We have just spent a night at the beautiful island Broken, in a little harbour maintained by the Nyköping sailing club. We have to admit that we mostly chose this island because of its funny name and the promise made by the harbour guide that there would be a sauna there. A promise that most times so far has been Broken – but our optimism is luckily still alive. And indeed – this time there was a sauna with the most fantastic view! The sign at the harbour declaring this little island the island of happiness was definitely not all wrong 🙂
In the sauna we fell into conversation with four Swedish sailors. They are all heading towards Denmark, and since this is the route we have been going along the last 7 weeks or so, we had a lot of tips and stories to share. As the sailors were from around Stockholm, we found out that also they could give us a lot of helpful tips and places to visit in the Stockholm archipelago. This morning we met up with our maps and note books on one of their boats to exchange lists of harbours and islands that are worth a visit – a very nice exchange, after which we all set sails and headed on towards the north and south.
Exchanges like these are so nice, and they seem to get more and more now that June is upon us and more sailors are getting out on the water. We really enjoy the life in the harbours and seeing more boats around us when sailing. It seems like the perfect time of the year right now – enough sailors for it to be really nice, but not too many for it to be stressful. Harbours are still quite empty and we haven’t had to squeeze in anywhere yet.
Luckily we have also met some sailors that are going the same way as us – for example our new friends from sailing yacht Merlin. We met them the first time in Gudhjem back on Bornholm, and have since been following almost exactly the same route, although we often have a little delay between us.
After our friend Alex left the crew in Västervik to head back to Germany, we decided to catch up with Merlin and found them in a scenic anchorage by Ålö. We decided to stay some days, enjoying the great surroundings. The rocky islands are so steep that you can jump right into the water from the cliffs at many spots, and everywhere in the forests you can find perfectly dry wood to make bonfires with. At night you hear the birds from all around you in the forests, and since many anchorages here are super well protected, to boat lies very calmly in these nice surroundings. The only thing we would like to complain about is the amount of mosquitoes – although Paul seems immune to bites, so it’s only really Alex and me complaining.
The crew from Merlin had once again already gotten a little ahead of us after the days by Ålö, but luckily we caught up with them again on the little island of Hävringe, which reminded us a lot of a miniature version of Christiansø. After a long sailing day, we arrived at the tiny harbour around 9 pm and were invited over to Merlin for leftover risotto – we felt like small hungry birds coming home to the nest. Thank you so much for the nice time together 🙂 Now we are going each our way around Stockholm, but we hope to catch up with them again in the archipelago on the other side!
By the way, if someone is interested in reading a sailing blog from the west coast of Sweden, another sailing friend that we met back in Skanör has a nice blog that we like to follow every week. It’s in Dutch, but the automatic translation in Chrome or elsewhere works perfectly! Twan is planning to sail to the Shetland islands and Scotland before heading back to the Netherlands 🙂
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