Short sail over to Sandhamn

After a very lazy day on Wednesday which consisted of eating and slobbing, we comitted to going for a sail today. We had a minor delay when we found out that we were in somone else's marina berth and didn't officially have one of our own. Unfortunately today is some sort of public holiday, so the Marina Office is closed (which seems a little counter intuitive). Apparently it will be no problem, but we won't find out till tomorrow.

I was also aware that that we'd not fuelled up the boat and I had no reason to suspect that the fuel guage was any more honest than one on any other boat I'd been on. The Bullandö fuel pontoon was hugely busy, so we decided to chance it and fill up at our next stop.


The sail over to Sandham was great with a pleasant force 3 on the beam and warm sun. I was helming and Becks was sail trimming and counting off the islands on the charts.


We headed for the fuel pontoon and a man came to help us tie up. The boat handles beautifully under power and came alongside very easily. After the tank swallowed 70L of diesel, we motored over to the guest moorings to find somewhere to stay. This turned out to be much easier than anticipated as there were harbour staff walking the pontoons giving mooring assistance. Mooring involved motoring up and passing bow lines to the man, who in exchange would give a rope back that went into the water, under the boat, to a heavy something on the seabed. The bow lines were lead through rings in the pontoon and tied off on the boat and the underwater line was attached to the stern cleat. All really easy. We paid the overnight fee of 200SEK (about £19) and wandered the town.


Sandhamn is really like the Cowes of East coast Swedish sailing. The town itself is traditional Swedish architecture and very quant. We tried to get a table at one of the restaurants, but were told they were fully booked (maybe they didn't like scruffy foreign yachtie).


Click image below for day's gallery:

Sailing Sweden - May 2009 - Sail to Sandhamn