Dear west wind,

It was really nice of you to come out and play, but now can you just GO AWAY!

Thankyou,

The crew of S/Y Fiona

The last few days have seen the wind strength go from the sublime to the ridiculous and I can tell you that it is very wearing on the temper, especially if you are thrown together on a small, tight boat. Sudden violent deluges followed by strong gales for days on end have forced us to be inside the boat, hiding out in bays where we don’t want to be, while waiting for the sea to subside enough for us to venture out again. What a contrast to the peace and calm of the weather we had at Väderöarna.

As I have said before, we watch the weather carefully, choosing mooring places and directions to sail depending on wind strength and direction. The bay we were moored in was totally open to the north, so when the forecast was predicting winds from just that point on the compass, we knew it was time to leave. That proved to be easier said than done as the wind was blowing from behind us and made maneuvering to loosen all of the ropes a hazardous affair. Poor Lars-Göran had to free the ropes from high up the narrow cliff face, while the dinghy kept perversely insisting on pretending to be a giant fender and inserting itself between the boat and the cliff. In the end, using a boat hook, brute strength and a lot of colourful language, we managed to free ourselves and take off. All of this was carried out with a full audience of rubber necking boat owners on top of the cliff face – none of whom offered to help out, I might add. So much for the myth of the friendly west coast people. As you can imagine, this somewhat bruised Lars-Göran’s male pride and provided another nail in the coffin of his self esteem and belief in his sailing abilities and put a dampener on our trip back to the mainland.

Just when I thought that things couldn’t get worse, they did. I could see that Lars-Göran was in no mood to fight for a place at the overcrowded pier at Fjällbacka, which was our tentative goal for the day. I thought it was better to spend a day at a nice nature harbour, maybe take the dinghy to land and walk around a little and just disconnect and recharge our emotional batteries, then tackle the town the next day.

It was a great plan on paper. Our first goal was to find somewhere to moor. I had hoped to just take one of the first places we came to, even though they had the rather gruesome names of Kyrkogårdsön (The Cemetery Island) and Galgeberget (The Gallows Hill). Charming! Apparently, their names do refer to their former uses – one as a burial place for sailors lost at sea who were washed up on the shores and the other as an execution place, where the bodies hung high on the hill as a warning to others. Lars-Göran pointed out that this part of the country was in Danish hands at the time (1600s) and that was the sort of barbaric behaviour you’d expect from Danes (joke!). Anyway, neither of the islands was suitable – one had bays open to the north, the other was tightly packed with boats.

Just a little further north, we dropped anchor in a tiny bay in Vedholmen as it seemed to offer protection from wind and waves. Today really wasn’t our day at all – not only would the anchor refuse to grip because of the sea grass on the bottom, but even though we had a belt of skerries on the outside of the island and a deep headland in front of us, the waves still managed to come around and we bounced up and down with the swell. We were exhausted by now, so we thought we’d have afternoon tea, listen to the forecast on the VHF and choose somewhere else once we knew what the weather was going to do. Who knows, maybe the wind would ease. Nope, gales and rain forecast for the next few days.

Damn!

So off we went again. Lars-Göran is a sweetie really. When he chooses a bay, he tries to select somewhere with calm water, protection from the wind and a great view. In other words, he wants us to have it all. I tend to think that he puts himself under too much pressure to achieve this, but I’ve learned to keep quiet and let him go rather than suggest a compromise “just for the night”. The next place he chose seemed to fit all of these criteria and he carefully anchored, dug in the anchor well and seemed ready to relax and switch off. The view was perfect, too.




A few hours later as we were preparing to eat dinner, there was a knock on our hull and Lars-Göran peeped out to find a fisherman in a dinghy clinging to the hull, telling us that the boat was dragging. And boy, was it dragging at a great rate!

Damn, again!

There was a lot of cursing and somewhat of a panic to start the engine, pull in the anchor and keep the boat off the shoals. Neither of us could understand how this had happened as we had backed in the anchor properly and it was disheartening and frustrating to find that our knowledge and experience in handling the boat just didn’t help. Frigging west coast! I tell you, if I could teleport myself home to the calm of the Stockholm archipelago this instant, I’d happily do so.

You know, some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed in the morning. And this is rapidly turning into one of those nightmare days. We did manage to find a spot nearby on the east of Gåsön (The Goose Island – but we didn’t see any geese), though I had trouble relaxing as I was really worried that we’d drag again. Over dinner, I told Lars-Göran to skip going to Fjällbacka and just let us get the hell out of this crazy, crowded west coast, but he calmed me and said that we ought to try and see what we could as we had come so far. He was hopeful that the strong winds would abate tomorrow and we could go and have a day on land.

Yeah, right!

It was a sleepless night for both of us as we worried that we’d drag again and we listened as the wind howled outside and the sea swell began to come in to our bay as the wind shifted to the south west and increased to a near storm strength. By 4 am we had both had enough, so I made a quick breakfast and we drew up the anchor, thinking we could go more inland and perhaps drop anchor in the bay opposite Fjällbacka. We only had up a tiny storm sail, but we made over 5 knots of speed, which was a bit hairy in the rock filled channels. Just as we came to the town, an enormous cloudburst hit – it poured and poured solidly for around half an hour and because we were traveling downwind, it drove straight into us drenching everything in the cockpit.

Förbannelse!

Time and time again we selected a mooring place from the chart, only to arrive there and find that it was not suitable. The winds were now more westerly, so this whole area was nothing but trouble. In the crappy weather, dripping wet in the torrential rain, I pointed in desperation to a small, protected looking bay a little way north next to the island of Veddö. On the chart, it was marked as Långsjö and I recalled that the cruising club had a buoy there. It looked a little closed in for our tastes, but in these conditions we could ill afford to be fussy, so off we went.




What a pleasant surprise. We squeezed in through a narrow headland and found ourselves in a deep, lake like bay, full of boats lying by anchor and shores lined with homes, summer houses and even a caravan park and camping ground. The SKX buoy was available as well, so we gratefully tied up the boat and collapsed into bed to recover.

We ended up having to stay here for three nights because the winds continued to be at gale strength from the south west. Most of the time we were forced to be on the boat as it was simply too windy to take the dinghy out and go to land. There were a lot of boats moored here, though few of them moved during the time we were in the bay. Only a couple of fishing boats and the inevitable boat taxis braved the rough seas outside of the headland. We caught up on some reading and writing and discussed what we would do when the weather abated.




On the final day we were here, we took the dinghy to land and walked around the lee side of the island where the camping grounds were situated. It’s not so much fun to walk through a place like this with a persistently inquisitive dog. It was close to lunchtime and Lambi could smell food everywhere, so she kept straining at her leash to go inside of every caravan and tent she could see. I know it’s not her fault, but I found it really annoying and was sorry I had bothered to come ashore. After a time, I began to notice that several people were openly staring at me, so I asked Lars-Göran what I was doing to attract this unwanted attention. He laughed and said “Check out what you are wearing” I protested that I only had on fairly ordinary clothes – long pants, furry jacket, boat shoes – all quite innocuous. “Now, look at what they are wearing” he said and it was then I noticed that everyone was wearing halter tops, shorts, bathers etc. Hmmm….after all these years I still feel cold, even in July *grin*




The caravan park stretched right across the island to a small horseshoe shaped bay which offered a nice sandy beach, ideal for children and good protection from the south west winds. Mind you, it would be the pits in a northerly gale!

There was a small grocery shop as well, so I wandered in and bought some fresh salad vegetables and smoked fish, while the bikini-clad checkout chick stared at me rugged up in my warm jacket. Can I help it if she is in total denial? Believe me, it was quite fresh in the wind.

Finally, we were tired of waiting and even though the winds continued to be strong, we decided that we would perhaps have a go at trying to move a little further south. It had begun to feel like we’d never leave and would have to stay trapped in this place for the rest of our lives. I had no idea that gales could go on so long, even if the weather was sunny. Our little bay was reasonably sheltered, but we could see that outside in the fairway, the waters were quite wild.




We are confident that the boat could handle the conditions, but I was less sure about my own ability to cope. I really didn’t travel all this way in order to struggle and fight every day though I could see that a change of scene would be a good idea. Naturally the forecast wind direction bore no resemblance to reality, so we found ourselves having to tack in a zigzag course through the rough water down to Fjällbacka. We had looked at information about several towns in this region and this is the one that had most appealed to us. We came into the bay where the town lay before us, winding its way up the cliff.




The church tower is unfortunately covered for renovation, but you can see it is still an appealing place to visit. The lovely town of Fjällbacka is associated with the actresses Ingrid Bergman. I’ve mentioned before that she spent her summers at Dannholmen in the Fjällbacka archipelago. It wasn’t just for that reason that I wanted to come here. There is apparently a magnificent view from the top of the 76m high hill behind the town (Vetteberget) as well as a huge opening (Kungsklyftan) in the massive stone cliff in the middle of Fjällbacka, where parts of Astrid Lindgren’s film ”Ronja the Robber’s Daughter” were filmed. I had been looking forward to simply strolling among the old boathouses by the harbour and walking through the winding narrow streets looking at the pretty, tightly packed houses. However, one look at the guest harbour dashed our hopes.




The boats were packed at the piers like sardines. They lay nine boats deep in places! Can you imagine having to tie up to the outside and clamber over nine other boats just to get to the pier (and pay 200kr for the privilege!). I had expected it to be popular, but not in my wildest nightmares had I expected anything like this. Sadly, we had to pass by and I felt really disappointed and a little worried about how bad it would be further south. Certainly there was a lot of boats out sailing today, all looking for a mooring place to protect them from the strong winds.

Even though it was windy, the day was sunny and bright and when we sailed in lee of the strong waves, it was really lovely.




We saw several tiny settlements like this one, consisting of fishermen’s cottages lining a tiny piece of flat ground at the foot of a high rockface. There were a lot of people out enjoying the sunshine and we even ran into a sailing school being held in one of the sounds. I am so impressed by the skill of these young children handling these tiny boats, though we were a little worried sailing past them, keeping a close watch to make sure we were well away from their path.




Sailing further southwards through the outer islands brought some further surprises, like this lovely summer home, complete with a lush, green lawn. The sight of such growth was startling when compared to the normal environment of stark, red granite rocks. I wonder how they managed to get it to grow so well in this harsh, windswept, salty place?




By contrast,just around the corner, the area is dominated by these smooth, almost sculptured stone slabs which gives the place a real feel of being in the outer archipelago.




All of this co-exists with large areas that have sadly been exploited by previous generations and a lot of the archipelago looks like a scrapheap in a quarry, with the beautiful stone slabs blasted away and granite blocks lying around, unwanted, forgotten and a little forlorn looking.




As well as being used domestically, a lot of the stone quarried here in Bohuslän was exported in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as part of the industrialisation and urbanising programs. Red granite was used for cobblestoned streets and town squares, piers, bridges in places as far away as Argentina. I think it is sad to see the aftermath of all of this activity in the form of big blocks, half finished, complete with drill holes lying strewn around the islands. There is also a lot of rusty wires, cables and remains of rails left there.

We bypassed Heestrand, the little town where we stayed a couple of weeks ago and decided to cross over the open waters down towards the town of Bovallstrand. The waters were foaming and angry as the waves swept in from the west crashing over rocks and skerries. The boat handled the conditions really well, so we were happy.




We were less happy when we tried to find somewhere to moor. The harbour attached to the village was as ridiculously packed as Fjällbacka had been so we tried to find a nature harbour that would give some protection from the strong winds. No such place existed! Eventually, after a couple of hours of aimlessly motoring around checking out one unsuitable place after another, we dropped anchor in Bergviksfjorden – “It’s just for the night” Lars-Göran assured me as we looked around this dark, windy rather cold place.




I hope things improve tomorrow as I am a bit tired of having to stay in places I don’t like and missing out on seeing places I really want to visit. Seeing the west coast from land is quite different to seeing it from the water – the struggle to find somewhere to moor the boat each day is sapping our strength and will to bother exploring. I am almost sorry that we came…