We woke to a sunny, still day – somewhat chilly but much nicer than the past week or so. The portents were favourable then, for our departure, but as we were only planning on a few miles, there was no hurry and we thought we'd leave after lunch. That gave us time to do a bit of laundry and to get it dry and for me to update the blog – a failure as it transpired, as the blog site wouldn’t accept photos so I gave up after a frustrating 30 minutes’ efforts.

There was another reason to leave today and that was that the marina staff had hired a boat with a crane to lift out the old buoys and anchor weights to replace them with brand new ones . It was a bit noisy and in time, we would have got in the way and anyway, it really was about time that we moved on, much as we liked this town. We almost changed our minds when the sun disappeared behind some advancing very dark clouds but fortunately, we didn’t as the rain only amounted to a few minutes’ worth of drops on a couple of occasions throughout the whole afternoon.



Our destination for the day was to be our first anchorage this year – a jigsaw-shaped bay called Smedviken on the island of Vinökalv, a drop-in on the way to Loftahammar, our next port. The wind was very light but blowing from a favourable direction, the SE, so once out of the harbour at 14:00 we unfurled the genoa and ghosted along at 2-3 knots, enjoying the peace and because we were travelling so slowly with little extraneous noise, the birdsong coming from the shore. Within a couple of miles we rounded the bottom of Gränsö and started travelling up the eastern side, the theory being that the wind would now be behind us, hence the reason for using the genoa only . Theory is good but the actuality proved different, the wind was now blowing from the west and so we were able to deploy the main also. Moreover, it began to freshen, up to 15 knots in the gusts, so we were clipping along at well over 6 knots, really enjoying the sail in flat waters.

The anchorage itself was some distance off the marked route and as we weren’t sure if the whole area had been charted, we opted to drop the sails and approach under engine, for control and speed reasons ie. we could go slowly and stop quickly! However, we never saw depths of less than a dozen metres so all was well and we turned into the bay around five o’clock. We weren’t alone, there was one other boat there, a Swedish one but the bay was plenty large enough to give them a wide berth, which we did and dropped the anchor at the other end – not without some difficulty, the chain ha somehow got tangled around a boathook, but this is just teething problems, the sort of thing that happens at the beginning of every sailing season



Soon after we’d anchored, the sun came out and we had 20 minutes or so, basking in the warmth, until the next dark cloud appeared and spoiled it all! Still, it was a lovely, tranquil anchorage and we eagerly anticipated similar anchorages in the days to come – but with more sun!

During the early evening, I did some more blogging and Julie repaired our Swedish courtesy flag. After less than a month of total use, it has already worn a hole – it shows either the winds we’ve experienced or the quality of the flag, not sure which! Later on, we watched the last episode of 'Homeland’, a thrilling ending to an excellent series, we look forward to the next which I believe will be during the autumn.