Into the 'skärgård'

We are now in Figeholm, the 'entry point' of the 'skärgård', the archipelago on the east coast of Sweden. This was our first 'aim' of this year's trip, so we are pretty happy with the progress.





From here we'll work our way North, in between thousands of (mainly) very small islands, often not more than just a rock. Most of the 'open sea' work has now been done, at least for a while. Every now and then one may have to cross a bay or so, but nothing like 'looking for the land'.
Today we did the last bit of that, from Sandvik on Öland (where there was not sufficient Internet for a blogpost) back to the mainland. On the way we crossed paths with the high speed ferry from Gotland. As it is difficult to estimate what the course of a high speed vessel will be (a change of course of a few degrees makes a big difference), we called the ferry on the VHF and negotiated with the duty officer how we would cross courses. All very efficient also thanks to the AIS which gives us the call sign and name of the vessel.

We often tie onto low jetties here and Onbekommerd's bow is quite high, making it difficult to get on and off. To help with this, we followed the Swedish example and acquired a 'bow ladder':





Very smart, we think!

Ultimately, we would ,like to go to the Åland Islands this year. That is still quite a way to go and there is a special chart folio for it. As the Åland Islands are a semi autonomous part of Finland, the charts are in Finnish (but with Swedish and English notations as well, fortunately)

Location:Smedjegatan,Figeholm,Sweden