Into the Gulf of Bothnia

After making such a good start to the trip I got much less worried about us reaching our destination in Örnsköldsvik.  Nina has turned out to be great on the boat, and as well as getting involved in the sailing and planning is also keen to keep heading north as well.

After Öregrund, we headed for a small nature harbour where we could moor to the rocks.  This seems to be less common than in the Stockholm archipelago, and as someone forgot to bring the dinghy we were getting a bit worried that we might have to anchor all the time.... which means no barbecues.

We had the wind in our favour again, and so had another go at flying the kite - this time the right way round.

With our new found spinnaker skills we flew the 37 miles up to Gårdskär, and found a nice little spot to spend the night.  The navigation is getting a little tricky up here, the only charts I have are 1:50K and the pilot book can be a little vague.  We managed to sneak our way in past the rocks though, and moored up on a small island called Häll-örarna, and of course had to have a barbecue :)

 The following day turned out to be quite interesting.  I'd managed to lose the spinnaker halyard from its block, so we just used the jib (which is now Nina's sail and I'm not allowed to touch it).  This leg was also a bit of a waypoint as it would get us past Gävle and up into more interesting waters again.  Our destination was a little bay near the island of Kusokalv, quite a big island a few miles east of the Swedish coast.  Again the weather was perfect, South Easterly winds and sunshine, but it's rare that the weather treats me this well and I was getting a bit suspicious.  About 10 minutes before heading into the tricky entrance to Kusökalv we were hit by a huge squall which turned me from this...

... into this ...

I dont think I've ever been hit so hard and fast by a squall.  We'd seen the grey skies over Gävle, but it crept up on us like a black hand in the sky and then pounced.  We went from a peaceful sunny 7knot South Easterly wind to torrential rain and 40 knots from the West in a bout 10 seconds (and no I am not exaggerating, the wind meter recorded a gust of 44knots).

Fortunately we had all the sails down by then (I dread to think what would have happened if it had hit while we were trying to get the spinnaker down).  It settled to 30 knots after a few minutes and we beat our way into it as we entered the bay.  Visibility wasn't so good, but the sea state was fine so we actually had no trouble motoring into the bay and dropping the anchor.  Once in the safety of the bay the rain eased up and the wind went down, and we could even see some hope of sunshine.

Once things had cleared up we realised we were actually in a beautiful place.  It's a nature reserve, with a public jetty which we moved to.  It also had a toilet (actually reasonably clean), a place to dump rubbish and a grill with a little hut full of firewood.

We had a little explore round the island which is covered in 'kullersten', which are rocks that were ground into stones by ice during the last ice age.  Apparently eagles are also common in the area, but we didn't see any.

After that we took advantage of the facilities and had a barbecue of jerk chicken, sweet potato and rice and peas - my favourite meal :)

We'd actually missed the spinnaker the previous day, so if we wanted to use it again there was no choice but get the halyard back up.  One big advantage of small light crew is that they are much easier to hoist up the mast ;-P

With the spinnaker back in action and the wind on our side again we whizzed up to our next destination which was a small fishing village called Kråskär.  They have a jetty to moor up to, but when we arrived it was a bit crowded, so we decided to pop round the corner to another nature harbour on the island of Innerstön.  Another very nice spot with free facilities, and a few other boats this time too.  A perfect place for dinner on board, and a bottle of champagne to watch the sun set over the bay.