Monthly Archives: October 2022

Thurs. July 28^th: Thursday is a work day for me so I had planned to only spend a couple of hours traveling before pulling in to the marina at Norsholm. They have 20 berths, lying alongside, and a decent café called Kapten Bille’s. As usual there was fast wi-fi and a warm Swedish welcome, so I spent a pleasant evening working and watching the boats go by while ensuring my small business was keeping in the black.

   Fri. July 29th The next morning we crossed Lake Roxen, which is expansive, beautiful, and (on the day we crossed) very flat. We traversed its 14.6nm length in about three hours and were greeted at the other end by our first ‘flight’ of locks, seven in total, which would take us up to the town of Borensberg. We were comparatively lucky because we only had to wait about 15 minutes for the first one to open, and it was a gloriously sunny day and a drama-free traverse through. Each lock took about 15 minutes to negotiate, so two hours later we emerged.

   We then had to pass through four double locks, cross an aqueduct which took us OVER a freeway, past seven remote-controlled bridges and another lock before we stopped for the night at Borensberg. This is a charming riverside town, a little sleepy but very civilized. We pulled up after the lock ahead had closed for the night on a jetty in the shadow of the historic Gota Hotel, a real ‘Vardhus’ relic of the early 20^th century canal tourist trade. The hotel had the air of a gently declining dowager, and rather than eat there for the night, we walked into town and found the charming Pizza Napoli restaurant, where four of us enjoyed decent but unmemorable pizzle for $75, before walking home, enjoying the sights a little, and turning in for the night.

   Saturday: July 30^th: We started our day with a an uneventful crossing of Lake Boren (7nm) and were greeted at the end by a flight of five locks which would take us up to Motala. This town is the gateway to Lake Vattern, 17nm miles across and with it the highest point of the canal, Forsvik, at 91.8m above sea level. There’s not much to recommend Motala. We stopped at a large jetty just before the last lock before the lake. We walked into town to the Sanny Thai restaurant for a decent enough meal and then turned in.

   Sunday: July 31^st: Time was slipping away from me because I had a crew scheduled to arrive in Gothenberg in a few days and because of my earlier brush with Covid I had entered the Gota Canal a little later than planned. So this day was my makeup day, and I planned to cover about 40nm. This was possible only because I was starting at Lake Vättern, going 17nm with no locks, followed by the Karlsborg-Forsvik-Lake Viken-Tatorp-Töreboda leg, another 30nm but with only two locks. With over 30 berths Töreboda has one of the largest marinas in the canal, but given our expected late arrival I wasn’t 100% sure we’d find an open spot. Turns out we arrived just in time, taking the last spot on the left shortly before sundown. There were a couple of excellent bakeries and restaurants nearby, and for a bonus we berthed right in front of a gorgeous wooden Norwegian yacht, which I spent at least 30 minutes ogling. We ate dinner on the boat and enjoyed a few glasses of wine, the mood quickly turning merrier as England’s Lionesses won the Euro 2022 final, beating Germany 2-1. If only the men could follow suit…

Tues. July 26/Wed. July 27: The Gota Canal guide divides to the canal into three convenient sizes, beginning or ending with a lake. The first section, from the Baltic to Lake Roxen, has 15 locks and 7 bridges.  After entering the system at Mem you’ll find the charming town of Söderkoping 3nm up the canal. There is a well-equipped marina here and a charming waterside scene of shops, bars and restaurants. In high summer expect lots of outdoor drinking, live music and dancing. We enjoyed a lovely waterside meal before casting off the following day for Norsholm, 12nm and 12 locks away. It was in this stretch that we really learned to ‘lock up’ as it is called, and how we became closely acquainted (for better or worse) with the three boats in our ‘convoy’, one Finnish, one German and one Swedish. Right outside Söderkoping are four single locks followed by two doubles, and by the time we had navigated our way through we had learned the ropes, so to speak.

   Once you enter the first lock the helpful young lockkeepers inform you that you will be traveling with this group and to keep up with each other, since it’s more efficient to fill the locks each time they open. So for the first day we shared their space, and vice versa, until we got to Lake Roxen, where the faster boats got ahead of us, never for us to cross paths again.

   The first three bridges are opened via remote control and a CCTV system, and they either hinge upwards, pull backwards, or slide towards or away from you. There is a red and green light system to indicate to boaters ahead of time the bridge is ahead, so you can slow your speed to wait for opening. Every bridge we encountered worked perfectly without fuss or drama.

   Given that the locks do not open until 8am and close at 5pm, there is no point in trying to charge through them all in long 12 hours days. It’s much better to take your time, aim for about six hours of traveling in a day and stop for a nice lunch. And the lockkeepers will tell you if you don’t have enough time to reach the next lock before it closes for the day. They stay connected with each other via walkie-talkie and they also know how many available spaces there are in the nearby marinas. As we cleared the last lock at Norsholm around 4pm, the lockkeeper explained that we could not reach the following lock in time, and that we should spend the night in the ‘staging area’ (a long wooden jetty) which was located a few hundred meters round the next bend. There was a boat behind us, who were told they could not go through, and would have to wait below the lock till morning. This actually worked beautifully, because we were completely we were able to spend a lovely family evening together, in the middle of nowhere, enjoying a spectacular sunset, some chilled white wine and a some Swedish meatballs and new potatoes I prepared on the stove. We all got quite inebriated, as I recall.

Since I started sailing in Sweden in 2016 I have been told many times by Swedes and foreigners alike that although the East Coast and Stockholm archipelago are amazing, the West Coast is really the place to go. Or as the saying goes, The West Coast is the Best Coast.

     However, I’m at the stage in my life where I’m not constantly seeking to travel over the horizon and instead prefer to do a deep dive into wherever it is I find myself, which is why it took me six years to finally take the plunge and make my way west.

     Once you exit the Stockholm area and enter the archipelago proper on the eastern reaches of the Baltic Sea, its approximately 500 nautical miles down to the southern tip of the country and then up the west coast to Gothenberg, which is the logical base for any extended exploration of the area. Since I enjoy taking my time and really visiting each place of interest I’m sailing close to, rather than just flying by, I knew that 500 miles would likely take me another summer, so instead, I decided to traverse the country by taking the Göta Canal.

     This marvel of 19^th century engineering was constructed mostly by Swedish soldiers digging the canal and linking various lakes from 1810 to 1832. It starts at the town of Mem, which is located up a short inlet from the Baltic, and finishes 102nm and 58 locks later at the town to Sjötorp at the entrance to Lake Vänern.  From there you cross the lake and enter the Trollhätte Canal which you take another 43nm to Gothenberg and from there, to the Kattegat.

     As a small boy I spent two idyllic summers with my father and brother going upriver on the Thames in England on our motor cruiser, and I have loved inland waterways ever since. The idea of gently cruising through a bucolic landscape in high summer through a country I truly love was irresistible. And I was sure that having my kids on board, working the locks together just as I had done with my father half a century ago made for a wonderful symmetry.

     The Arcturus crew from Stockholm to Mem was myself, Michelle K and her son Devin. We had met in the capital on the 19^th, a couple of days later than planned due me contracting Covid, and from there sailed and motored down through some of the southern islands of the archipelago, arriving at Mem in the afternoon of July 25^th. The next morning we checked in with the canal control office where I was given a flag to certify I had paid to the lockkeepers on the journey ahead, and we went through the first lock. (of which more, later). Three 3nm further down the canal is the town of Söderkoping which has convenient bus and road links to Stockholm. It was there I bade farewell to Michelle and Devin and greeted my family for the adventure ahead.

     Arcturus is ten feet abeam and 35 feet long, and she was fairly typical in size with the boats me met along the way When boats cross in the canal there is plenty of room both in the middle and either side, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hug the middle wherever possible. The maximum allowed draft for boats is 2.8m and Arcturus draws only 1.1m with her centerboard up, but it doesn’t pay to be too polite when passing because closer to the banks the canal bed slopes up very quickly and by the time you are five feet away from the edge you can expect to be touching bottom.

     Boat length is limited to 30m but I don’t recall seeing single boat that big. The largest vessels you will likely encounter are the historic white passenger boats that have plying this route since the 19^th century. These always have right of way and if you are unlucky enough to meet them coming the other way at a lock, expect for them to have priority.

A steep learning curve

     Entering the canal and its procedures are quickly learned by reading the guidebook, but locking up and down can be a little anxiety-inducing until you have half a dozen under your belt. Each lock has a jetty or staging area on the bank, and in the likely event of the lock gates being closed when you arrive, you pull over and have two crew take lines for the bow and stern. There is typically one jetty on each side of the canal, each big enough for two 30-40 foot boats, allowing four boats at a time to enter the lock.

     When locking up, the water in the lock will be down and the lock walls will loom 15-20 feet above you, necessitating the crew to clamber up an incline from the jetty to the top of the lock wall, keeping the lines tight while you gently guide your boat in. You will need a minimum of four fenders at varying heights both port and starboard, to avoid hitting either the lock walls or a neighboring boat when the sluice gates are opened, because the water flow can be fast and the turbulence can be challenging.

     The lock walls are typically aged 19^th century stone, with a series of small bars, topped with iron rings the size of dinner plates, at intervals along the top. The guidebook recommends that you make a large bolon with your bow line and slip it over the iron loop and then bring it down firmly against the bar so it holds firm. The bow line is then run though a block on the bow and back to a cockpit winch. The stern line is simply run from an after cleat to another crew member who stands in line with the stern. As the water comes in – and it comes in fast – the water rises and the bow line will slacken. At that point the skipper should grind in the slack quickly to ensure the bow doesn’t start to get pushed away from the wall and into the neighboring boat. For the stern crew, the pressures are far less and they can simply pull in the slack by hand.

Amygdala bests Prefrontal Cortex

     On our first lock just a few minutes after casting off from Söderkoping, we learned the benefits of following instructions closely. Although we had set the bow line through the block and run it back to the cockpit as recommended, I omitted to instruct my son on affixing bolon round the iron loop and he tried to control the boat’s movement by brute strength alone. Angus is a big strong boy who lifts weights every day…but he really struggled to keep the bow under control, meaning the lockkeeper had to modulate the the speed of the water ingress a little to help us out. One of the other occupants of the lock, a cigar smoking German with a boat out of Kiel named Grissini took exception to our lack of knowledge and, rather than offer constructive advice, decided to make a few snide comments, leading quickly to a bad-tempered exchange between the two of us.

     “Why are you in such a hurry?” I asked him. “Do you have a country to invade?”

     I’m not particularly proud of letting my amygdala overcome my prefrontal cortex in such a way, but it had the desired effect. He backed down and I followed the guidebook more scrupulously for the next locks, which were just a few minutes down the road. By the time we had done half a dozen of them, we were experts (almost).

What Will It Cost?

Pricing depends on size of boat and if you choose low season or high season. but here’s a graphic of what it would cost to take my boat (a 35 footer) through this summer, low season and high season. At current exchange rates, 7990 Swedish Krona is about $734. For the experience, I consider it very good value…

Other useful links:

The official Gota Canal website is very helpful and the English version is completely comprehensible. Click HERE to access.

The Gota Canal Skipper Guide is also invaluable. You can download it HERE