Sailing Around the World the Wrong Way:Volume II

The next day, we sailed north to Goteborg, Sweden, which is Sweden’s major seaport on the west coast.  Small islands and rock formations sticking up out of the water surround it for miles around.  The shipping traffic was heavy with many different shipping lanes marked by buoys.  The day started sunny with a 15-knot wind.  Cruising north under the jib alone was pleasant and comfortable until noon when things became a little more threatening.  The rain started light at first and then became heavy with increasing winds of 30-40 knots.  As we entered the shipping lanes with their many confusing buoys, the rain turned to horizontal sleet which coated everything white.  Fortunately, I had to go below and navigate but poor Harold had to endure the ravages of wind, rain, and sleet for three more hours.  There was a sailboat, named “Wigwam” in front of us that seemed to know where it was going so we followed it in.  We eventually figured out that it was going somewhere else and had led us up a river away from our port.  We had to backtrack over two miles to find the right channel.  There was a heavy cross current (called stream by the Europeans) in the channels.  Finally after dark and a long day, we made it into the marina and found an empty slot.  Some friendly woman came out of her boat in the weather to take the line from Harold on the bow to help tie us up.  The people in Scandinavia were always friendly and helpful. 

There isn’t any anchoring in Scandinavia.  The large boulders on the bottom everywhere preclude anchoring.  In most places, if you ever got an anchor to hold, you would never get it back.  For the same reason, there aren’t any mooring buoys.  All of the boats are tied up in slips to a dock.  In fact, most all of the local boats do not even have a provision for an anchor on the bow.  Some have an anchor setup on the stern.  This stern anchor is dropped to hold the boat and let it out to tie the bow up to a large iron ring in a rock on the shore.  There are a lot of these rings in protected spots.  One boat will tie up to a ring with their stern anchor out and a number of other boats will then raft to this boat.  Rafting is very popular in Scandinavia because of the limited amount of mooring facilities. 

The mooring slips at the docks all have a marker at the end that is either red or green.  If the marker is red, the slip belongs to someone else and will be in use.  If the marker is green, the slip is not in use and anybody is welcome to use that slip.  Sometimes it is difficult to find a green slip in the tight waterways of the marinas, especially in high winds and strong currents, and sometimes it is necessary to raft up at the docks.