Obviously I am a weather force to be reckoned with, as the days and days of grey, windy weather have suddenly disappeared – at least for the time being. I should have started with the threats earlier.

When I last wrote about where we were, it was in Munkö in the central part of the Stockholm archipelago. Since then we have sailed around 90 nautical miles and are now staying at the very pretty island group of Lundarna (meaning the groves), on the southern edge of Bråviken. We arrived here last night "with a bang" so to speak and have been exploring all day.

We had been moored yesterday just north of Oxelösund after a horrid day - a long tiring day of sailing in cold, adverse winds and mooring first at Lökholmarna, changing our minds after dinner when we started dragging and instead going back to Stora Trassö.




Lökholmarna certainly lived up to it's name (onion islands) as they nearly made me cry yesterday. We had such a great time last time we were there, that it was frankly the only thing that kept me going while I was shivering along the length of the Södermanland coastline.

Yesterday though, it was exposed, windy, impossible to anchor in and just SO WRONG. The one good thing about stopping at Lökholmarna was that we ran into our friend Ulf who was tied up to a cliff on the western (more sheltered) part of the island. We chatted and laughed for a while, but we had to re-anchor (where the hell is the electric windlass when you need it?) several times and still dragged, that we had no choice but to leave in the night and seek somewhere else.

At Stora Trassö, we regrouped, lazed around a bit, did the washing (so badly needed - I swear the sheets were about to jump overboard themselves), baked bread, sorted through the food stores, prepared some meals, cleaned up and talked about what we might like to do in the last couple of weeks before we head to our new home. We had intended to stay the night, but at around 5p.m. we had a sudden 180 degree wind shift. This made the crossing of Bråviken a cinch, so despite it being a bit late to start off, we packed up and by 6pm were on our way southwards.

Two hours later, we had crossed over and were coming to the beginning of the next archipelago and I started looking for an anchor place close by. I pointed to Lundarna on the chart, a small group of islands that form a wave breaking function for the coastline around Arkösund. It looked quite impassable on the chart, surrounded as it was by dark blue (signifying a depth of 1-3 metres), but I had found a more detailed diagram in both of our harbour guides, so I selected the more modern of the two and showed him where I thought we could anchor. With this view! Hard to believe it's 8pm, isn't it?




Now, I know I promised Lars-Göran not to blog about this next bit, but I can't help myself and anyway, I had my fingers crossed, so the promise doesn't really count, does it? The nature harbours here in the St Anna Archipelago tend not to be as all-round sheltered as those in Stockholm and you really have to think about wind direction. Lars-Göran had slowed the boat to 2 knots and was gingerly making his way forward, aided by the chart I had found. I had copied out the VHF forecast and he was trying to decide whether to anchor off Lunda or perhaps we'd get more shelter along a narrow passage closer to Måsskären (seagull skerry).

Honestly, it was 8pm, we hadn't eaten and I just wanted us to anchor, but he insisted I stand and look at Måsskaren and say whether I thought it was better than where I first pointed. Just as I stood, there was an almighty BANG!, followed by a full orchestral performance from the mast and rigging CLANG! SHAKE! CLANG! HEAVE! CRUNCH! CLANG! CLANG!, sending the crews of boats already moored there leaping into their cockpits for a stickybeak. Not that WE would ever have done anything like that...

Yes, we had come to a very sudden stop, hard on ground. We got off okay, though I guess we were the discussion topic of the evening in the bay. No damage to the boat and nothing broken inside (just the birds' water and seeds all over the floor). I was thrown forward by the impact and crashed into a stainless steel rail we have around the dodgers. I am now sporting an enormous, painful and quite colourful bruise on my left shoulder and a smaller one on my thigh. I've been attempting to use the injuries to get out of work, but Lars-Göran knows I'm faking it, so no dice there I'm afraid.

In the morning, we set out to explore this very pretty island group and to see exactly how big these shoals we hit were.




It is still cold in the wind, but if you can stay in lee, the sun warms you up beautifully and this group of islands is really fascinating. There are anchoring spots in all kinds of places, ranging from quite dark, pine clad bays in the south to glorious, open rocks in the north. While we both liked the landscape in the north, we realised that we were far better off at around mid-point where we were. With a wind shift, you'd be stuffed if you were anchored here. It is far too tight for a boat our size, even though the views out to the open sea are stunning.





We had taken a picnic and thermoses of tea and coffee, hoping to wander around, explore the islands, sit in the sun on the warm rocks and then have a snack. But we left out the furry factor in our careful calculations. Lambi may only weigh 3.5kgs, but she has the appetite of a large pelican. She knew we had a picnic stashed away in the dinghy and she could not rest until we had eaten it. So she pestered us, wandered up and down like an expectant father in the maternity ward waiting room, whined and begged until we thought the only alternative we had to cheerfully wringing her neck was to get out the food and eat it. Damn dog!




But what a superb place to enjoy your lunch. We were in the sunshine, sitting barefoot on the warm rocks surrounded by pretty wildflowers, colourful rocks, sailing boats in the distance and water. The only sounds we heard were those of a few birds in the trees and the water lapping gently by the shore. Paradise anyone?

I was even inspired to dip my toes into the water. Quite literally, as after all, this is the Baltic and still cold by my standards. But don't say that I've never tried it out! And please ignore the Swedish winter tan and the puffy, menopausal legs. I tried to get him to photoshop them to be long, lithe and tanned, but he said photoshop was not a miracle maker.




When you live here and see all of this glorious natural beauty around you, you can become a little blasé and tend to take them somewhat for granted. But I realise how fortunate I am to live here. If you were to make somewhere to relax, a place to feel calm and regenerated, it would have to be a scene like this - warm rocks, bright, cheerful wildflowers nodding in the breeze, with amazing clear blue water gently washing over the shore. It's awesome to think that this is a product of mother nature, a living place and not simply there for the sole purpose of providing somewhere for holiday makers to go.

What also makes this place a hit with us is that it is not readily accessible unless you have a boat. I'm sure this is why it is so well preserved and has such a feeling of remoteness. It is so breathtakingly stunning that I'm sure you all want to come here and laze around on the shore.




We walked over the rocks, then set off again in the dinghy to check out some of the narrow winding passages we had seen, all the while keeping to the western side of the islands because we could clearly hear the breakers pounding in to the rocks on the other side. It still amazes me that the water is so calm in lee, no matter what is raging on the other side. It is like being in two different worlds at once.

All along the cliffs we found wildflowers poking out of crevices in the rocks. I wonder how they get enough nutrients to not only survive but to bloom so profusely. It is such a harsh, exposed environment out here, but still they put on this magnificent show every year. I really must get a wildflower book, so I can find out what they all are. I feel somewhat at a disadvantage here, coming from the southern hemisphere where plants like these are unknown.




While we were on the rocks, we saw a small sailing boat motor away, heading northwards towards Stockholm. What surprised me was that it was absolutely silent. I looked through my binoculars and saw that they had a small electric motor hanging from the transom. I looked at our noisy, slightly smelly two-stroke engine on the dinghy and turned to Lars-Göran saying "We have to sell this and buy one of those" pointing to the electric motor. He confessed that he's been thinking about it for ages, so we added it to our list of things to do before next season.

As the afternoon progressed, we decided to head back to the boat. The water went through many twists and turns and we followed by motor and sometimes rowed where it was too shallow. It really is an interesting and beautiful place.




Before we went back, though, Lars-Göran went to the place where we had hit ground and armed with the chartlet in the Granath book he started to measure the shoal. We discovered that Granath's chart is inaccurate and that the ground extends for almost 50 metres further than is marked. When we hit, we were in water clearly marked in the chartlet as being 4.5 metres deep, when it was in reality only 0.6m deep. Quite a bit of difference there and important when you remember that we have a draught of 1.8 metres. Ironically enough, when I got back to the boat and hauled out the Åke Améen book from the 1970s, HIS chart was accurate. I wished we had used that one instead, but I made the mistake of thinking the modern, coloured chart based on satellite navigation would be better and more up-to-date than the black and white line drawings used in the earlier publication.




It just goes to show how careful you have to be in these rocky waters. We were not the only ones to come to grief, though. We spent the late afternoon and early evening watching boats head in and look for mooring spots and no fewer than four boats slammed into the same ground. These ranged from quite big yachts with sophisticated navigation aids to a small sailing boat with people standing on the fore watching the water and taking pictures. The evening air was full of the sounds of shuddering rigging, motors grinding hurriedly in reverse and people shouting. We spoke to one boat owner who was really angry. Like us, he was using the Granath book and had hit very hard. He was worried that his keel was damaged and said he was going to write and complain about the book's inaccuracy. We haven't bothered with that, we have just coloured in the area on our own chart so we know where we are going next time.




As you can see, none of that bothered Bruce and Sheila in the slightest. They sat on the aftdeck, protected from the wind, happily sunning themselves and working on their tans. Oh for the carefree life of a cockatiel.

I'd like to stay here for another day, but the evening weather forecast promises another wind change that will make this bay a little more wavy in the afternoon. We are still trying to stick with the idea of following the wind as much as we can, so we will head somewhere else tomorrow. Depending on the winds, it may be deeper into the Saint Anna archipelago, or across to the larger islands closer to the mainland. Whatever we do, we intend to enjoy these last couple of weeks as then we have a lot of hard work to get through with renovating the new flat and unpacking all those boxes and boxes of books, clothes and furniture.

But I'm filing that away for now and concentrating on enjoying the sunshine and the peace of being right on the ocean's edge. Which reminds me of a joke I told Lars-Göran this afternoon:

What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A nervous wreck.

He threw a sponge at me. I wonder why?