This is "Onbekommerd"!

Sunday, June 30, 2013

The locks in the Göta canal

We have now passed 18 of the 58 locks in the Göta canal, so we thought it is time to say a few words about them.
The canal seems to be a bit infamous for it's locks. When you look it up on Wikipedia, you'll see that it is nicknamed 'the divorce ditch' as locking is supposed to lead to heated arguments (and worse) between crew members.
Now we have passed numerous locks before coming here and we wondered what the problem was. Well, the unusual thing is that, when locking 'up', you cannot reach anything in the lock to tie up on. The only solution is to put a crew member ashore just before the lock, who then walks up the steps or slope next to the lock, holding the ropes, whilst another crew member drives the boat into the lock. That's unusual, but not really all that complicated. The next thing is that the water comes into the lock at quite a force, making it imperative that you keep the front line very tight.
As said above, we have now passed 18 locks, having Sean and Nikola with us has been a great help. Tomorrow, they leave us to return to London. Fortunately there is only ONE more 'up' lock to go and it has a lift of only 20cm as opposed between 2.5 and 2.9 m so far. So it should be a piece of cake. After that, we get 39 'down' locks, which is much easier. Needless to say it has really been quite straightforward, posed no problems and the canal has not lived up to its reputation, the relationships of us as well as Sean and Nikola still being intact!

Many of these locks are 'single chamber' ones, but we have had one flight of three stepped locks and a few 'double' ones. We are still going to have a set of 5 and the famous set of 7, but that is quite a bit later.
One thing we had not expected is that it is still so quiet in the canal! Of the 18 locks, we have been alone in 16 and had one companion in the other two.
The scenery is very nice, the weather has been good, we are having a great time!
Here are some pictures:





Location:Kanalvägen,Töreboda,Sweden

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Most Northerly point. And into the Göta Kanal!

After leaving Mariestad and just before reaching Sjötorp, we reached the most northerly point of our voyage this year: 58 degrees, 50.63 minutes.
Soon afterwards we entered the first of the 58 locks at the Göta canal. This is looking back from there:






Just before leaving the lock, we paid the canal fees, which pay for all the locks plus all the facilities (harbours, showers, washing machines etc) during the canal trip. There are a total of 20 harbours and you can stay up to 5 nights in each of them. But as sometimes the harbours are a few KM apart, it's unlikely that one does that (and anyway, the canal is not even open for 100 days a year).

We did 8 locks today with Sean and I handling the boat and 'the ladies' doing the shore work:





We tied up in Lyrestad, a sleepy village on the canal. It was a very nice trip through a sort of 'forestry' landscape. No doubt we are going to enjoy the canal!

Read more about it on www.gotakanal.se. Also in English!

Location:Centralgatan,Lyrestad,Sweden

Friday, June 28, 2013

Off duty day

The Läckö to Mariestad stretch was nice, first a bit of open water and then some relatively narrow channels although nothing as scenic as yesterday's last hour through the skärgård.
Mariestad was 'advertised' as having an especially nice cathedral and an interesting collection of old wooden houses, but unfortunately it disappointed on both counts. The cathedral is ok but not special (we think) and the wooden houses are few in number. All in all not bad, but not the excitement we were expecting. The view from the boat (at 10 pm!) is not bad though:





Today Lyn and I were 'off duty' from cooking. Sean and Nikola prepared us a very nice 'chicken a la king':





Tomorrow we will enter the Göta Canal, the 'official aim' of our trip. Just over an hour to Sjöterp, where we buy the 'canal ticket' which pays for 58 locks and the 20 guest harbours. Then we get a series of 8 locks to start with. More about that tomorrow!

Location:Pirgatan,Mariestad,Sweden

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Läckö slott

What a difference a day can make!

We left at 6am to catch the railway bridge before the rush hour started. The wait was about 15 minutes and we were let through:





Once on the lake proper the wind was very light, yesterday's waves had disappeared and we had a quiet 4 hour trip, which included a nice breakfast and coffee. Then we entered the 'skärgård' at Naven light:





The trip through literally hundreds of little islands (there are actually 22000 islands in and around Lake Vänern) is very scenic and interesting. At some stage, the passage is only 7m wide:








Then you get to the imposing Läckö slott (castle):





And from the air:





Arend and Birgitta left us here, we enjoyed having them on board, one night was not long enough! But our son Sean and his girlfriend Nikola arrived on the next bus, they will stay with us until Monday. We went on a guided tour of the castle, from where you can see the small, idyllic marina with 'Onbekommerd' in it:





Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Wind, waves and rain on Lake Vänern

Our South African / Swedish friends Arend and Birgitta came on board this morning. By 10am we were on our way for the long trip across Lake Vänern to Läckö. The weather was the worst we have had it in quite some time, not only overcast with regular rain but also the wind was more than the predicted 10 knots. After hacking into increasing waves for well over an hour and the conditions becoming increasingly less comfortable we decided to turn back rather than continuing for another 3 hours. Remember that this is a BIG lake.
So we are now in Vänersborg. Had a nice meal and some wine:





Tomorrow the forecast is for light winds and also from behind, so we are going to have an early (6 am) start, again for Läckö and its castle!

Monday, June 24, 2013

A quiet day in Trollhättan

We stayed put today. Every now and then an extra rest day is good. And the guest harbour here is small but with excellent facilities, brand new toilets and showers as well as a washing machine and dryer all included in the really very reasonable daily harbour fee of SEK 100.

We did a little bit of shopping and Lyn managed to completely catch up on her work (which had suffered under the 'Great Trek North' of the last few weeks.

Tomorrow, we 'll take the last big lock and go to Vänersborg, just a few miles 'up the road'. On Wednesday we expect South African / Swedish friends on board for the two day trip across Lake Vänern. We look forward to that!





Sunday, June 23, 2013

A walk around the Trollhätte falls and locks

For centuries, Trollhätte has been a difficult point for transport from the coast to and from inland Sweden. The river (Göta Älv) comes down at this point over a 32m waterfall. In 1795, work was started on a series of stepped locks to enable ships to reach Lake Vänern, the biggest lake in Sweden and - after the two big Russian lakes, which are more like seas - the third biggest lake in Europe.
Clearly, ships have been getting bigger all the time and so has technology to build locks into rock and thus new locks were constructed in 1844 and again in 1916, the current locks. These three sets of locks are now still clearly visible next to one another.
The 1800 locks:

The 1844 locks:

And two pictures of the 1916 locks in operation:


This shows the yacht rising 8 m. There are 4 lock chambers, making for a total of 32m.
The waterfall which is bypassed by the locks is no longer there. It is now diverted into Sweden's two oldest hydro power stations. But sometimes, the falls are 'switched on' for the tourists. In June this happens on Saturdays at 3pm (and not on Sundays as one of our books suggested). So we missed it and only saw the dry bed:

In July, the falls operate daily (it appears many things in Sweden happen in July only).
All in all, it was a very interesting afternoon!

Saturday, June 22, 2013

New experiences

As we moved up the Trollhätte canal, the landscape changed and became quite scenic. Lots of trees on the hills along the canal and red-painted summer cabins everywhere.

Then we arrived at the Trollhätte lock set. This is a set of four locks, the first three directly interconnected (i.e. you move from one lock chamber straight into the next one) and the fourth one just 100 m further. Each step lifts you 8m, so at the end you are 32m higher! Quite something, our first stepped lock. Each chamber is 90 by 14 m, so that relatively big cargo ships can also go up the river.
Here is one entering the first step:

This is from Onbekommerd in the second step, looking back:

All this comes at a cost, the lock fees are just over €100!
After the locks you get to the town of Trollhätte. We decided to stay here for a few nights as there are some interesting things to see. One is the Los waterfall, which is now diverted to a hydro electric power station but is rumoured to be 'switched' to the old course on Sunday at 3pm. That's tomorrow. But it could also be only on Saturdays. No-one knows for sure, we'll have to find out tomorrow. In addition to that, we - as users of the lock - are a main attraction: lots of people come and watch the proceedings. There is more, we'll report tomorrow.
Another first occurred when we tied up today: the Swedes use a system where you tie the front of the boat to the jetty and the back to a floating mooring (the Dutch word is 'hekboei'). We knew about this and prepared for it by acquiring a special hook last year in a marina in Germany.
Here is the result:

It is very easy and is the most used system in Sweden so we'll use it often in the weeks to come.

Location:Trollhätte

Friday, June 21, 2013

Lilla Edet

The plan was to do only a relatively short stretch to Kungsalv, but the 'Gästhamn' there consisted of one tiny jetty in rather dilapidated surroundings. So we decided to give that a miss, which was a pity as the fortress looked impressive.
Instead we continued up the Göta Ålv, against about a knot of current. In the beginning there is quite a bit of industry on the banks and really run down at that! But later it gets more rural and quite pleasant. Probably because of the midsummer celebrations (we certainly have not got our mind around HOW midsummer is celebrated), it was exceptionally quiet on the river.

There was this passenger boat:





But for the rest a ribbon of yellow markers to starboard and white ones to port:




A very unusual way to mark a channel, with poles either on the shore or in the water with gantries sticking out above the channel. Also unusual colours as the international convention is green to starboard and red to port when going upstream. And each of the literally hundreds of these markers we saw today has a light that is always on. Not very 'green'.

We also passed this typical Swedish sight:



Yes, an IKEA store behind those trees.... ;-)

We went through the first lock at Lilla Edet (up about 6.5 metres) and are now tied up in the guest harbour just outside the lock. Just in time, as shortly afterwards there was a torrential downpour.

Location:Göta älvbron,Lilla Edet,Sweden

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Tourists

Yesterday, we bought ourselves 'City Cards'. These (like in many other cities) give you use of public transport, sightseeing and museums. We have bought them several times in the past and always found them a good way to start to get to know a new city. So too in Göteborg. The history of the city is quite interesting, founded by King Gustav Adolf (here he shows that 'this is where the city shall be built')





The idea was that Göteborg would be the centre of the Swedish Colonial Empire, but it turned out that the Swedes were not great at colonising in the long run and it took a long time after that before the city came into its own, these days as the main import and export facility of Scandinavia.
In the 19th century, a quarter of the Swedish population emigrated to 'America', looking for a better future. The building they departed from is now a Casino: still a gamble...





Interestingly, it appears now that immigration rather than emigration is a priority now, looking at the very cosmopolitan face of this city.

All in all, we have enjoyed our stay here in the Lille Bommen harbour (which is expensive but extremely well situated and with very nice facilities).

Tomorrow, we plan to move to Kungsalv, about 15 KM up the river (called Göta Ålv), where we hope to spend the night next to the castle.

Location:Göteborg

Short message

As the developer of Blogpress has responded to my request (and probably of many others!) and restored the previous version of the editor, I have now been able to add pictures to the post about our Læsø to Göteborg trip.
Enjoy!



Location:,Gothenburg,Sweden

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Tourists

We have been playing tourist today.

After we got the Internet sorted our (out of 6 countries where we have got Internet with the iPads, Sweden ties with the UK for first place in ease of setting this up), we got 'City Cards' and did some sightseeing. Göteborg is ok, but not full of great architecture or anything else of enormous interest. We'll do a few more things tomorrow, provision the boat and move up the river on Friday. Another reason for that is that Friday is the 21st, which is 'midsummer', a day on which all of Scandinavia celebrates and goes beserk. Next to the marina they are building a big stage, which will mean lots of noise plus drunken youngsters into the next morning.... Better get out of the big city into quieter surroundings to celebrate this occasion! Call us old..... That's OK!



So probably only a next update on Friday night!





Location:Christina Nilssons gata,Gothenburg,Sweden

From Læsø to Göteborg

The 'Blogpress' developer has kindly restored the previous version of the app.

See the post with pictures below.


The trip from Læsø (still in Denmark) to Göteborg (very much in Sweden) consists of two very different parts.

First there is the crossing of the Kattegat. This is (for us) a 4 hour stretch during which you loose sight of land as Læsø is very low and disappears behind the horizon before the first sighting of Sweden takes place. About halfway you cross 'shipping route T', the main route to and from the Baltic for the big ships. It's quite busy and requires quite a bit of planning to cross.


Before you see the 'Trubaduren' lighthouse, which marks the end of this stretch, you already see some of the higher islands off the coast near Göteborg.

The next stretch is the approach to Göteborg itself, two hours to the marina. This is interesting, as you enter the 'skärgård'. I don't think there is a good English translation for that word, the official 'archipalago' is way to general. The Dutch word is 'scherenkust' and it is a collection of thousands of islands, mostly very small, some with a little house on it and some with navigational lights. The chart of the approach to Göteborg looks like this:



And this is a rather pretty 'skär':


The harbour itself is not too impressive, quite a few ferries to and from Denmark and Germany plus local harbour ferries and tourist boats. One cruise liner and one container ship.

After 6 hours exactly, we tied up in the Lille Bommen marina, right in the city centre.


And changed the courtesy flag:


It was a nice trip, a bit of swell from abeam in the beginning and later reasonably flat. No water on deck, so no salt to clean off!

We'll be here for a day or two, will let you know about our plans in a later post!




Location:Lilla Bommen Göteborg

Monday, June 17, 2013

Østerby, Læsø

The forecast was correct and by 10am the wind started dropping. By then we had done some shopping and I even had a haircut! After taking in some diesel, we left at 11:20. At first there was about 12 knots of wind but as it was from behind it was easy going. After an hour or two, Læsø came in sight, it is pretty low so you can't see it from far away. The wind and waves also decreased as per plan and at 3 pm we were tied up in Østerby, the Eastern harbour of Læsø. A nice an quiet place. Quite a few visitors in the harbour, apart from the usual Danes, Swedes and Germans there is even a Swiss-flagged yacht. So with us as the only Dutch entry that makes 5 nationalities.





  1. 1. It seems likely that we'll do the Sweden crossing tomorrow. The forecast is good for it. It will be 22 miles (say 4 hours) to the Trubaduren lighthouse and then another 11 miles (all nautical miles of 1852 m of course) to the Lille Bommen guest harbour in Gothenborg. It does not seem likely that we will arrive there in time to get Swedish SIM cards for the iPads. So, unless we have nice WiFi tomorrow night, there won't be a blog update tomorrow. But as 'Lille Bommen' appears to be very near the centre of the city, it should be possible to get connected the next day.



  2. 3. Sorry, no pictures tonight. The Internet speed will not allow it!



  3. 5. sorry again. Blog press has delivered a totally useless 'update' and I can't control all these bullet points!





Location:Smedievejen,Østerby Havn,Denmark

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Swinging Sæby

We are still in Sæby. We woke up around 5am and there was little wind. But the forecasts did not agree (we use two different ones) and one of them predicted more than we like. So we took the conservative approach and went back to bed. In the end the wind arrived quite late and we may have missed a 'gap', but that's now in the past and we are comfortable with it!

We did get something in return though. On our return from the supermarket, around 11am, we were surprised by the Sæby Big Band playing in the town square! It sounded really good too. Here they are:





Not a great picture, sorry.

And as we continued our way to the boat, a jazz band was playing at a local pub, in the beer garden:





They were really good too, especially the clarinettist.

So Sæby is a really musical place, it seems!

As the afternoon progressed, several boats came in to seek shelter from an impending storm. That arrived with thunder, lighting, rain and wind, but its now gone.

No idea yet when we will start our next leg, we are taking it day by day now. But all is well on board!

Location:Christian Rhuusvej,Saeby,Denmark

Friday, June 14, 2013

A walk through Sæby

We are still in Sæby, the wind is still to strong for the next two 'big crossings'. There is a rather small chance that we can go to Læsø tomorrow, but more likely it will be Tuesday. But that's ok, we are comfortable here, do a lot of work, reading etc. and Sæby is quite interesting, dating from as far back as 1400.

We took a walk today, first to the 'double sided statue' at the harbour entrance:





No, that is not old! A mermaid on the one side and a lady (Virgin Mary?) on the other.

Next the church from the 15th century, originally part of a large monastery. Also a good reference point when coming in from sea (keep the church between the harbour moles at 260 degrees, the pilot says).






Inside, there are nice frescoes:





And ships carved into the choir stalls by school children in the 1700's:





In lots of places in Denmark you see these plants coming what appears straight out of the pavement:





They look like weeds but they are not. The people living in the houses against which they grow take great care of them!

More later, either from Sæby or from Læsø.

Location:Strandalle,Saeby,Denmark

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Sæby, the last stop on the Danish mainland....

.... but then it could be a long one!
We did the 27 nmiles from Hals to Sæby in a comfortable 4 hours. With a following light wind and ditto current things were easy. Unfortunately we are basically a 'day too late' as far as the weather is concerned. There is a weather system arriving (as I write this, actually), with winds of over 30 knots (that's a good 7 Beaufort), which is 'stay in the harbour' weather for us, especially on open water. And the Kattegat is VERY open. Now if this weather had only arrived tomorrow night, we would probably have made for Læsø (the island between here and Sweden) today and done the crossing tomorrow. But it's no problem, we are safe and comfortable here with plenty to do for 'work and play' (the piano for Lyn for the latter). The forecasts seem to agree that the winds will stay until at least Sunday, what happens after that is unclear. So blog posts will probably not be daily as there won't be a lot to report. But we'll keep you informed when we plan to leave.
Here is a picture of Sæby from the air. We had a quick look around and its quite pretty. We'll post some of our own pictures later.



By the way, this is quite far North: 57 degrees and 20 minutes!

Location:Haulundsvej,Saeby,Denmark

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Hals, at the entrance to the Limfjord

Another 30+ miler brought us to Hals today. Light winds, easy conditions.
Hals lies at the entrance to the Limfjord, which runs straight through Jutland all the way to the North Sea on the West Coast. There are a few towns on this fjord, the major one being Aalborg and that means that there is a (small) amount of relatively big commercial shipping going into the fjord. As the entrance is not all that wide (well, it is wide for us but not for the 'big guns') there are lots of navigational aids like this lighthouse:





And this set of lights, one red and one green, has a third one (white, not shown in the picture) behind it. If you - from a distance - keep the white between the red and the green, you are in the channel!





We find Hals quite a convenient place: there is a clubhouse with nice facilities that you can use as a 'guest'. And there is a very good supermarket within 100m from the harbour! Danish supermarkets are excellent from an organisation, a presentation and a cleanliness point of view so we don't mind shopping there. Even so, we try to organise ourselves in such a way that we shop once in four days.

Location:Hals

Monday, June 10, 2013

Grenaa, Bønnerup and 'Adventure is relative'.

We had a long day, 40 nmiles, planned, so we left early and were out of Ebeltoft harbour by 7:30. The wind was as predicted, around 10 knots from the North West and when we came around the corner at Øer, it seemed to pixk up a bit and our course was almost straight into the waves. No problem, but just too lively to make coffee en route and also each wave slows you down a bit so our average speed was around 5.5 knots instead of the usual 6+. Around noon, over halfway the planned trip to Bønnerup, we passed Grenaa. As the wind was beginning to drop and the sea would soon do the same, we decided to head into Grenaa, buy some fresh rolls, have lunch and then carry on in more comfortable conditions. The only snag was that the harbour is far from the town and three is no 'kiosk' where you can buy rolls. Fortunately an extremely friendly man in the ice cream shop (Denmark has an ice cream shop almost on every street corner), offered to sell me some rolls which he had in his freezer. They were superb rolls too! By 3 we were on our way again and the conditions were much kinder. We passed some nice 'klints' (cliffs) on the way:





The harbour entrance of Bønnerup is rather spoiled by 7 huge windmills:





Denmark is full of these inefficient things (as I look at them at the moment they are standing still....) which explains the high electricity tariffs. Someone has to pay for this....

Today we remarked that we were quite adventurous, being so far North, in the big 'Kattegat', getting our first taste of the sea swell. And there are not a lot of other pleasure craft on the water, we saw only a handful today. But when - after a little walk around the harbour - we got back to the boat an oldish sailing yacht was tying up in front of us. We obviously helped to take a line and of course we got chatting. It transpires these people (a couple in their 60's plus their son in his 30's) are on their way to Iceland! That is 1000 miles away to the east coast and then another 300 to where the couple lives. The son lives in Denmark with his family and is helping his parents to take the boat - which they bought in Denmark last year - home. So we are not that adventurous after all.....

Tomorrow should see little wind and a trip to Hals, at the entrance to the Limfjord. The wind has already disappeared and the harbour looks quite 'rustic'





Location:Vestre Mole,Bønnerup Strand,Denmark

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Endelave and Ebeltoft

Yesterday, we had no Internet signal, so a 'double post' today. Strangely, sometimes there is a perfectly strong 3G signal when we are 'at sea', miles from land and then on an (albeit small) island, there is zilch!

Anyway, after we put in some diesel at Fredericia, we were 'en route' at 7:30. There was a force 4 wind blowing and as it was 'from the side', the waves made us roll a bit but nothing to hectic and we arrived on the small island of Endelave early enough to have coffee. These islands are very nice: the harbours are small and there are few or no resident yachts, just visitors. This makes for a nice and lively atmosphere, in contrast to the marinas on the mainland which are often full of deserted boats. Endelave is a typical Danish island, with low thatched houses and a white church:









What was unusual was a deer in the churchyard. Hope you can see him in this picture:





This morning was - as predicted - overcast and windy, so we settled down to some work on the laptops until 11:30 when - again as predicted - the wind dropped. We had a relatively long (32 nmiles) trip planned to Ebeltoft. But we were a bit tempted to stop at Tunø, as it looked a very nice island as well:





Next we crossed the fast ferry route between Sælland and Jutland. When you see these ferries approaching, the rule is to just carry on. They are way too fast for you to take any avoiding action, so they will avoid you. Still, when you meet two together....





We got to Ebeltoft around 4:30. A picturesque small town, again quite typical Danish with wood framed houses:





We had a request to post a map to show where we are. Here it is. The drawn line shows the route in the Baltic to date. The broken line is the plan for the next few days. We have been very fortunate with the weather so far and this should continue for three more days. Then, unfortunately, a weather front will hit, making it impossible to cross to Sweden. This front is now predicted a day earlier than originally. So we'll sit it out for a few days in either Sæby or on Læsø. The current forecast does not go far enough to see the next gap.





Location:Syddjurs,Denmark