I forgot to mention that once again, the bad forecast was good ie it forecast lousy weather and it was accurate. It rained yesterday evening when Ian & Jilly were with us and the forecast was for it to stop by morning (it did) and for the wind to pick up to F6 (ditto). Still, at least the sun was shining…

We set off in the breeze, walking up the river, to the small town of Trosa . The town dates back to the 14^th century, when its principal sources of income were herring fishing and grain trading. The latter had to stop when Stockholm banned it (didn't like competition) but the pretty little town survived, today it has 4,700 inhabitants, zillions more in the summer. We could have stayed here a while, getting a better flavour of the place, but I was keen to get out to an anchorage, I’m 'harboured out’ right now!

Shopping done and our farewells to Ian & Jilly (she is flying home, Ian been joined by two other ladies, the two L’s as he termed them and we might bump into them in Stockholm,) we set off. Or at least we tried to. Instead, we found ourselves firmly tethered by our patent pick-up-Swedish-buoy hook with a failsafe won’t-come-undone mechanism. It wouldn’t. Much struggling later, having fed another line through the eye of the buoy to take the strain off (no mean feat in a F6 with an 11 ton boat!) we got the thing off and we were on our way . Our destination was the edge of the Stockholm archipelago, on an anchorage on the very tip of the island of Torö, called Soviken and about 16 miles downwind. When I say downwind I mean generally so, when you’re following channels and sometimes in the lee of islands, the speeds that you achieve vary, from a best of 6.8 knots (v good with a reefed genoa) to about 4. It was lovely sailing, the boat was alive and charging forward with the gusts. This, combined with some quite tricky piloting in between the rocks, shallows, islands and so on made for an exhilarating ride, which came to an end when we dropped the hook at around 15:00, in a secure anchorage occupied by one boat on a Swedish Cruising Club mooring (blue buoys and dotted around the archipelagos, restricted to 8 tons sadly) and one nose onto a rock. It was a lovely, peaceful spot and we could then relax in the sun and wind (it drove us below finally) and later, I blogged and then we watched part 2 of ‘Episodes’. A lovely day.