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Bergkvara. Tuesday, 16 May 2023. Day two. Up at 8.30am. We cooked pasta with bolognese sauce in the campsite kitchen, then waited until reception opened at ten to pay. There’s coffee inside. Wi-Fi password: JTTRT4Y2. We left at eleven.
For the first couple of hours, a moderate breeze let us sail. Then it died and the engine purred into life. About an hour later, the wind began building again, and the sail started working. It kept building. I reefed the jib, but even then we reached 8.4 knots. Waves were 1–1.5m high, with whitecaps all around and spray blowing off many of the crests. Land was eight nautical miles away, and the wind wouldn’t let us head towards it: either back the way we’d come or out to sea.
I started the engine, took down the sail, and set the autopilot into the wind towards shore. For the next three hours, we sat in silence, heads down to lessen the motion. Every 15 minutes, my watch timer made us look up and check our surroundings. At one point, my phone’s GPS stopped working. The coast was still out of sight. Thankfully, a forced restart fixed it.
My whole body rebelled against being aboard. Bashing into the wind, I hated sailing and couldn’t understand why I’d bought a boat. Stepping ashore at the nearest marina, Sandhamn, I wanted to fall to my knees and kiss the ground. My feelings escaped in a groan of happiness. I felt renewed, reborn. We bought doner meat at the supermarket, heated it in a frying pan and ate it with bread. I’ll remember that sweet, tangy flavour for the rest of my life.
30 nautical miles in eight hours.
#passage
For the first couple of hours, a moderate breeze let us sail. Then it died and the engine purred into life. About an hour later, the wind began building again, and the sail started working. It kept building. I reefed the jib, but even then we reached 8.4 knots. Waves were 1–1.5m high, with whitecaps all around and spray blowing off many of the crests. Land was eight nautical miles away, and the wind wouldn’t let us head towards it: either back the way we’d come or out to sea.
I started the engine, took down the sail, and set the autopilot into the wind towards shore. For the next three hours, we sat in silence, heads down to lessen the motion. Every 15 minutes, my watch timer made us look up and check our surroundings. At one point, my phone’s GPS stopped working. The coast was still out of sight. Thankfully, a forced restart fixed it.
My whole body rebelled against being aboard. Bashing into the wind, I hated sailing and couldn’t understand why I’d bought a boat. Stepping ashore at the nearest marina, Sandhamn, I wanted to fall to my knees and kiss the ground. My feelings escaped in a groan of happiness. I felt renewed, reborn. We bought doner meat at the supermarket, heated it in a frying pan and ate it with bread. I’ll remember that sweet, tangy flavour for the rest of my life.
30 nautical miles in eight hours.
#passage
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