Delayed write up from May this year:
The first sail of the year saw Jendor sailing to Lilla Nassa, with a crew of friends from work. Lilla Nassa is a group of small island towards the outer edge of the Stockholm central archipelago. The main island has a small natural harbour with metal pins driven into the rock to tie up to. We moored up with the bow into the uncharacteristic northerly wind.
After a beer or two we explored the island while the chilli cooked. It is bald of vegitation, which sounds like it would be cold and barren, but in reality it's strikingly beautiful. There's a number of small huts which we assume are used for short visits in the summer.
The evening saw heavy rain on deck, copious quantities of wine consumed down below and everyone retiring to their bunks at midnight, drunk and tired after long day. I was roused two hours later by Sophie who had heard a thud in the forepeak cabin. I pulled on my foulies and headed up on deck into the cold driving rain. On the plus side, even a 2am the sun was beginning to rise and the problem was easily visible. The weather front had brought a textbook windshift with it and we were now lying at 90 degrees to our previous position with the bow bumping against the rocky shore. Hauling on the anchor, it became obvious that it was dragging. The first plan was to reverse off the rock and hang back on the bow lines which were still tied to the shore. Sadly this had no effect, so I got our two largest crew to push against the rock with the spinnaker pole and we came free.
A plan was formed, given the following conditions: The wind was likely to shift again in a few hours; the harbour is really tiny giving limited manoeuvrability to drop the anchor again; light conditions were still dusky meaning that underwater rocks would be harder to spot; I was no longer sure of the holding power of the seabed and most importantly the harbour was empty besides us. The plan was to put someone ashore and tie a warp to one of the metal pins that we previously had our bow to and attach this to one of the stern cleats. We'd then join as many lines together as was required to get to the southern side of the bay and tie the bows up to the metal pins over there.
Everything went flawlessly except Sophie, who had the shore-bound job of handling the stern-line and walking round the island to the new mooring spot, came back on board complaining of being afraid of zombies and seeing lots of mating frogs.
In hindsight, judging from the satellite photo, it may have been possible to go alongside the pontoon just to the right of where we were (in the above image), but I think a grounding in the pitch black would have been much more irritating.
So all this sounds a little hairy... do I regret going? Would I go back? in terms of damage to the boat, there was just a very minor scratch to the gelcoat on the stern, so nothing too serious. I think that if you just stay risk free and go to the places that you know, there's no point owning a boat and may as well just buy a holiday home. We've since replaced our 5kg stern anchor with the 15kg one which will give me a little more faith in it's holding power. I'd consider going back again, the only hesitation there being that I've done that one now and there are thousands more to explore. If you're reading this and are considering checking it out, It's certainly worth it.
