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June 2008 / Our First Sail (motor!) in DOVE

Posted 3 months ago

June 2008 / Our First Sail (motor!) in DOVE
Today we sailed DOVE around Skaftolandet Island leaving Ellos 0850 returning 1255, motoring the entire trip to make it easy to concentrate on navigation while learning how to use the Raymarine chartplotter and autopilot. The tiller pilot is great, steers better than I can. Its a ‘must have’ for this sensitive spade rudder boat. Yesterday I was up the mast installing some high tech lazy jacks given to us by our friends Brion and Christian. The lazy jacks are another ‘don’t leave home without’ piece of gear as the mainsail is too much to handle when it is dropped without them.The SW Swedish coast is beautiful and the small towns are all incredibly picturesque and tidy. I mean EVERY TOWN is like that, not just one tarted up tourist town. One particularly attractive larger town, Lysekil, has a beautiful little mini cathedral perched on top of the hill (see photo).The wind built over the course of the day and we were glad to enter the little passage off the Gullmarnfjord that winds behind Skaftolandet back to Ellos. The bridge there has clearance stated on the chart supposedly 16.8m and I was sure the boat’s mast was quite a bit less than that…well, until we were right under, then we both thought we were going to hit! Turns out the boat’s air draft is 15.9 without the Windex or VHF antenna! So way too close, but we made it. Luckily there is no tidal range to speak of and the bridge clearances are given for high tide. Then the narrow winding well marked channel’s depth was hard to know from the chart so we nosed ahead until a passing sailboat confirmed we would have at least 4m all the way through and it was. Today was a good taste of the navigation challenges to come. The wind has picked up and clouds coming and tonight we are being blown hard on the dock but happy to be back in the HR marina.The new boat is great, HR really builds an amazing boat, and we are so happy to be here. How can Sweden be this beautiful?! The little houses along the shoreline with their boats nosed up to the shore, happy families picnicing and swimming. Sweden: land of station wagons, small red and yellow wooden houses, a million rocks and islets and many fine boats. Full Story »

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