Crossing from Norway to Sweden–The Skagerrak Strait

Wow! This is the final segment of Season 2, cruising with Hokukea! We can hardly believe the miles we’ve covered and the places we’ve been 🙂 Our final segment began with crossing the Skagerrak Strait, the body of water north of Denmark, west of Sweden, and east of Norway. We were feeling a bit anxious to get to Sweden because we had some weather delays and needed to get to Baltic-Kalmar Marina in SE Sweden where we’d reserved a spot and date (September 18) to haul out Hokukea and put her in indoor storage for the winter.

We crossed the Skagerrak from Mandal, Norway to Långedrag Marina (home of Gothenburg Royal Sailing Society). It took us a little more than 28 hours to cover the 156 miles across the Skagerrak. Based on the weather forecast, we expected a fast trip (23-24 hrs), and we started out sailing really well on a comfortable point of sail. At about midnight, however, the sails began to luff (bang around) and the wind got behind the headsail causing an accidental tack. We weren’t sure what happened initially: Did a genoa sheet or car break? Why did our auto-pilot go off-line?… Was it broken? As it turned out, it was “just” a 90 degree wind shift…. and we found ourselves on a very uncomfortable point of sail with a lot of slewing around and dropping off waves. Dropping off waves slows the boat down a lot. Our speed dropped from 6-7 knots to 4-5 knots. And then, just to keep us on our toes, the shipping traffic increased exponentially as we approached the north of Denmark. We later learned from some cruising friends that this area is among the busiest shipping areas in the world.

Gothenburg (Långedrag)

After a long night and then a long day, we finally got to Långedrag Marina in fairly breezy conditions. We were tired, and then we were challenged with parking between posts and tying our lines to them, a type of docking we had not yet done/practiced. Luckily, some sailing friends (Kate and Mike Farthing) with a similar boat to ours had provided us with a step-by-step description of how they docked in that marina. They were nearby the marina, so they took photos of our assigned slip for us. They also sent photos of how they tied their boat up in that marina. Their instructions were enormously helpful and we docked without incident. An employee of the harbor also came out and helped us with our bow lines.

Långedrag is like a suburb of Gothenburg. We had been to Gothenburg twice before, so we explored the little towns near Långedrag and found them to be really nice.

Varberg

When the winds shifted so that we could travel south, we headed out from Långedrag to Varberg. We had never heard of Varberg before, and it turned out to be one of our favorite Swedish towns!

Halmstad

The town of Halmstad is up a river!…. So we went up that river and docked alongside the shore. I had come down with a bad cold, so we didn’t do much while we were there, but we did walk down the river a bit and across a bridge to see the town. The town was cobblestone, with several pedestrian-only streets, and nice shops, cafes, and restaurants.

Helsingborg

Helsingborg is a relatively big city (pop. 150,000+) and we had originally planned to spend 2 days here, but the winds were favorable for moving along south, so we decided to limit ourselves to one day.

Malmö

Malmö is the 3rd largest city in Sweden and is just across from Copenhagen. We docked at a new marina at the streetfront and enjoyed the sights and restaurants of the big city. We saw many Danish boats in the harbor and learned that many Danes come for a couple of days “holiday” in Sweden.

Höllviken (Falsterbokanalen)

Shortly after we departed Malmö, we sailed under the Öresund Bridge, a very large bridge that connects Malmö to Copenhagen. We’ve read about this bridge, watched videos of it, and drove across it last year. It’s unique not only because it is very long, but because a large portion of it dives under water into a tunnel before it comes above land again in Copenhagen. There are several marine traffic lanes for going under the bridge, with the middle two lanes being reserved for cargo ships.

Falsterbokanalen is 1-mile canal that cuts across the very south of Sweden into the Baltic Sea. There are no locks in the canal, but there is a low bridge that is opened for boat traffic about every two hours. We spent a night in the marina at Höllviken so that the next morning we could be waiting just outside the bridge at 9 a.m. for the scheduled opening.

Ystad

Much of central Ystad is “old town,” with cobbled streets and beautiful facades on the buildings.

Simrishamn

Arriving in Simrishamn (pronounced “Sim-ris Hamn”; “Hamn” means port) placed us clearly in southeast Sweden; prior to that we were in south or southwest Sweden. Getting there felt like a bit of a milestone because we are storing the boat for the winter a little further north in southeast Sweden, and we had to travel 300 miles with 11 stops within about 2 weeks. Simrishamn was another beautiful Swedish town with lots of old-town charm.

Sölvesborg

Sölvesborg looked much like the other pretty small towns in this part of Sweden. They also have a St. Nicolai church. This one dates back to the middle ages and has early 15th century frescos. The church also displays a “runestone” that was found in a nearby field and has been dated to the 6th century.

Karlskrona

Unlike the other “old town” Swedish towns of this area, Karlskrona is known for its history of naval ship building. They have a well-designed navy museum that focuses on the methods used to design and build the Swedish warships going back 500 years. Interestingly, they displayed numerous “models” of old warships that were used for planning and design, and also for communicating with foreign ship builders who did not speak Swedish.

Torhamn

Torhamn was just a 3-hour sail from Karlskrona, but it positioned us for our final passage (44 miles; 8 hours) up to Kalmar. The harbor is very small and has a tight entrance…. and just to challenge us a bit more, the layout of the entrance had been modified and didn’t match our harbor guide. There’s not much of a town in Torhamn, but there’s a little cafe at the marina that has nice lunches and is bustling on a Saturday night with live music and lots of singing.

Kalmar

We had lots of great motor-sailing up the Kalmar Straight to Kalmar (the winds were not quite strong enough to sail without the motor). There were only a few other sailboats along the way, and no cargo ships to deal with.

There were some strong winds forecasted for the upcoming days, so although it was late in the season, many of the spots where we wanted to dock in the marina were already taken — however, there was still room for us!

Kalmar is a very interesting town that is rich in Danish & Swedish history, but initially we were focused on preparing our boat for winter storage (cleaning, deflating, and stowing our dinghy; washing and vacuum packing towels, linen, and clothing; cleaning the boat interior; emptying and cleaning the refrigerators; emptying, defrosting and cleaning the freezer; emptying the water tanks; stowing boat items; etc.). We planned for 3 days to do this, and that’s what it took.

We checked in with the marina company that was going to store our boat and made sure that we were still on track to lift the boat out of the water as scheduled. They sent their rigger to review our rigging so he could prepare for mast removal. We worked with the rigger to remove the sails and reorganize some of the rigging so it would be out of the way for mast removal. Finally, with the rigger aboard, we moved the boat to the commercial harbor (next to the guest harbor where we were initially docked) near the crane and storage warehouse. We left the boat and took our duffels and checked into a nice hotel conveniently located in the harbor.

The next morning we returned to the storage marina and saw that Hokukea’s mast had been removed and she was ready to be lifted out of the water. Once we arrived, the rigger and his two assistants jumped into action. They used the crane to place lifting straps forward and aft under Hokukea and then slowly raised her out of the water (she weighs 11 tons). They set her down on straps attached to a cradle that would hold Hokukea securely. Then they slowly moved her just outside of the warehouse for her bottom to be power-washed before storage. The whole process (excluding the power-wash) took just 30 minutes.

We left Hokukea in the care of Baltic-Kalmar Marine for the winter and went to explore a bit of Kalmar.

We had an absolutely incredible Season 2! The weather was overall cooperative, and we generally got to sail and explore where and when we wanted. We covered 1848 nm (nautical miles)…. about 400 more than Season 1. No wonder we are so tired. Here are summaries of Season 2.

To end our season in Europe, we decided to spend a few days in Stockholm and a week in Ortigia, Sicily (the old town of Syracuse).