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.
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