Hello Sweden

I’m posting a little early this month as we are leaving Stockholm tomorrow, August 26 and will likely be without internet access for the next week, or, longer. However, I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ve been in Sweden for all of August having left the lovely ‘white’ town of Mandal, the southernmost town in Norway on July 30th for the passage to Göteborg, Sweden. It was an uneventful thirty-four hour passage (thirty hours of motoring and four hours of frustrating sailing). The heavy shipping that we thought would have been coming out of the Baltic around the northern tip of Denmark didn’t materialize and we were thankful for that. There were only a couple of really high-speed (30 knot) ferries to dodge.

An impressive building, built on rock, seen on arrival at Göteborg

We were a little nervous as we were heading for a new country, a new type of sailing and a more urbanized marine environment than we’d experienced in Norway over the past year. The marinas and anchorages in south Norway weren’t as busy as we’d been led to believe, but, we didn’t know what to expect in Sweden. Prior to arrival, all I could think about was how we were going to deal with the ‘lazy lines’ that we had to use for mooring in the marina at Göteborg. We’d never even seen these before, let alone used them. The theory is simple. On arrival, the crew on the bow is supposed to pick up the lazy line which is fixed to the harbour bottom and run it to the stern of the boat where it is tied off to hopefully stop the forward motion. Then, the bow can be tied off. An additional complication on our boat is we have a very long, very high bowsprit which makes it difficult to even get near the dock without ramming anything, let alone get off over the sprit onto the pontoon.

So, we arrived. The marina was packed full and just waiting for some mooring entertainment.  There looked to be a spot if we squeezed in between two boats. A large ferry was coming in behind us and we had to move fast. We pulled into the spot and were resting on the adjacent boat’s fenders. G got off the sprit with difficulty and tied up. Then, we started looking for the lazy line and realized that’s why this spot was empty, there wasn’t one. It soon became apparent we’d have to move as we had nothing to tie the stern of the boat to. We were too heavy to raft up to the adjacent boat and there was no room for a stern anchor. Reluctantly, we untied and with difficulty got over to another spot that had just become vacant. No lazy lines there either, but, we managed to get tied up after a lot of messing around. We met some people later who told us that, as the season progresses the lines get caught in props and cut off. They related how a motorboat got one wound around their prop in the middle of the marina and had to sit in the fairway overnight for a diver to come the next day and free them. Now that’s entertainment! Luckily, it wasn’t our turn to be the entertainment this time. I hope we don’t have to deal with ‘lazy lines’, or, their absence, again any time soon.

In addition to new mooring arrangements, we were in for a new type of sailing. Although I wouldn’t say we are masters, we have at least experienced ocean sailing and coastal sailing. We’d never done ‘canal sailing’ before. Yes, we’d been through the Welland Canal in the Great Lakes in Canada, but, that was on a modern boat with two instructors and six crew. The locks are also so massive that they throw lines down to you from the top which you tie on and simply winch in as you rise up. It was easy. We didn’t know what to expect this time.

the series of locks at Berg on the Göta Canal

in the lock at Berg

The inland canal journey between Göteborg and Stockholm consists of two canal systems. The first, the Trollhätte Canal, runs from Göteborg to Lake Vänern and is still a commercial route used by large freighters hauling logs. The Gota Canal runs from Sjötorp on Lake Vänern, through to Mem on the Baltic Sea. From Mem, Stockholm is about three days away by various routes. The 190 km Göta Canal was built between 1810 and 1832 by a total of 58,000 Swedish soldiers who dug 87km of the Canal by hand! There are fifty-eight locks and innumerable bridges along the way. The Göta Canal is primarily used by leisure boats. We had chosen the west to east route recommended in the pilot guide although, judging by the number of boats seen along the way, the east to west route actually seemed more popular. There were a lot of Danish and German boats, a few from the U.K. and a few from Poland. We only saw one U.S. boat and no other Canadian boats.

Each lock had a pretty lockkeeper’s cottage alongside.

What we hadn’t realized and luckily found out in time is that the sailing season comes to an end in Sweden around mid-August when the kids go back to school. The ramification for us was that the Göta Canal would be effectively closing on August 17 when all its university student staff left. After this date, you have to pre-book a passage and you are escorted through in a flotilla. The price also doubles! So, we had a time constraint which luckily we were able to meet and came out at Mem on the Baltic on the very last day possible, good timing for once.

Speaking of price, we started to call it the ‘Gotcha’ canal after a while because it was so expensive. For our small boat, the transit charge was 4400 SEK (around $900 CAD). This is more than the Panama Canal charges for a transit. To be fair, this does include up to five nights free berthing with showers/laundry etc. at each of 21 marinas along the route, but, the reality is you probably wouldn’t want to stay more than a night at each anyway and whether you are passing through in six nights, or, 106, the price is still the same. If you consider the time, effort and diesel involved in going around the long way though, it’s probably worth the price.

So, we were off. We took our time and planned for one week on the Tröllhatte system and one week on the Göta system. Leaving Göteborg, we travelled up the river to the first lock. There was a two knot adverse current, thus, we could only make three knots over the ground. It was a long day. We got to the first lock just as the downpour started. We weren’t sure of the procedure. There was a waiting pontoon, but, the book said go right up to the lock and wait otherwise they aren’t sure that you want to go through. So we did and we waited, and waited. There was no white flashing acknowledgement light as there should have been. There were no other boats in sight. We started to wonder whether the lock was closed. We called on the VHF. Nobody answered. We called again. After forty-five minutes we weren’t sure what to do. We were in a very narrow channel right in front of the lock. We started to get nervous about maybe being in the wrong place and if a big ship (we had seen some fully loaded with logs earlier) came along we’d have a real problem. So, we thought we’d go back to the waiting pontoon. The rain was pouring down, I was on the helm and couldn’t see beyond my glasses. We went alongside the pontoon at the end. A fender decided to pop up horizontally at that moment and it got caught between two planks and jammed solid! The boat came to a screeching halt and the stanchion the fender was attached to just about came out of the boat and bent right over. Then, the lock bells start ringing and the white light back at the lock gates starts flashing, the gates were now going to open. We got the feeling the lockkeepers watching via camera were having some fun with us. We managed to get the fender off and rushed for the gates. We got through only to see that there was a very small pool on the other side with another waiting pontoon with a motor boat sitting right in the middle of it. We had already overshot the pontoon and needed to turn around. As we pulled alongside this second waiting pontoon we didn’t notice that there was a steel cable sitting about two inches below the surface of the water marking a no-go area at the end of the pontoon. We had to go near the end because the motorboat was taking up the whole middle of the dock. To make a long story short, G yelled in time and I was able to reverse off the cable, luckily. This wasn’t an auspicious start. This first lock took 2-1/2 hours to get through and we were drenched and exhausted, only 57 more to go, this was going to be ‘fun’.

The Tröllhatte locks are large and commercial and different from the Göta locks. They have bollards and ladders which are inset into the walls and you need to continually move your lines as you’re ascending. Going into the lock it’s important to position yourself correctly between a line of bollards and/or a ladder. The instructions all said to use both a bow and a stern line, which we tried to do. On our boat, though, with a canoe stern we have two ‘pointy ends’ and when the bow is against the wall the stern is away from the wall and vice-versa and you can’t work the lines. After one of our best and longest spring lines got jammed up in a ladder and had to be abandoned, it soon became apparent we needed a new technique. We found one line amidships was the best for us with the other person fending off bow and stern, as necessary, with the boat hook. After getting to the top of the series of locks we were in, we went back to try and retrieve our line and somebody had already taken it. We were beginning to wonder if we’d get to the other end with the boat still intact.

a view of the Göta canal

there were many bridges that needed to be opened, both large and small

As our experience and techniques improved, it did get better, but, I wouldn’t say ‘locking through’ is one my favourite activities. There are a lot of stressors, packing into the locks with other boats trying not to do any damage to your own boat or others, different lock configurations, constant steering, a lot of waiting for bridges/locks to open etc. We had a few other mishaps as well:

1) we went lightly aground three times trying to stay out of the way of other passenger boats

this photo was taken just before we went aground in front of the small dock in the picture while trying to stay out of the way of the passenger ship, Juno

2) we also went aground once after the lockkeeper told us we had to pass a passenger ship starboard-to-starboard, as they were coming out of a lock, so they could have the deeper water. This also entailed us having to ‘reverse’ down the canal a bit. Our full-keeled boat only does reverse on its own terms i.e. it goes whichever way it feels like at the moment and although we have tried to analyze it, there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason as to which way it chooses to go. This time, it didn’t go the way we wanted it to, so we had to do a 360 degree turn and go forward and then turn again. Our full-keeled boat has great attributes for ocean and coastal sailing, but, canal sailing and marina manoeuvring are another matter.

2) all our fender covers were ripped off and we ended up with a very long, deep, scratch on the hull on the port side, we still don’t know where or how we got that

3) we had our first experience of stern mooring to a buoy which sort of went ok and mooring from the boat to a very short pontoon which eventually went ok after three passes (it was pouring rain again and very windy)

4) approaching a lock we clipped some overhead branches, luckily, no damage except a few acorns on deck

5) we had a water leak develop on one of the engine hoses, luckily Glenn was able to shorten it a bit and reclamp

6) the day after the water leak, actually the very last day on the canal and just before the very last lock, our fan belt shredded. We were in a very narrow, buoyed part of the canal, so, drifted as far as we could, dropped a stern anchor and then the bow anchor. Glenn had the fan belt changed (we had spares) in twenty minutes flat and we were congratulating ourselves on a job well-done. We hadn’t seen any boats in the meantime. We pulled up the anchors, but, couldn’t get the stern anchor up as it was stuck fast. As we’re tugging away, we look up to see the largest of the passenger vessels, Symfoni, approaching us down the narrow channel. We got over as far as we could. When the ship got to us, I waved it ahead and they slowly crept past, with all the passengers giving us a good look and the captain and crew staring daggers. They must have thought, what idiots, these Canadians, to be anchored in the Canal, which is strictly forbidden except in emergency. Of course, they didn’t know the whole story and it was an emergency. We couldn’t get the anchor up and actually had to abandon it. Another sacrifice made to the ‘Gotcha’ Canal.

Söderköping was an interesting town to visit along the canal. This is a 500 year old bell tower

Söderköping was also home to this whimsical sculpture, it is called ‘River Crossing’ and there was actually another ½ to it, with bunnies diving off, on the other side of the canal.

We heaved a sigh of relief as we left Mem and got out into open water again. Stockholm was only about three days away, via the Södertälje Canal (another canal, but, only one lock). We had planned a two-week stay there so we could get mail sent, provision, buy charts etc. as well as do some sightseeing in a city I’d long wanted to visit.

The trip to Stockholm was uneventful and quite scenic as we wove our way through the archipelago. We anchored out for two nights and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I hadn’t purchased charts for this portion of the trip as I had read the Swedish charts are best and they are the ones that you should have. So, I thought I’d just buy them when we got here. Not so. We checked every chandlery between Götenberg and Mem. They all had a few odd charts, but, either didn’t carry, or, were sold-out of anything relevant that we needed. I was only able to purchase one chart for the middle of the trip. We weren’t going to be in any one place long enough to order charts, so, we kept going. When we got to Mem, we found ourselves without any paper charts to get to Stockholm. We had our electronic charts, of course. With a lot of effort, I had used these to plot the route on PC-Planner on our laptop and it was now in the chartplotter, but, particularly for the Stockholm entrance, I wasn’t sure I had us going through the right channel and under the right bridges. Against my better judgement and everything I’ve been taught, we had no choice but to proceed without paper charts. As we were going to be in the archipelago, at worst, if the electronics failed, we could just pull over and stop, it’s not like we’d be lost at sea or anything.

The trip went fine and now I’m sorely tempted to cut back a bit on the paper charts we carry, maybe just carry the essential small-scale charts for route planning and leave the large-scale details to the chartplotter. Supply isn’t the only issue, it’s cost as well. I hadn’t really factored in the cost of charts (and diesel) in our budget. For Norway alone, the chart cost was over $3,000. If you want to keep moving, you need more charts all the time and you only use them once. It’s a real dilemma and I don’t know what the answer is.

Arriving in Stockholm and seeing the classic view of Gamla Stan (Old Town) from the water was thrilling. We enjoyed Stockholm a lot, it is very beautiful with its water/island setting and many parks juxtaposed against the backdrop of the old, elegant buildings. However, it is a very large city (maybe as big as Toronto) and has the usual traffic and road construction issues although the bike lanes everywhere were fantastic. The number of tourists was also overwhelming in places, great groups of them all milling about. I guess we’re included in that description. The harbour is very busy with boats of all sizes, types and description plying the waters. We were amazed to see the number of ‘antique’ boats still in service here as ‘tripper’ boats and the number of steam vessels still operational. The pretty sidewalk cafes were very enticing and a visit to the Ostermalm Saluhall (I think this translates to ‘food hall’) was a lot of fun, eyeing all the gourmet delicacies on display (and sampling a few as well).

one of the many lovely cafes in Stockholm

this is the entry gate into Gamla Stan

We were disappointed in the Wasahamnen marina in Stockholm. There are only two marinas close to downtown and this was supposed to be the better of the two. It’s very expensive, the most we have ever paid anywhere, 300 SEK (about $48) a night. For that price we expected a lot, but, there is a very large swell, things are rundown, the electricity went off, the showers are mildewed and they informed us they’d be unable to accept any mail package arriving for us. This is a service that most marinas provide for international boats, but, not this one. The location however, was excellent for the most part and we could walk downtown in about ½ hour. It was adjacent to an amusement park as well, but, eventually you did get used to the constant screaming of kids on rides. We were also directly adjacent to the Vasa Museum, the highlight of our visit.

For those of you not familiar with it, the Vasa is a warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. The ship was commissioned by the King and it was decorated accordingly, it is an absolutely stunning piece of carving work. Similar to the English ‘Mary Rose’, the problem seems to have been the hull not being deep and wide enough to carry enough ballast and also the lower gun ports were too close to the water line. The Vasa only moved about 1500 metres before a slight gust of wind basically blew it over and down it went, with fifty-five people drowned. It was found and raised in 1961, almost entirely intact due to the brackish Baltic water which preserved the wood. We usually go through museums quickly, but, we spent over two hours in this one, it was amazing.

This is the stern view of a scale model of the Vasa and shows how it was painted when it was new.

This is the stern view of the real Vasa. Unfortunately, all my other pictures were too dark to see well.

As I mentioned earlier, we will be leaving Stockholm a little earlier than planned, but, this will give us time to make a few more stops in the Stockholm archipelago on the way out. We also plan to visit Gotland (a large island off the coast) before we leave Sweden. Next stop, Germany and the Kiel Canal (another Canal!).

Another whimsical creation, seen on the sidewalk in Stockholm, it’s called ‘Rag and Bone’