And so finally all the preparation is over, and it’s time for the Baltic cruise to begin. The basic plan is to first spend a couple fo weeks heading up to Örnskoldsvik where Nina’s family have a summer house. We’ll spend a week there and then Nina will head back to Stockholm, and I’ll make my way back down south to meet people at Arholma.
I left a couple of days before Nina to get a head start and get some of the Stockholm archipelago out of the way. I set off on the evening of the 5th and made a short hop down to a nature harbour on Ägnö, which is a quiet spot to anchor.
The wind was Northerly, so I motored 25 miles the following day to a place called ‘paradiset’ just off the island if Finnham. No sailing for me, but passed a few interesting boats on the way who were having better luck with the wind.
As usual paradiset was pretty crowded, but still a good spot to anchor for the night and well protected from the wind.
On Thursday I made my way, again under engine, to Kapellskär where Nina was to meet me. I arrived early in the blazing sun and spent the afternoon doing a few final chores on the boat until Nina arrived at about 18:00.
Kapellskär is actually a surprising quiet marina, and I even took my first dip of the season – this is what the Swedish summer should be like.
I had planned a slow start to get Nina used to the boat and give us time to sort some things out, but Nina was keen for us to get some miles under us. I got up early and started us moving at around 7:00. The wind had turned South, but was still a bit light to make any progress under sail, so we motored our way out into the Baltic sea, passing Arholma and it’s famous lighthouse on the way.
As soon as we got out into the open sea the wind freshened and we finally got some sail up, the current jib is too small to do much, so we flew the gennaker and made a nice 5 knots – and yes I do realise the clew and the tack were the wrong way round :P
The geneker wasn’t too happy on a dead run, so we had a go at flying it as a spinnaker . I’d never done this before with this sail, or with any sail for that matter, so it was a bit of an experiment. I’m sure it wasn’t trimmed correctly, but it had the effect of taking us up to 6-7 knots in a light 4.
Making this good progress we decided to continue on to Öregrund and arrived there at about 17:00 after a good days run of 50 miles. Öregrund itself was actually quite charming, and had all the facilities we needed to stock on the all the things we’d realised we forgot, as well as enjoying a traditional Swedish dinner in a local krog.
A fantastic start to the trip, let’s hope the winds favour us like this some more.
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