Randall set off early this morning, heading for Morocco. We spent a long time last night talking to him about taking a more inland route there. He has very little in the way of sailing experience and is ill-equipped to handle a crisis in big seas and his boat is not ready for ocean sailing. A friend with sailing experience has agreed to meet him in Kalmar and sail the leg to Denmark, which will be good as it will give him valuable experience with sailing techniques. We advised him to take the so-called “Sjö-Fyra” (Sea-Four) route down the east coast of Sweden to Kalmar. This is a well marked route through the inner archipelagoes. It is longer than merely heading west out to sea, then southwards and he will have to be alert and follow navigation markers, plot courses and watch out for other boats, but his boat will be spared the big waves and winds that can whip up in the Baltic. We also tried to get him to consider the canal route through Europe rather than take the boat out on the North Sea. The name “Sea-Four” is a take-off of the main road highway through Sweden called the E4 (European Highway 4) and we intend to take the same route down the coast as it is very pretty.

At just after 11am we were ready to cast off as well, having loaded the boat with food, drinks, pets, fuel, water etc. As we have a bigger and faster boat than Randall, we didn’t want to demoralise him by passing him out on the route, so we chose to go outside the islands down to Landsort, then head along the sjö-fyra. The going was fast in the strong southerly winds and despite it being an overcast day there were many boats out on the water.




Of course, July sailing also brings out that peculiar creature we’d probably refer to as a “Sunday driver” in Australia. This is a person who has no proper grasp of the rules of the sea but nevertheless takes out his expensive boat in July and creates mayhem on the water. Today we met a couple of these idiots – both in charge of boats worth many millions of Swedish crowns and seemingly determined to wreck their own as well as other boats. The first person was motoring along northwards in a huge, modern sailing boat. He came to a very tight, very busy, marked channel between several islands. Most of us travelling southwards were sailing at high speed because of strong winds from behind. We were all sailing in a convoy along the left hand side of the channel, leaving the right hand side for the north bound boats. Instead of passing the traffic on the starboard side and continuing along the channel as is the customary rule, this cowboy thought he’d cut diagonally between us and the sailing boat immediately in front of us. With his 40 foot sailing boat! The look on his face when he saw us powering down towards him under full sail at nearly 7 knots was priceless. What did he think we’d do? Apply our imaginary brakes? It was really close and he would have been totally in the wrong had we collided. Lars-Göran was furious at his stupidity.

Soon after I was steering and L-G had gone below. I was heading in a westerly direction across a large section of water. I checked the charts as I neared a lighthouse and saw that my course was still to be due west towards Oxelösund, though there was another route northwards towards Södertälje at the same point. Suddenly a Dutch flagged boat on my left that had been holding a similar course (though slightly behind us), began to push closer to our boat. I indicated to him that I was heading directly west. He didn’t respond and got closer and closer. I guessed that he was wanting to head north, but he could wait and pass behind me. But no. For some reason he wanted to cut in front of me. Why? You would never do that on a road, so why at sea? I indicated again that I was holding a course of 270, but he kept edging closer until there was barely a coat of paint between the boats. I was under sail, so there was little I could do to slow the boat without altering course. Eventually I called up Lars-Göran who shouted at the guy and he eased back. Maybe he didn’t like being beaten to the marker by a woman!

After that, we had fairly stress free sailing along the coast. We passed this station near Stendörren:



It isn’t advertising “Lots” of anything. In fact, Lots means pilot in Swedish, so this is one of the old pilot stations dotted along the coastline. As the waters here are so full of rocks and shoals, it is obligatory for large ships to have a local pilot aboard. They are called out from these stations and travel out to the ships to guide them safely through the area.

Along the way, we also passed an enterprising person who has started a kiosk and small restaurant (or “krog”) along one of the channels. And it looks like he’s doing good business.



After several hours of sailing, (and a VERY frustrating close call with the Furlex that decided to jam at a particularly inopportune moment, not to mention an anchor that insisted on repeatedly dragging) we decided to call it a day, mooring in Stora Lökholmen (The Big Onion Island) lying halfway between the towns of Nyköping and Oxelösund. It’s always nice to finally lie in peace in a beautiful natural bay and enjoy a well earned gin and tonic in the evenings.