On Wednesday 24th January, 2007, three keen sailors left the warmer indoors for the slightly cooler wintery Swedish Archipelago. Their boat was a Seacart 30 and their destination K.S.S.S in Saltsjöbaden.

(the other guy was holding the camera)
This was not a very long trip (maybe 15km if you took the scenic route) but when you get down to the boat and it is covered in 10cm of snow and ice getting under way can be a bit of a hassle.

A 3mm layer of ice surrounded the boat and all of the mooring lines were frozen. So what does a rather silly Australian do? He reaches down to splash some water on the rope hoping to get the ice off... (We cut the lines after that) It was like trying to trick your friend to lick the metal pole that is covered in ice when your 6 years old...Anyhow back to the story.

We got under way very slowly, it took 5 trips to the nearby cafe to get hot water to clear the ice off the motor and a few more minutes clearing ice off the prop. After clearing the dock we had to motor through about 300m of thin sheet ice to make the open harbour. Ice crunching sounds are not the most pleasant noise for a boat owner to hear...When we hit the open water we brought the sails up on deck and went for a sail.

When we left the thermometer read -7 Degrees CELCIUS and the wind was blowing around 8-10 knots. Not bad conditions for a sail one might say!

Blasting down the harbour we where absolutely scooting along. With the gennaker furler ropes iced to the deck and the jib traveler blocks more like big carbon ice cubes our options for sails were limited. A quick decision for option A which coincidentally was option B also was a jib set off the changing block and two reefs in the main (the reefing lines where frozen).

Navigating was a touch more difficult due to the snow on the encompassing hills and a couple of the small channels were iced up to the point where we could just scrape through.

The best part of the journey was opening up the throttle when we approached the large open bay Baggenfjärden near K.S.S.S. A large grey cloud bank was rolling in from the North East. It was a snow storm and we got hammered for about 20mins by heavy snow. It is one thing to sail in and out of a rain squall in a dinghy but to be snowed whilst doing 10-15 knots, wearing a drysuit in minus 7 degrees C was surreal. The Seacart was happy, sitting on 10-11 knots and hitting 15s in puffs. Oh, the sailors were having a real cool time too.

The sun sets before 4pm in winter so our sailing time was cut short and we had to head in. A professional photographer, Malcom Hanes, took some great shots from the shoreline and we had a camera onboard too.

Maybe next time I'll come late when we are sailing in the snow (tounge out). Follow along in the forum.

Hej då (Good bye in Swedish)

Calle, Tomas and Matt
Seacart 30

02/06/07