Stockholm archipelago trailer sailing

[erbster]

I am considering taking my 19' trailer sailer to Sweden next season, to explore the islands in the Stockholm archipelago (sleeping aboard, preferring anchorages rather than marinas). Does anyone have any experience or advice on this?

Current queries are:
1. Getting there: are there any alternatives to the passenger ferries (eg freight routes). I'm currently looking at Hull-Rotterdam
2. Availability of fresh water. I have limited storage capacity
3. Navigation. Lots of rocks! Is the Imray pilot useful for this area?
4. Weather. How to get forecasts when away from it all and weak/patchy phone (let alone 3G) coverage

Any advice, sage or otherwise, appreciated.

Charles

 

[Resolution]

Charles
We have just returned after a fantastic summer sailing in the archipelago. Quite the best sailing I have ever done. (Resolution is a 42 ft deep keel yacht so a fair bit different to your trailer sailer).
In answer to your questions.
1. Dunno
2. There are enough marinas or harbours to nip in and top up tanks say every three days. The "sea" water is virtually unsalted, so washing in sea water is no problem except a wee bit cold.
3. Sure are lots of rocks. It is essential that you have the Swedish Batsportkorts for the area. These are ring bound 50 page booklets of about A3 size, I think three are needed to cover the archipelago. Use them to plan in advance each day's sailing. We marked the course with little removable arrow stickers bought at our local stationers.
Also very useful to have a book of harbour guides ("Hamnguiden 8, Arholma to Soderkoping"), which provides aerial photos and chartlets of all the best anchorages. Text in Swedish but still very helpful.
We also had a Garmin chartplotter at the wheel which was excellent, as it is often very difficult to identify from visuals alone just where you are on the paper charts. So if you can get a small hand held waterproof one with the Swedish charts that would be good. The Navionics charts on our Raymarine chartplotter were not as good or accurate.
4. Weather forecasts. Probably best to get some weather expert explain how their summer weather systems differ from what we are used to in England. We found WiFi difficult, but 3G mobile phone coverage was widely available. I used Wind Guru either for Stockholm (inner archipelago, sheltered) or Sandhamn (out on the edge so more exposed).

Do join the Cruising Association and go to their winter lecture on the Baltic, there will be lots of good advice.
Have a great time!
Peter

 

[erbster]

We have just returned after a fantastic summer sailing in the archipelago. Quite the best sailing I have ever done. (Resolution is a 42 ft deep keel yacht so a fair bit different to your trailer sailer).

Good! Glad to hear.

2. There are enough marinas or harbours to nip in and top up tanks say every three days. The "sea" water is virtually unsalted, so washing in sea water is no problem except a wee bit cold.

Washing in sea was part of the plan anyway.

Sure are lots of rocks. It is essential that you have the Swedish Batsportkorts for the area. These are ring bound 50 page booklets of about A3 size, I think three are needed to cover the archipelago.

Did you buy these before you went? If so, did you use a UK supplier or a swedish one?

We also had a Garmin chartplotter at the wheel which was excellent, as it is often very difficult to identify from visuals alone just where you are on the paper charts. So if you can get a small hand held waterproof one with the Swedish charts that would be good. The Navionics charts on our Raymarine chartplotter were not as good or accurate.

I use Navionics iPad for planning, but have a yeoman sport plotter. That is a perfect fit for the admiralty small craft folio charts. Would the Swedish charts you mentioned be a similar size?

Do join the Cruising Association and go to their winter lecture on the Baltic, there will be lots of good advice

Would love to but I could not get to London for 7pm mid-week.

Thanks for this useful advice

 

[taifun]

I am considering taking my 19' trailer sailer to Sweden next season, to explore the islands in the Stockholm archipelago (sleeping aboard, preferring anchorages rather than marinas). Does anyone have any experience or advice on this?

Current queries are:
1. Getting there: are there any alternatives to the passenger ferries (eg freight routes). I'm currently looking at Hull-Rotterdam
2. Availability of fresh water. I have limited storage capacity
3. Navigation. Lots of rocks! Is the Imray pilot useful for this area?
4. Weather. How to get forecasts when away from it all and weak/patchy phone (let alone 3G) coverage

Any advice, sage or otherwise, appreciated.

Charles

Your #1:

Check with DFDS Seaways, http://freight.dfdsseaways.com/ferry_terminals/DFDS_terminals/Immingham/
The route Immingham - Gothenburg could be an alternative for you.

 

[erbster]

Your #1:

Check with DFDS Seaways, http://freight.dfdsseaways.com/ferry_terminals/DFDS_terminals/Immingham/
The route Immingham - Gothenburg could be an alternative for you.

Excellent! That would chop miles off the driving! It all depends on the cost...

 

[NealB]

I went kayaking and wild camping there, for a week in June last year.

Once away from the main channels, we seemed to have the whole area to ourselves... Pick an island, and it's yours for the night.

A trailer sailer would be wonderful (or a Dylan Winter duck punt).

 

[erbster]

The more I hear, the better it sounds!
The main obstacle at the moment is getting there: the dilemma is between a (very) long drive to save cost (£hundreds) or a quicker journey (expensive ferry)
I fear the (very convenient looking) Immingham Gothenburg ferry helpfully suggested by taifun would cost in the region of £1600 return, which is even more expensive than the harwich esbjerg passenger ferry.

 

[wazza]

I am considering taking my 19' trailer sailer to Sweden next season, to explore the islands in the Stockholm archipelago (sleeping aboard, preferring anchorages rather than marinas). Does anyone have any experience or advice on this?

Current queries are:
1. Getting there: are there any alternatives to the passenger ferries (eg freight routes). I'm currently looking at Hull-Rotterdam
2. Availability of fresh water. I have limited storage capacity
3. Navigation. Lots of rocks! Is the Imray pilot useful for this area?
4. Weather. How to get forecasts when away from it all and weak/patchy phone (let alone 3G) coverage

Any advice, sage or otherwise, appreciated.

Charles

1. Imingham (spelt wrong maybe) and apparently heard today Tilbury to Gothenburg, or there is a ferry from Harwich, I believe that goes to Ejsberg in Denmark
2. Everywhere, 90% free, not a problem on that front..
3. Dont know about imray but try a book Arholma-Landsort and look at this site too http://www.kissen.co.uk/saindex.asp
4. www.smhi.se, www.kustvader.se & www.yr.no are the ones I rely on....and they can be read in English..

 

[jbweston]

Hi

I've just left Penguin to be laid up just outside Stockholm. This is her third winter in Sweden - last two on the west coast and this season I brought her round the south and east coasts to the Stockholm Archipelago.

1. Travel. In the spring, I drove out to west Sweden using the Harwich to Esjberg ferry - easy, comfortable trip but takes a long time and was expensive. I needed to do it to carry heavy gear including an outboard so it was worthwhile. I think it would be worth costing up the alternative routes and doing a cost/time analysis (depending on your personal balance between time and money). Once your boat is there, travel to and from the UK as a foot passenger is easy, with plenty of flights and an excellent Swedish public transport system

2. Water is available in nearly all the harbours that have guest facilities -ie the marinas, harbour walls etc - you might call these 'developed harbours'. There are lots of them and there is a free guide book listing them all and their facilities and giving aerial photos so you can see their layout. However you might want to use what the Swedes call natural harbours - sheltered bays with few or no facilties, in which case you are unlikely to find tapwater unless there's a friendly farm or house nearby. It wouldn't stop you going into a developed harbour for a couple of hours to visit the supermarket and pick up water - some are free for a short stay and only charge for overnight.

3. I have the RCC/Imray Baltic Pilot and it's a very useful introduction but not detailed enough to cover all the routes and harbours - there are said to be 30,000 islands in the archipelago and the Pilot covers all of Sweden, Finland, Poland, Baltic coast of Denmark, Estonia etc etc. The Swedish Cruising Club sells pilots mainly in Swedish (see http://www.sxk.se/catalog/hamn-och-farledsböcker)
.
4 Weather. Wifi is widely available in the developed harbours, meaning that the excellent Swedish forecasts are easy to translate and digest(they have the equivalent of our shipping forecast and coastal forecast online) . MSI Sweden does a good English language forecast on VHF twice a day, but only the 'shipping forecast' not 'inshore waters'. NAVTEX reception is patchy.

Paper charts. You can't get by without large scale charts unless you confine yourself to the well marked channels into larger harbours (which is defeating the object of going there, I think). For Sweden south of Stockholm I've been using the excellent Delius Klasing Sportsbootkarten (folios covering an area) which are available on order from Bookharbour or increasingly on Amazon. BUT (big but) (a) they are detailed but not detailed enough for real off-the-beaten-track exploring in the islands except as a backup and supplement to modern electronic charts - I use Navionics Gold which have proved excellent, and use the paper jobs as backup and to blu-tack a pointer on to mark my progress and (b) the Delius Klasing coverage stops just north of Stockholm so only covers part of the archipelago. If you want to use paper, then I think the Swedish charts are the ones you need and you will probably have to order these from Sweden or locate a chart-seller when you arrive.

Finally it might be worth joining the UK Cruising Association as it produces lots of useful free stuff about the Baltic in English for its members and usually there are several hundred CA boats in the Baltic during the season, so there are plenty of people to who have been there before you if you want to ask advice. However, the CA doesn't produce any really detailed guide to the archipelago, so you are going to need electronic or paper charts and reference books whether you are in the CA or not.

I think parts of Sweden (including the Archipelago) are close to a sailor's paradise. The only drawback is that they are a long way to travel from the UK. But they wouldn't stay paradisical (?) for long if they were half an hour from the Solent!

I hope you manage to get there. I love the place.

 

[erbster]

I think it would be worth costing up the alternative routes and doing a cost/time analysis (depending on your personal balance between time and money).

Already doing it
Costs about twice as much to use Harwich to Esbjerg ferry, compared to Chunnel and overland. The latter would take 3-4 days. I'm currently interested in Immingham Gothenburg, which I expect will be the most costly option, but would involve only about 4 hours driving once in Sweden.

Paper charts. You can't get by without large scale charts .... I use Navionics Gold which have proved excellent, and use the paper jobs as backup

I'm planning to start at Blido and will not travel all that far, staying East and a little to the North of Stockholm for the majority of the time. I have navionics on the ipad, but was not planning to rely on it and use paper charts on a yeoman plotter. But you have found the electronic charts to be more precise for the detailed stuff than the paper charts?

 

[erbster]

1. Imingham (spelt wrong maybe) and apparently heard today Tilbury to Gothenburg, or there is a ferry from Harwich, I believe that goes to Ejsberg in Denmark
2. Everywhere, 90% free, not a problem on that front..
3. Dont know about imray but try a book Arholma-Landsort and look at this site too http://www.kissen.co.uk/saindex.asp
4. www.smhi.se, www.kustvader.se & www.yr.no are the ones I rely on....and they can be read in English..

Tilbury too, eh. Thanks for that and the link

 

[Neil_Y]

I think you'll find the DFDS Tilbury ( and Grimsby) Gothenburg are mainly freight services I use these to ship unaccompanied cars to Sweden, but they do have limited space for passengers travelling with vehicles.

Cost wise it has always been cheaper to drive up from Dover/Dunkirk area and I've drivem it more than once towing a horse trailer (with horse) to North of Stockholm. We've done two days lots of hours driving but possible with two drivers, there are still Ferry and bridge tolls to add to the cost so check the route.

I've sailed and Kayak/camped in the archipelago, phone coverage is generally very good (better than Devon) as lots of people live out on the islands. Water shouldn't be a problem as there are small habited islands where you will get water as well as the many uninhabited you can stop at. Lovely place to explore.

 

[jbweston]

Already doing it
. . . I have navionics on the ipad, but was not planning to rely on it and use paper charts on a yeoman plotter. But you have found the electronic charts to be more precise for the detailed stuff than the paper charts?
. . .

Well, I have but that's because the German paper charts I use are not such large scale as the Navionics. I think if you use the most detailed Swedish charts you'll find they are just as detailed as Navionics. I don't know that from experience but obviously the Navionics guys get their hydrographic data from somewhere and it's highly likely to be from Swedish official surveys. I haven't investigated the Swedish charts because as I mentioned my paper charts are only backups for my electronic ones.

Also this year I've used four folios of Delius Klasing paper charts going round Sweden this year and they are bulky and expensive enough without going even more detailed. As you are going to confine yourself to a smaller area you will be able to go more detailed without all that bulk and expense.

 

[jbweston]

PS re charts.

The Swedish officlal chart catalogue is online here: http://www.sjofartsverket.se/en/Mar...ic-Information/Buy-Our-Products-/Chart-Index/

 

[erbster]

Well, I have but that's because the German paper charts I use are not such large scale as the Navionics. I think if you use the most detailed Swedish charts you'll find they are just as detailed as Navionics. I don't know that from experience but obviously the Navionics guys get their hydrographic data from somewhere and it's highly likely to be from Swedish official surveys. I haven't investigated the Swedish charts because as I mentioned my paper charts are only backups for my electronic ones.

Also this year I've used four folios of Delius Klasing paper charts going round Sweden this year and they are bulky and expensive enough without going even more detailed. As you are going to confine yourself to a smaller area you will be able to go more detailed without all that bulk and expense.

That makes sense. I suppose it depends on whether I trust the electronic charts for the "twiddly bits". I think I want a paper chart for overview at least.

 

[Resolution]

That makes sense. I suppose it depends on whether I trust the electronic charts for the "twiddly bits". I think I want a paper chart for overview at least.

The archipelago Batsportkorts are mainly 1:50,000 but with pages down to 1:12,500. You really do need this level of accuracy at times. We found that our Navionics charts (on a Raymarine C7 chartplotter) were sometimes significantly less detailed and had the red/green channel markers out of place. In a couple of areas the Navionics was massively wrong, eg one stretch about a mile long that they had as 6 to 10 metres depth was less than 4 on my depthsounder.