Leaving the Baltic Sea

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Tue 28 May 2019 21:04
As expected from an unstable weathersituation with a low pressure parked over southern Scandinavia we met quite uncomfortable circumstances when leaving the protection of the
Trosa archipelago coming out to sea. Plowing through headseas from 25kts of cold winds speed decreased to 5 kts.This continued the whole night and before sunset an alarm breached through the ordinary noise onboard. It showed to be the Comnav autopilot loosing function sending errormessage "F2 fuse breakdown". It took some time before we found the F2 fuse and managed to replace this 20A fuse. Of course you wonder what was behind the breakdown but the autopilot has worked well ever since.
Day two at sea headseas were changed to beamseas while turning west around the southern part of Sweden. With a windforce of 25-30kts and quite heavy seaway on the beam rolling sometimes reached +-20degrees. Apart from being uncomfortable our printer/scanner (allthough placed in a safe position) made a skyride suffering from severe trauma beyond repair.Just before sunset day two we reached Öresund (the waters between Denmark and Sweden). Allthough heavily trafficated this is a beautiful part of the passage between east and west coast of Sweden. Waters are calm and seaway moderate. Coastlines illuminated by small villages and big cities (Copenhagen). The passage under Öresundsbron in sunset is magnificent (Öresundsbron was ready july 2000. It´s Europes third bridge in length and has made it possible for loads of people in Sweden and Denmark to work "on the other side of the bridge". The Danish/Swedish thriller "Bron" relates to this bridge,See pictures below).
Day three we came out on Kattegatt which means coming out to the "salty waters" of the west coast of Sweden and so definitely leaving the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea. Again with 25-30kts of beamwinds and steep seas with short periods we launched the paravanes. Performing one of all regular engine checks I discovered a leak of coolant on the top of John Deere. After search for the source it showed to be a hole in a small coolant hose supplying a coolant level gauge. I managed to do a temporary repair with heat resistant rubber tape (more on this topic in a later post) for definite repair in port.
Just in time for dinner,we reached Öckerö an island in the Gothenburgh archipelago,after 78hrs at sea. As usual dinner and red wine tasted better than ever and sleep after that can best be caracterised as being unconscious.
Youngest son Gabriel studying medicine in Gothenburgh will come for dinner with some of his collegues,some service and repairs will be performed,and in a couple of days we will be bound for Norway.

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