Thursday, June 9: Andy and Mia rejoined the boat mid-morning for the last leg to Stockholm, where they would leave me alone with the boat and the new adventures that awaited me. After a quick motor down the canal back into Lake Malaren we soon determined that the light airs would not get us to the Swedish capital on time and so we motored the 45nm distance between us and Stockholm. There’s not much to report from our journey except that the gorgeous red and white country houses got more frequent, as did the river traffic. The only delay came when we had a thirty-minute wait for a lifting bridge to be raised required by our 14m mast. By late afternoon we had made it to Slussen, the lock at the south end of the island of Sodermalm which marked the entrance to Danvik’s Canal and our gateway into the city’s iconic harbor. From there was one more lifting bridge to wait for and then a simple ten-minute motor over to Washamnen, the compact and super-convenient marina located between the Grona Lund amusement park and the Wasamuseet nautical museum.
Since this was Andy and Mia’s last ever night on their beloved boat, I volunteered to decamp to the nearby Pop House hotel, which is part of the Abba Museum complex. But my motives were not all altruistic. I badly needed a soak in the tub plus I wanted to get some work done and hey, Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Anni-Frid are iconic figures from my teens, so what better way to spend my last few hours before really taking ownership of Arcturus than a little Nordic pop escapism listening to Dancing Queen and all their countless other musical touchstones?
