Posts In The “Destinations” Category
During the Cold War, Sweden invested heavily in defense against a possible Soviet attack. One of the more ambitious projects was the Musko Naval Base, an underground base and shipyards on the island of Musko with docks designed for submarines and destroyers. To reach the island from the mainland, the navy built the 1.9-mile (3…
The island of Nattaro was our first anchorage in the famed Stockholm Archipelago cruising ground after our trip to Visby. The island is full of walking trials and beaches, particularly Storsand, the largest beach in the Stockholm archipelago and one of the nicest places to swim. With raw water freezing on the deck that mid-April…
Visby, on the island of Gotland, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995 for it’s well-preserved medieval structures, include a mostly intact 2.1m (3.4 km) 12th-century wall and a number of church ruins, the majority dating to the 12th century. Walking around the main town, packed on steep, narrow and winding streets within…
In the 26th edition of our Technology Series, we visit the Maritime Safety Center in Aland to see their facility and to learn more about the STCW (the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping) courses they offer. The Maritime Safety Center offers the wide variety of courses required by professional mariners to…
Nynashamn lies on the Swedish mainland at the southern end of the Stockholm Archipelago and is a gateway to the renowned cruising ground. The huge guest harbour there can accommodate over 300 boats and is packed in the summer, but in early April we shared the dock with only a few other boats. Adjacent to…
Stendorren Nature Reserve is part of EU’s Natura 2000, the largest coordinated network of protected areas in the world comprising over 18% of the EU’s land area. Stendorren includes 185 hectares of land with marked hiking trails throughout and suspension bridges connecting several of the offlying islands to the mainland. It’s a popular place, with…
A beacon has stood on Gubbo Kupa since medieval times, historians surmise, as part of a warning system of incoming enemy vessels. The cairn there today has been in place as a navigation mark since 1826. Like most hilltop navigation marks, the site offers sweeping views of the area. From the island of Hasselo, we…
The island of Hasselo is home to the exclusive pub “The Thirsty Winterswan“. It’s only open in the fall, winter and spring, and only for 3 hours a week: on Saturdays from 4pm to 7pm. The concept appealed to us greatly and we tried not to get our hopes up too much in case it…
Sweden monitors its coast closely and has even reinstated EU-internal border controls in places. So we weren’t surprised when a Swedish Coast Guard vessel made a beeline for Dirona when we came into view while anchored in the Misterhult Archipelago just north of Kalmar. Their visit was brief and friendly, and we otherwise spent two…
Kalmar was one of Sweden’s most important cities between the 13th and 17th centuries and its city seal, dating from the mid-1200s, is the oldest known in Scandinavia. Prominent when approaching by water is Kalmar Castle, one of Sweden’s best preserved renaissance castles. The castle was involved in a number of conflicts, and played a…
Oland is the second largest island in Sweden and has a history of settlement dating back to at least 8000 BC. The island is famous for it’s beaches—one guide lists 55 around the island—and Swedes flock there in the summer. But Oland also has a wide array of other attractions including Iron Age ring forts,…
After Karlskrona, we spent a couple of nights anchored at the Hastholmen-Ytteron Nature Reserve at the eastern edge of the Karlskrona Archipelago. Much of the area we’d travelled through was a restricted military zone until 1997. Just west of where we anchored is the island of Torumskar, where an international incident occurred in 1981 when…
Two Swedish submarines “escorted” us in from sea as we approached Karlskrona from Utklippan. The Swedish Navy is renowned for its submarine technology, particularly in building extremely quiet vessels that are difficult to detect. Over two years of war games with the US in 2005-2006, the Swedish submarine HSMS Gotland made repeated undetected attack runs…
We were the first visitors of the season when we made Swedish landfall at Utklippan on March 27th. We were excited to finally reach Sweden and were looking forward to some fabulous cruising. Utklippan itself is an incredibly beautiful island full of migrating shorebirds, lots of history to see, and a lighthouse. It’s a wild…
The Danish island of Bornholm has been fought over for centuries by Denmark, Germany, and Sweden. The 227sq mi (588 sq km) island is the 8th largest in the Baltic Sea, lying 80nm east from the nearest Danish land, 45 miles from Germany and only 25 miles from Sweden. Prominent on the northwest coast of…
We reached Denmark the day after transiting the Kiel Canal, and anchored for the night at the west end of Smalandsfarvandet. The next day we passed through eastbound to Klintholm, where we rode our bikes out to view the famous Mont Klint chalk cliffs and enjoyed touring the area. Being early in the season, we…
Following an overnight run from Amsterdam, we made a brief pit stop in Heligoland to top up our diesel tanks with duty-free fuel and were underway again in time to catch the last half of the Elbe River flood tide and reach the Kiel Canal that afternoon. We arrived at the canal in a fog…
Just over four months after arriving, we departed Amsterdam on a calm but chilly morning and exited the canal system into the North Sea at IJmuiden. From there we made a 200nm overnight run to the German holding of Heligoland to pickup a load of duty-free diesel. Conditions were wonderfully settled most of the way…