Well the forecast was accurate. It was an awful morning, it was bucketing down with rain and the wind was howling. Consequently we were in no hurry to get up and moreover, when we did, we treated ourselves to a black pudding (Swedish style) and fried egg breakfast – not for everyone I know but we like it!

Around 10:00 there was a tap on the hull and dripping outside was Connie, who told us we could stay another night for free – he'd checked with Lotta, the boss (more of her later) . Consequently, at the very least we felt we ought to go to the marina’s little café come shop for a coffee and this we did, only to be confronted by free Danish pastries, nice lemon twist things. As we were 100% full from an excess of breakfast , we asked if they could put them to one side and we’d have them later. They are such nice people here, extremely helpful and generous.

Back to the boat and lunch and then, as per the forecast, the weather improved dramatically and the sun came out. Now we could have left at this juncture but as the forecast seemed to indicate worsening conditions again after this brief respite and as we’d not really done much walking in the area and as, also, we had a free night, we decided to stay.

Across the water from us was a peninsula called Femöre and most of it is a nature reserve, with paths that one can follow. Also, and chillingly, this was until recently the site of one of the most secret establishments of the Swedish military . Now I don’t know if you are like me and thought that Sweden is a neutral country so doesn’t have any armed forces worth talking about – wrong. Conscription was in place until recently and apparently, up until the 1980’s, Sweden had the third largest air force in the world! Now the establishment on Femöre was built during the height of the Cold War and the peninsula is riddles with deep, nuclear bomb-proof bunkers and on the surface, are automatic sighting and ranging howitzers for protection of the harbour and the steel works.

All this war stuff was of no real interest , we wanted a nature walk and to see the views. However, our meanderings along the paths came to a sudden halt when we were confronted by a young man, in full kit and brandishing a very business-like automatic rifle. Fortunately, he was smiling and of course, spoke impeccable English and he explained that there was a 5 day exercise being conducted but that this wouldn’t start until 18:00, when the civilians (we were not alone) had left the area . Further on we came upon more soldiers, plus armoured personnel carriers and further again, we saw two older individuals with blue and yellow headbands – this denoted them as instructors/invigilators we discovered, during a very interesting 10 minute chat with them (that is why I was able to talk about conscription etc above). The soldiers conducting the exercise were all young officers, on their final test and they would be passing out in the next 10 days or so. When we asked how they were doing, the wry answer we got was that they had all passed but they didn’t know that yet! Apparently, it costs 4,000,000 SEK to get one of these recruits to this stage – and I thought training doctors was expensive!



After this unexpectedly interesting walk, we felt that we deserved our cakes so we headed back to the harbour. Over coffee and cake, Connie suddenly said 'oh, before I forget, a large power boat came for fuel and he obviously didn’t know what he was doing and upon leaving, he crashed into your boat . There was a hell of a bang but I didn’t see any damage but he disappeared from the scene very quickly’. Suddenly, the cake lost its’ flavour and I was off to examine poor CW. Sure enough, as I thought would be the case, there was a large gouge in the gellcoat, about €200 worth of damage I would estimate. Connie was on the phone to Lotta straight away (it was her weekend off) and she told me to call the police, this is a hit and run and Sweden doesn’t like this sort of behaviour. Sure enough, in due course the police arrived and took photos and statements but to disabuse Lotta of her enthusiasm, bless her, they really didn’t care too much and they hoped that they would find the perpetrator so that they could try and persuade him to do the right thing! Connie was convinced that the boat was now safely tucked away deeper in the harbour so after launching their rib so that I could get a better photo of the damage, we set off to find the boat, which we did (it wasn’t that large) and it was empty, but at least we could identify it and we could try to find the owner’s name. We also had his credit card details as he’d bought fuel, so we were confident that we could chase him down. It isn’t the money, it’s the principle – we are all amateurs, we all make mistakes on the water, but if you mess up you rectify the damage, simple.

We’ d decided, on the recommendation of the marina staff, to try the local Thai restaurant that evening so we set off to find it, which we did. However, apart from the disconsolate staff it was entirely empty so we gave up on the idea and nipped into the supermarket for some salad and ham and had that back on the scarred boat. We also watched episode 1 of series 2 of ‘Episodes’ – quite funny and available of iPlayer if you’re interested.