This was the first longer cruise my
wife an I had on our then new Alacrity 19 "Discovery". I had purchased
the boat in April the same year and after a cold and snowy delivery
trip, complete with engine trouble and an extra night in a marina, we
kept her in a club slip in the north east of Stockholm.
I had been sailing quite a lot on the week-ends in the beginning of the season and now we were ready for a real cruise.
Unlike the following year we picked a good day to start our cruise, a Wednesday. Starting in the middle of the week is good, because one can avoid most of the annoying power boats who live in the inner part of the Stockholm archipelago.
The goal for this first cruise was Sandhamn, a big sailing centre on a small island in the outer parts of the archipelago. It is quite fancy and attracts a lot of rich party people from the city during the summer. Also, it's start and finish for one of Swedens biggest sail races, the Gotland runt race in June. When we visited the island, there had just been a smaller race, Sandhamnsregattan, which is for older classes of mainly wooden boats.
We left our home port at about noon. With a follwing wind for almost the whole time we made it to Vaxholm castle at 1700. Our first plan was to stop here, but the wind was so good, we decided to continue and just anchor somewhere when we got tired. We finally ended up in a moderately protected cove in Lindalssundet. There was quite some wash from passing boats, but we reckoned that this would stop during the night, which it did.
We had dinner and got to bed early. We were quite exhausted after this first long sailing day.
The next morning the weather was exactly the same as the day before. The following wind continued and we sailed on to Gällnö. This was only a short sail of about three hours, but we were still quite tired after the night and had made an early start due to increasing wash from passing traffic.
Getudden at Gällnö is a very nice cove, frequently visited by people with children because it has a sandy beach, something quite rare in the archipelago with all it's rocks. On Gällnö there is also a small shop and café about half an hours walk from the cove.
We anchored from the stern bows towards land, as it's common here. Unfortunately the anchor did not set properly the first time. Instead of motoring out again and repeat the maneoevre I decided to use the inflatable dinghy to reset the anchor. This worked very well except for the fact that the dinghy had been damaged (probably by mice) during winter storage and now had two small air leaks I did not know about. However I made it back to shore, despite a slowly deflating dinghy. I am sure it was a great sight for everybody else...
As we arrived early we had the whole afternoon to relax, swim and enjoy our vacation.
The night was cloudless and there were quite a few stars to be seen. You can see the dots in the picture actually.
One thing about the flowers. We used to have these on our first cruise in 2002, then on the old wooden folkboat, and since we have carried on the tradition. However, there are people who think that flowers onboard ship are bad luck. We did not know this then, but maybe we will be taking herbs next time just to be safe.
The next day we had to cross Kanholmsfjärden, with a bit more open water than we had encountered before. Of course the wind veered to the east and picked up somewhat, so we had to tack the rest of the way to Sandhamn.
Sandhamn has two small boat harbous, one directly in front of all the seaside restaurants and pubs and another one on a smaller island on the opposite side. As we wanted it a bit more quiet we picked the other side, Lökholmen (this means Onion Island). There were a lot of boats here, but the Alacrity being so small and shallow draught we got a spice at the innermost and most shallow part of the anchorage. Here we would stay two nights.
I had been sailing quite a lot on the week-ends in the beginning of the season and now we were ready for a real cruise.
Unlike the following year we picked a good day to start our cruise, a Wednesday. Starting in the middle of the week is good, because one can avoid most of the annoying power boats who live in the inner part of the Stockholm archipelago.
The goal for this first cruise was Sandhamn, a big sailing centre on a small island in the outer parts of the archipelago. It is quite fancy and attracts a lot of rich party people from the city during the summer. Also, it's start and finish for one of Swedens biggest sail races, the Gotland runt race in June. When we visited the island, there had just been a smaller race, Sandhamnsregattan, which is for older classes of mainly wooden boats.
We left our home port at about noon. With a follwing wind for almost the whole time we made it to Vaxholm castle at 1700. Our first plan was to stop here, but the wind was so good, we decided to continue and just anchor somewhere when we got tired. We finally ended up in a moderately protected cove in Lindalssundet. There was quite some wash from passing boats, but we reckoned that this would stop during the night, which it did.
We had dinner and got to bed early. We were quite exhausted after this first long sailing day.
The next morning the weather was exactly the same as the day before. The following wind continued and we sailed on to Gällnö. This was only a short sail of about three hours, but we were still quite tired after the night and had made an early start due to increasing wash from passing traffic.
Getudden at Gällnö is a very nice cove, frequently visited by people with children because it has a sandy beach, something quite rare in the archipelago with all it's rocks. On Gällnö there is also a small shop and café about half an hours walk from the cove.
We anchored from the stern bows towards land, as it's common here. Unfortunately the anchor did not set properly the first time. Instead of motoring out again and repeat the maneoevre I decided to use the inflatable dinghy to reset the anchor. This worked very well except for the fact that the dinghy had been damaged (probably by mice) during winter storage and now had two small air leaks I did not know about. However I made it back to shore, despite a slowly deflating dinghy. I am sure it was a great sight for everybody else...
As we arrived early we had the whole afternoon to relax, swim and enjoy our vacation.
The night was cloudless and there were quite a few stars to be seen. You can see the dots in the picture actually.
One thing about the flowers. We used to have these on our first cruise in 2002, then on the old wooden folkboat, and since we have carried on the tradition. However, there are people who think that flowers onboard ship are bad luck. We did not know this then, but maybe we will be taking herbs next time just to be safe.
The next day we had to cross Kanholmsfjärden, with a bit more open water than we had encountered before. Of course the wind veered to the east and picked up somewhat, so we had to tack the rest of the way to Sandhamn.
Sandhamn has two small boat harbous, one directly in front of all the seaside restaurants and pubs and another one on a smaller island on the opposite side. As we wanted it a bit more quiet we picked the other side, Lökholmen (this means Onion Island). There were a lot of boats here, but the Alacrity being so small and shallow draught we got a spice at the innermost and most shallow part of the anchorage. Here we would stay two nights.
Discovery is the little boat all the way in. When we arrived, the final races of Sandhamsregattan were still under way and could be watched from the rocks on the northern shore of Lökholmen.
We were very satisfied with our
cruise so far, the sail to Sandhamn had worked out without any
incidents (except for the one with the leaking dinghy) and we were
right on schedule. So we went to dinner at one of the restaurants in
Sandhamn and celebrated our success.
Continue to part 2
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