We let the girls settle down to sleep and concentrated on making our way cautiously down the last bit of the Stockholm archipelago before we made open water. It was a tense time as it was dark. Not pitch black darkness as it is summer here and it never gets quite black. Don’t believe me? Well, check out this photo of a Swedish back garden taken by a friend of mine at at 2.30am.



I’ll never get used to this almost all day daylight!

Anyway, it was dark enough that we didn’t see the markers that indicate stones and islands, so we relied on a new navigation program we have loaded onto our PC called Fugawi. This in itself has spawned many a joke about “Where the Fug-are-we?”

As well as the navigation program, we followed paper charts and watched the lighthouses. It is a real leap of faith to do something like this. You can’t see a thing, so you have to trust that what the lighthouse tells you is correct, even though you know you’d feel so much better if you could see it for yourself. The ones here are set up with a light that has coloured screens over them. You have a strip of green, then clear, then red. You need to constantly refer to the lighthouse and make sure you are in the white zone – this indicates the safe passage through the rocks. If you are seeing a green light, then you need to correct your course a little more to “port” and for a red light, you need a “starboard” correction. By combining the navigation system with the lighthouse watches we made sure that we were always safe. It also helps that this stretch is our home waters and we do know the danger spots.

After a four hour stretch, we were safely out in open water and it was time for the girls to be on duty. There is nowhere to stop on the way, so it is constant sailing for 24 hours. The only way this can be successfully done is for the person steering and looking out for ships to get rest breaks. It is very tiring to be constantly on watch. We took the longer shifts as we were more used to it and could take over from each other. But we also needed rest and this is when the girls helped out for a couple of hours. We knew the prevailing winds, had the auto-pilot set for steering a 175 degree course, so the girls just had to make sure we kept on course and watch out for other boats. If there were boats or any problems they had strict orders to wake us up.

We also ate in shifts during that time. I had made a hot spicy thai fish soup that I reheated for Lars-Göran and myself to eat and I made quick cook macaroni-cheese for the girls. Not the world’s most nutritious meal, but it was warm and filling. You can see them eating here:



As we are still sailing, they had to share the space with Bruce and Sheila who are strapped safely to the table. The rest of the time, we had sandwiches, cup of soup, fruit etc. But mostly during our breaks, we slept.

Despite it being summer, it was really cold out on the water. I had many layers on in order to keep warm. I'm actually wearing thermals, a layer of warm clothes, a layer of thick, fleecy clothes, water and wind proof sailing gear, lifejacket, three pairs of socks and my ski-ing cap! Welcome to Swedish summer!



Despite the light, it is actually in the middle of the night - about 4am. The going was slow as we had no wind, fog and a swell. Not idea conditions especially as it was almost impossible to see beyond the end of the boat.



The wind was so light that we sailed the whole way with a special light-wind sail called a gennaker. For those familiar with the fine silky spinnaker, this is a similar concept, though far easier to handle and a real asset for light winds.

On the girls’ last two hour shift from 8pm to 10pm, they called up Lars-Göran to say we were off course and that the wind was changing. To our dismay, the electronic auto-pilot was kaput! That was depressing news for two reasons. Firstly, because it meant hand steering the rest of the way and secondly it meant a big bill to replace it. I took on the job of steering and left Lars-Göran to navigate and watch out for the lighthouse that indicates the entrance to Visby harbour. The lights of the town remained tantilisingly in the distance and we scanned the coast for the harbour. According to our pilot book, the Visby lighthouse should be visible 12 nautical miles out to sea, but we couldn’t even see it with 5 nautical miles to go! We just headed for the southern end of the town and kept scanning for the navigation channel. It was just after midnight when we made our way into Visby harbour and managed to find a good spot to moor and fell gratefully into bed.