Monthly Archives: June 2018

Friday June 22nd: NEVER start a voyage on Friday. There are few sailing superstitions more entrenched than that particular chestnut and when we devised our launching schedule we had planned to obey it rigorously.

But our failure to install either the composting head or the manual windlass meant that by Friday morning we had the boat completely ready to go and we were itching to leave,  not least because the boatyard had suddenly become  busy with happy Swedes coming down to their boats, laden with food and drink, voices positively giddy at the prospect of getting out into the archipelago to celebrate Midsommar.

But the weather is no respecter of dates and the big day dawned gusty and full of showers. My  plan was to  return the rental car to Norrtalje – about an hour’s drive away – and return by public transport. What I hadn’t planned on was given the importance of this day in the Swedish calendar, the habitually wonderful local bus system was operating on a quarter service – meaning that once I had changed buses for the branch line that went to the island I was faced with a two hour wait for a bus. Or I could walk. So walk I did, and before long I came across a backed-up line of cars waiting for the ferry.  

Swedes are far too polite to turn down a request for a ride so I brazenly marched to the front of the line and asked the first car with a single occupant I could find. By chance he was a naturalized Swede, originally from Poland, and a boat builder. We chatted about my boat’s design for the brief ferry ride and ensuring car journey to the boatyard. Such lovely people, these Swedes!

The boat was ready to roll and so were we….so we simply slipped our mooring lines and off we went. Given the gusts and the newness of the boat (to us) we opted for a reefed main and small jib, sacrificing speed for comfort and ease of handling. We made uneven progress for the first couple of hours under grey skies as we headed north east through a crowded channel with countless islands, skerries and rocks to keep us vigilant.  We turned eastwards from Ljustero into the channel just south of the islands of Ostersundet, Edöo and Applarö and I quickly slipped back into the routine from two years before – monitoring channel markers, checking for shallow water and (when I could) adjusting trim for the constantly shifting and fluky winds. Out here you get a serious wind shadow while you pass an island, then get hit by a vicious gust as you clear the lee and scurry to ease the mainsheet and dump the surplus. You will often lament your reefed main or small working jib, then be thankful just moments later as a venturi effect threatens to lay you on your side. But as our mood changed from caution and care  we became a little – how shall I put it – giddy at the prospect of longs days ahead of us in a well-found boat in one of the world’s great cruising grounds. But the winds soon gave way to lulls and we found ourselves becalmed for a couple of hours, so we abandoned our original destination of Granhamn and adjusted our sights to Blidö, a well-regarded and cozy gasthamn to the north east about 22nm from our departure point, which we read was pleasantly sheltered from the main east-west ferry traffic passing the island of Xylan to the north. To make things even better, by about 5pm as we approached the south side of the island the clouds cleared and a glorious late afternoon sun appeared to dry us out and warm us up. We pulled in about 7pm and side-tied to the dock, since all the bows-to buoys were taken. Leg one was in the books!

I was feeling pretty euphoric at the first successful passage of the trip and so I was grateful to climb the hill and order an Islay whiskey and a beer from the Wardhus, which overlooks the dock and serves some terrific modern Swedish cuisine. The staff were busy celebrating Midsommar night themselves and although the service was fine, it was clear their priorities lay elsewhere. I collapsed into my bunk a little after 11pm, sure I would sleep through the night. Barely two hours later I awoke to  the sounds of celebrating locals. A family of middle aged Swedes were carousing at the sauna right across the harbor from my boat, alternating between roasting, swimming, and drinking. Time to make lemonade from lemons, I thought, trudging bleary-eyed to the harbor’s laundry room where, I was told, the wifi was strongest.  I fired up my laptop and caught up with emails. An hour later weariness overtook me. As I walked back to the boat, the sauna-ists was still at it, and there was more action on the dock, where a couple of very handsome Swedish teens  were making out to the sounds of a boombox playing Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire”.

It was quite a moment.

JUNE 18-21, 2018: HAVING A BOAT anywhere – even just tied up at the bottom of your garden, should you be lucky enough to have a waterside home – can be nerve-wracking. In the wee small hours you will often find yourself worrying if the mooring lines are chafing through, if you really tied that bowline correctly, or if through some other small oversight, you will wake in the morning to find your pride and joy, your magic carpet, your refuge and the repository of your dreams, gone with the morning tide.

Having a boat on the other side of the world merely adds to those worries (please add the sound of world’s smallest violin here). But since  my 1966 Allied Seabreeze Arcturus was on the hard, not in the water, at the Ramsmora Batvarv (boatyard) on the island of Ljusterö, about twenty miles north east of Stockholm, in the enviously stable and earthquake free Kingdom of Sweden, I wasn’t too worried about her drifting away on the tide, being stolen by bandits, or falling into a sinkhole.

Which allowed me to put her away under winter cover in August of 2016 and walk away with barely a care or a backward glance.

Fast forward to June 18th, 2018. My Norwegian flight from LAX touched down at Gatwick airport at 10am for a 90 minute layover before the quick and easy leg to Stockholm Arlanda. Having booked the flight back in November I not only got the whole thing pretty cheap (less than $600) but also ensured I was in the exit row for both legs of the flight so I got plenty of legroom. I picked up rental car (pro tip here: If you join the Hertz Gold Rewards program and buy the cheapest economy car available you will almost always get upgraded….I got a large new Volvo station wagon) and  drove to the hamlet of Dunderbö to pick up fore and aft pulpits from the previous owner’s barn and made the 75 minute drive to the island of Ljusterö, the highlight of which was the cool, drive-on, drive-off ferry at the tip of the island. From there it was a simple 15 minute drive to the boatyard. The anticipation as I approached was palpable….

Arcturus was right where I left her. Still wearing her winter cover and waiting patiently on the grey cinder floor of the yard. I could hardly wait to get to work.  First I disrobed her  winter cover and then dismantled the aluminum frame. Opening up the cabin I took a deep breath and ventured below. Two years on, there was a slightly musty odor but amazingly zero mold (thanks to Mia’s tip about wiping everything down with a 50/50 water/vinegar solution). Although I was jet lagged I was far too excited to sleep. So I worked from late afternoon until about 1am, organizing and cataloguing everything, from the clevis pins for the rigging to the silicon caulk for the toe rails until I feel asleep, dead on my feet, at 1am. And it still wasn’t dark.

I don’t know about you but when sleeping in a new space I get disturbed easily. This time it was the dawn chorus of the birds precisely 75 minutes later. 2.15am and bright daylight. Time to get up! I scrubbed the deck, cabin top and topsides manically and installed the stanchions and lifelines. Finally the clock crawled round to 8am and I headed off to Arlanda to pick up J., a sailing buddy from LA who was to help me launch the boat and sail her aross to the Åland Islands and back.

The only slight fly in the ointment was that we were denied the sight of seeing Arcturus launched because we headed into the island’s only town to provision at just the wrong time. An hour later we returned and found Arcturus floating serenely at the launch dock. A simple miscommunication between myself and the boatyard which was disappointing from a social media aspect but great for our schedule. We reconnected the electrical systems and the solar panels, installed and dodger and tried the engine, more in hope than expectation.  The engine turned and fired first try. How that was possible after two years on the hard with no trickle charger? I had no idea but it was a huge relief.

By now it was mid-afternoon and we retrieved both masts from the storage sheds and ran the dyneema rigging and shrouds ready for hoisting. At this point the rising wind stymied our hopes of getting it down that very day, but the yard foreman (Ollie) agreed to do it first thing in the morning. Which was good, because I had hit a wall with jetlag and sleep deprivation. I could barely string a thought or coherent sentence together. I ate a salad, drank a liter of water and passed out at 4pm.

   By Wednesday lunchtime the mast was raised and the rig tuned. So far so good. But this was where our plans hit the rails. We had planned to install an Airhead composting head, which had been delivered to the boatyard a few weeks before. But with the boat already in the water we discovered the thru hull was frozen and rather than try to hammer it free and risk sinking the boat, we thought it best to delay until the boat was put up for the winter again, when the thru hull could  not only be opened without any danger, but also glassed over easily. Fortunately the existing head was functioning perfectly, so unless we did something stupid – like putting toilet paper down there – it would probably be fine for this sailing season.

Our second plan was to install the Lofrans Tiger 555 windlass which came with the boat. But here my organizational skills had proved deficient. After searching every locker and lazarette, we realized the windlass was not on the boat, but back at my friend’s country house just north of Rimbo to which I had access but to which our schedule did not allow another road trip. Also: in the archipelago you don’t really  need to use the anchor too much: you either go into a marina (gasthaman) or go bows-to on the rocks in the quietest naturhamn (nature habor) you can find, tying the boat at the front to a tree or boulder and securing the aft using the stern anchor. In other words, we could put this  job on the back burner and concentrate on sailing.

Which we did. Mainly prompted by the countless locals arriving at the boat yard  laden with food, drink and good cheer and casting off in their own vessels for nearby islands for the annual Swedish bacchanal of Midsommar (Summer Solstice), we felt we simply could wait no longer. The boat was ready and so were we (or so we thought).

Ignoring all sailing superstition,  we cast off on a rainy Friday morning…..heading for the anchorage of Granhamn, just outside Kapällskär, from where, if the forecast were fine, we would strike out for Finland the next day.

Bleary-eyed me imparting words of wisdom at the boatyard…