We had a marvellous day sailing and being tourists in picturesque Arkösund. The skies were so blue they hurt your eyes and everything looked great as we sailed along the shores.



We had heard great reports about how lovely Arkösund was from our sailing friends so we felt it would be nice to check it out. We also needed to pick up some fuel for the dinghy motor and a light globe at the chandler in town. The town itself is very old and has some beautiful houses on the waterfront.



We took our time walking around to the supermarket and boat supply shop but found it rather stressing. It was packed with summer tourists, very busy with cars, people, cyclists etc so in the end we were glad to leave. I think we’ll come back here another time (but NOT July!) and take a closer, more leisurely look. Lars-Göran chatted to the marina owner who also found July an awful month. He said he did 30% of his business in July, but hated it because people were stressed, demanding and generally unpleasant if they could not get what they needed. That has been out impression as well.

After leaving Atkösund, we looked for a place to moor for the evening. Along the way we passed the creepiest place that I’ve yet seen in Sweden. Every little island around here is covered in lush vegetation – except for one location:



Now, what is with this place? We named it “Death Island”. Honestly, it was so bizarre. Unfortunately as there are so many hidden rocks in this part of the bay we couldn’t get a closer picture, but everything looked dead and skeletal here. Peering through my binoculars, I saw that the island was populated by hundreds of cormorants! They made an awful din and had virtually killed every living thing on the island with their potent droppings. How funny that they chose this place and no other island as a nesting site. I guess the fish supply must be good around here.

After consulting the charts we decided on an island called Djursö (animal island). You can see it on a map here if you look towards the top and centre of the map. This area is known as St Anna’s Archipelago, named after St Anna, who is the patron saint of sea farers. And as you can see, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle of islands that you must plot a route through. Bear in mind that this map shows only the visible islands. There are masses of hidden shoals as well so we had to carefully pick our way around. But again, my husband’s unerring ability to pick out just the perfect spot came to the fore again. We dropped anchor in this idyllic place



It was quite tricky getting there, not helped at all by our depth meter which seems to have developed a sense of humour. When the water is really deep, it quite happily displays the depth, including one or two decimal places. I mean we have a draught of 1.8m, so we smile when we see that it is 98.50m under the boat! But when it is tight and we are slowly making our way through places that are 2m or less, we’d like to know when we are straying into shallow water. It is at these critical moments that the depth meter chooses to display “-----“ (basically depth meter language for “Ha Ha, take a guess”) which either gives us a heart attack or an ulcer. But we are here in the bay now and it is lovely.



The sound from the forest on the shore is really relaxing. High in the sky, three majestic sea eagles hover on the thermals. There is the gentle chirp of the forest birds and the sound of deer as well. This is the most surprising sound of all. I never had anything much to do with deer before. There are no deer in Australia (except on deer farms). Of course, I’ve seen Bambi and I think deer are these cute, gentle little creatures. “Yeah right!” sneers my husband, who sees them more as a moth eaten nuisance. I was out helping to cover the sails when I heard what sounded like a Smoker’s Convention with about 100 people coughing their lungs out with the typical smokers’ cough. I asked what it was and L-G said “Deer”. I didn’t believe him, but sure enough I saw two small deer chasing each other along the shore and sounding like they had a 5 pack a day cigarette habit. Amazing!

When I went below to check on the progress of our dinner, I discovered the oven flame was out and our lasagne was barely lukewarm. I cursed and tried to light it again, then realised that we had run out of propane! Did we have a spare propane bottle? Well, yes we did, but it was empty, too. Another of those jobs we forgot to do before we left home. I could have kicked myself as we could have got more in Arkösund today! Never mind, we’ll find a place tomorrow. In the meantime, we can at least use our Heatpal to make coffee (as Lars-Göran cannot function without several cups of strong, brewed coffee every day).

In the evening, he takes Lambi for a row to shore. She is delighted, naturally. It’s so hard to take in that this is the sea, not a lake. This is the Baltic Sea! I still can’t get used to no tides and no waves crashing on the shore. It somehow just doesn’t seem right.



Let's see where we end up tomorrow!