Our position is 58:15.641N 17:01.494E

Distance covered 58.1Nm

Heavy rain in the night made getting up early all the harder but it had stopped by the time we pulled the anchor up and got away. The bottom had proved to be very muddy in our solitary haven so much work with brush and bucket was required before everything was safely stowed and we were heading out to sea down the buoyed channel.

The tranquillity of the night before

was followed by cleaning the anchor

Leaving the anchorage and the many sea birds, here occupying the rocks at the entrance

The ship that services the nuclear power station. Hope it isn’t carrying radioactive waste!

Because the forecast was for more rain, we hadn’t completely settled on our final destination, reserving the right to stop early if it was too miserable. We were hoping to get to the island of Harstena, where we had identified a sheltered anchorage in Flisfjarden, with a slightly tricky entrance among the rocks and with a narrow passage once inside, but it was around 60Nm away and would take all day to get to. Harstena was originally a seal hunting community, but now only offers tourism and has very few permanent inhabitants.

As it turned out the passage was completely uneventful. We saw heavy rain on the coast, but we were offshore and missed virtually all of it. The wind allowed good sailing to start with, but mid-afternoon it went into the North and we had to take the sails down and motor.

 Nothing to photograph along the way apart from the clouds

When we arrived at the anchorage and successfully negotiated the rocks, it proved to be in complete contrast to the previous night as there were many boats already there, enjoying the evening sunshine and, in some cases, swimming off their boat (even though we were no longer under the influence of the nuclear power station warmed water). Most of them were moored to rocks or tied to trees, with a stern anchor but we chose to anchor, along with some others. In any case there was not a lot of room along the most popular shoreline. It certainly wasn’t as tranquil as the previous night, where all we heard was the cry of the terns, as people on the other boats were talking, playing music, dogs were yapping and dinghies were buzzing about, visiting other boats and going ashore, not to mention water skiing.

You can just see the mast of an anchored boat in an inlet on this island on the approach to our anchorage – the lack of space must guarantee him solitude

Full concentration by the skipper on the narrow entrance

Our final destination