It dawned warm and sunny with a gentle sea breeze. Almost perfect conditions for being on holiday. During the night many more boats came into the harbour and we could see that the Swedish holiday season was about to get into full swing. Everybody takes time off in July, so most popular places get very crowded. We prefer the solitude of the outer islands of the archipelago to the crowded, noisy guest harbours, but in Gotland you have little choice about where to stay so you learn to adapt.

Today, the girls left us to travel down south to the camping grounds of Tofta – a well known summer beachside party place for the young (and mostly inebriated!) where they were to spend a night and a couple of days, before meeting up with us again a little further south in the harbour of Klintehamn.

If you look at the postcard map pictured, you'll see Tofta south of Visby and Klintehamn a little further south again. We estimated that it was 25 nautical miles from Visby to Klintehamn and in the mild winds it would take us about 5 or 6 hours to sail there. We checked the pilot books to see what kind of harbour was there and hoped that there would be room. It was quite a small place, with only a few guest spots available, though we figured that we could find somewhere to tie up, even if we stayed in the commercial harbour.

After seeing the girls loaded up with tents, sleeping bags, tanning lotion and putting them safely on the bus, we paid our harbour fees and cast off for the next port. Farewell, Visby!



As we left the harbour, a big cruise liner (The Costa) was anchored outside the harbour ferrying Italian passengers to visit Visby for the day.



We set a southerly course and watched the beautiful Gotland coastline glide by. The shoreline around here is very different from the mainland. It consists of sheer limestone cliffs interspersed with beaches and farmland. The limestone "shelf" stretches out for up to a kilometre out to sea and is very shallow (less than a metre in most places) so you must keep well out and only come to shore at the dredged channels. Beyond Visby, we saw the cliffs of Högklint, which were an awesome sight.



Part of the way through the afternoon we passed by Tofta Strand where the girls were staying. In this aerial shot of the beach, you can see the shoals clearly.



This is one of the most popular camping places in Gotland and on a hot summer day, there can be more than 20,000 people staying here in the camping grounds!



It looks a lot like a regular beach in Australia - with white sand and real waves! For those of us living in Sweden, this is a rare sight indeed. Most beaches here have rocks rather than sand and the water is calm but often very deep quite a short way from shore (which may account for the large number of drownings in Sweden every summer). So this was like a little picture postcard of home.

In the late afternoon, we spotted the first marker buoy for the channel into Klintehamn and sailed along the route into the harbour. You can see a beautiful aerial shot of the harbour here. Check out the size of those wind generators! They certainly dominate the horizon and dwarf anything around them.

This is very much a working harbour, rather than just a marina and we both like it here very much. There are no pretensions, facades or people swanning around in their designer yachting gear showing off and "being seen" - just ordinary travellers and those here who work with boats. Quite a change from the frenzy of Visby hamn.