctions, some which even smoked. Well life is tough, and somebody has to take up the challenge, so we each did, walking away 2 lbs heavier while only consuming 1 lb of Ice Cream.

Most of the lockmasters were local young kids. This was summer employment for them. You quickly learned each lockmaster’s style by how they controlled the fill. The typical rise per lock was about 2 meters. There were 4 gates which let water into the lock. The lockmaster had a choice as to how much to open a gate and how many gates to open at once. Some, one in particular, seemed in a hurry and opened everything at once. The water boiled and rolled through that one. Most of the others took it slowly and it would take you 20 to 30 minutes to pass through. The first couple of locks, the lockmasters were quite helpful in showing you tried and proven techniques. Hopefully you are a quick study, because after that you were mostly on your own, which to the ever present amusement of the bystanders wasn’t such a bad thing.

6/15/03 – Berg

We left Söderköping and went through a variety of locks and across Lake Roxen. Lake Roxen is the first of the larger lakes on the system. Albeit at only 18 miles long and about 8 miles wide, isn’t nearly so big as some of the others. At the western end of the lake is the city of Berg. There is a series of 8 locks in a row climbing up to the city center. We had to wait about an hour or so to enter the locks while a large cruiser was down locking. As he would come into each lock, he would displace so much water that it would overflow the gates at the lower end.

These locks were constructed over 100 years ago. Although, in most cases the gates have been modernized with hydraulic doors which let in the water, the walls are, in most cases, original. Over the decades, water pressure from upstream has seeped behind the walls and water shoots out of the cracks and crevices. One has to wonder how long the walls will hold up.

Total distance for the day was 26.6 nm.

6/16/03 – Motala

Today we continued to work our way Westwards, through a couple of smaller lakes and arrived at about the mid-point of the Göta Canal at the city of Motala. Motala sits on the shore of the second largest lake in Sweden, Lake Vättern. The architect of the city was the same architect for the Canal. Just outside of the marina, several hundred feet into the lake is a fountain which shoots a single column of water a hundred feet into the air. The city’s roads are laid out in arcs. The arcs, if extended would form circles, the center of which would be the fountain. Very interesting and unusual.

We had a plethora of files which needed to be transferred to China. Jan had been working most of the day and night proofing them. For dinner we took a break to do a little sightseeing, find an internet connection and maybe have dinner. We decided to check out the First Hotel, a Swedish chain of upscale hotels. It turned out that they had a WIFI connection available for a small fee. This turned out to be our solution. With a chain of hotels available around Sweden, the ability to transfer and download files, our problems seemed over. We went back to the barge, continued proofing all of the China orders and finally at 3:00 am, Steve walked back to town, sat on a bench in the park in front of the hotel, and uploaded all of the files and providing us with the proverbial “sigh of relief.”

We are getting close to the Summer Solstice. We are currently at 58˚ of latitude putting us about 800 nm closer to the north pole than to the equator. We are about even with the southern part of the Alaskan Panhandle. This means that it doesn’t get very dark at night. The sun doesn’t set until close to 10:00 pm and rises a little after 3:00 am. Even at midnight, it is not totally dark.

The next morning, we bought some additional WIFI access cards from the phone company, checked email for any responses to our big upload from the night before, waived goodbye to Malcolm and his group (they had also spent last night here) and headed out of Dodge – I mean Mortola.