It’s been a little quiet in here lately – mostly caused by the fact that we had Paul’s parents visiting us on the boat in the Åland islands and the subsequent trip home to Denmark to celebrate Liv’s mother and her 60th birthday. It has been such a nice time surrounded by family!
But another reason for the quietness in here is that we have spent most of our non-sailing-time trying to figure out how to go home, and where we want this home to be. Of course Désirée’s home is Bogense Marina on Fyn in Denmark, so this is where we will sail at some point – but the route options to get there are quite diverse! And in addition there is the big discussion and decision of where to settle down after these months of living on the water and which jobs to apply for etc etc. The end of summer is sadly getting closer and closer and we by now find ourselves not being able to procrastinate these talks anymore (although we have been very succesfull with doing that until now! :)).
For a long time we were planning to go through the Göta canal, a partly artificial canal taking you from the east coast through the big lakes Vättern and Vänern to Göteborg on the west coast. But sadly it is not high-season on the canal anymore, which means that it is only possible to go through the long stretch from the entrance at Söderköping to the exit at Vänern in only 5 days. This stretch includes 58 locks, which means an average of more than 11 locks a day. This leaves almost no time for taking in the surroundings, which we are kind of sad about. And even though the price is also lower outside of the high-season, it would still be a heavy post in our budget.
Other sailors we have met have told us that one can spend many weeks exploring the cities around the canal and the big lakes on the route, so the concept of the convoys combined with the quite spicy price of passage has slowly made us quite unsure about the Göta canal plans.
So now we have brainstormed other options and are considering to go from the southernmost Stockholm archipelago to Gotland in one big stretch of about 70 nautical miles. Gotland should be super scenic, with quite different landscapes compared to the rest of the Swedish coast. We are sure that exploring this big island outside of high-season could be a really great experience!
Friday we sailed from the Ålands back to Sweden, where we have found some really beautiful natural harbours. Not the worst place to have to consider the future!
Now we are waiting for a good weather window to go to Gotland, and if it does not come within some days we might just continue south along the coast, just as on our way up here. Time will show 🙂
All the best and god vind,
Paul and Liv
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