After a very pleasant, quiet evening at Furusund, we moved on today to Sandhamn once again. Airborne’s engine is fixed, so they are heading north, so we decided to meet at Sandhamn. On leaving Furusund the wind direction and strength looked promising for a sail. The wind gods saw us coming though and had other ideas. As we headed between Yxlan and Blido, the wind headed us and funneled between the islands. We stuck with it though and tacked down between the islands. We did even manage to hold the sails as we headed south, though we did have to do a couple of short tacks in quick succession to get through one tight bit of the channel. As we approached Finhamn the wind headed us and died a bit, so we diverted off to motor through Paradiset. On the way out we did bounce over an unmarked rock. It made a lot of noise, but we don’t think we have done much damage. We’ll have a proper look when the boat comes out of the water at the end of the season. It was purely careless navigation on my part as, because we were in an open bay, I had the tablet zoomed out and didn’t look properly for hazards. If I had zoomed in a bit I would have seen it straight away. They do say that it is not ‘if’ you hit a rock in the Baltic, but ‘when’, so now we have done the ‘when’.
Anyway, after Paradiset we managed to sail again (tacking of course) for a while, but had to motor the last few miles into Sandhamn. While it was quiet and we arrived, it soon built up. The good weather is bringing everyone out to play. We have stayed for a further day on Saturday as well to catch up on jobs and have a bit of a break, but the main occupation has been people watching. With helicopters shuttling people in, large ferries arriving and a fleet of jetskis (or is there a better collective noun like ‘a mid-life crisis of jetskis’), it has certainly been a lively place. With a sound system being set up as well, we aren’t expecting a quiet evening!
The sail from Furusund to Sandhamn was a total of 37.7 miles on the log in about seven and a quarter hours. For details of the track, see below: