Mixed bag

Yesterday, I ended by sort of lamenting the absence of freshly baked bread due to the early season. I was wrong! When the lady harbourmaster came around at 8:30 last night to collect the harbour fees, I commented that I was sorry that we were too early in the season for the famous fresh bread delivered to the boat (she had told me earlier that the coffee shop was still closed). Then she remarked: 'you are giving me a perfect excuse to start baking". How many rolls do you want? What good news!
This morning, this bag was delivered to the boat:





Note the weather forecast and especially the phrase "mostly good visibility"......

At 9:30 we set off on our trip to Kökar. This is a group of islands at the extreme south eastern end of the Åland archipelago. We wanted to go there last year but were prevented by unfavourable winds and our first reason to return this year was to see Kökar, which is reported to be stark, almost treeless and very different from the rest of Åland.
To get to Kökar is tricky. You navigate from mark to mark, from island to island and sometimes from rock to rock. Navigation marks sometimes look like this:





It's not difficult, with two people, two plotters and the paper chart, but it's intense concentration. Good fun, an adventure.

Some 13 miles out of Kökar, we noticed that the visibility ahead was getting worse. We could not see marks or even an island which was half a mile away, which meant we were relying on the plotters. We jointly decided that carrying on in these conditions in these waters was not good seamanship and turned around. We stopped at a place called Degerby for lunch and to look at the long term plan. The weather continues to be unstable over the next 6 to 10 days. Add to that that is is still eerily quiet everywhere (we are usually the only guests or share with maximum two others). So we have decided to give up on Kökar and look for a weather gap to return to the Swedish mainland. That may only be on Friday, looking at the forecast.
We are currently at Kastelholm, a place we visited twice last year. Nice, very sheltered and at the moment deserted. A Finnish yacht came in an hour after us, but no harbour master in sight.
So for those looking at today's funny track of Onbekommerd on MarineTraffic.com: we are fine, but we motored over 45 miles to get basically 15 miles from where we were.


'It is as it is', Lyn reminds me....

Location:Finland