One thing I didn't mention yesterday was that our old friend, Peter Answer, was under the surgeon’s knife whilst we were struggling with anchors. Happily, he was well enough to be texting us after his ordeal by lunch time and this morning we exchanged a few texts and he’d had a good night and is hoping to be home on Monday. It is always a worry when friends have to go to hospital and it always makes one feel guilty somehow, here we are out playing and a dear old friend is in pain and discomfort. Happily, in this instance it seems that everything is going according to plan and Pete will make a full recovery.

All the texting was done whilst we waited for the rain to cease . The lovely day yesterday ended in a prolonged period of rain, throughout the night in fact. Indeed, it rained pretty much continually until about 15:00 and it stayed grey and overcast all day.

We wanted to get within a stone’s throw of Stockholm today, our intention was to get there on Sunday and spend Monday preparing the boat for the arrival of our next guests, Elaine Skeffington and Rosemary Hurrell (see previous blogs for introduction). We were fascinated by the anchorage known as Napoleonsviken on the island of Ägnö, 16 miles away. Again, whilst the wind was weaker than yesterday, it was still in the wrong direction and so once more we burned diesel, letting 'Paul’ (the autohelm) do the work as we sheltered from the rain. It was a shame, as the islands were pretty and there were many impressive houses to look at, but seen through a windscreen it’s just not the same somehow.

The deep bay that constitutes Napoleonsviken is extremely sheltered, with steep rocky sides and lots of places for Swedes to tie up their boats . Given this and its’ nearness to Stockholm, it does make it a very popular anchorage – the guide states that as many as 400 boats cram themselves in! We counted 35 and that was enough. It wasn’t crowded but too many more would spoil it.

We anchored in 10 meters of water and then settled down with books/ Sudoku etc to wait for the rain to stop, which it finally did. When we put our heads out and looked around, Julie spotted another British boat and she exclaimed ‘that’s Fay & Graham Cattell’s boat isn’t it?’ – and surely enough it was Tam O’Shanter. Now a brief explanation. We are members of the Cruising Association, a sailing club based in London that has a worldwide membership and which has been running for well over 100 years. The world has been divided into special interest groups and the Baltic Section has been run by the Cattells for years and at the risk of embarrassing them should they ever read this, run superbly well. We have only ever met them a couple of times, during meetings of the Baltic Section in London and we were keen to do so again, so we hailed them and then chatted over the VHF radio whence I invited them over for aperitifs, which they accepted.

That gave me the excuse to pump up the dinghy which I haven’t done so far this cruise, as I volunteered to act as taxi for the Cattells. It also gave me the opportunity to give the hull a quick clean, again as it hasn’t been touched since we left. It wasn’t too grubby as the Baltic is not that saline so we didn’t have the usual salt streaks.

I fetched Fay & Graham around 17:45 and we spent a lovely couple of hours in their company, swapping notes or more accurately, picking their brains as they have so much experience of these waters. Once they’d gone, there wasn’t much left to do apart from have a bite to eat and watch an episode of Mrs Brown’s boys – just as funny the second time around!