Today was to be the last chance we would have this year to savour the Swedish archipelago and we were determined to enjoy it. Initially, the weather was 'on side' as it was a sunny day, albeit it did feel somewhat autumnal, at least for the first couple of hours. Later it became greyer and indeed later still we had rain but by then we were safely at anchor in the absolutely wonderful teardrop shaped bay called Solbergänaset on the island of Näset, arriving at 15:30.

The final part of the buoyed channel between the islands and islets was really very narrow and quite shallow at times, a few metres only but it was perfectly navigable under engine – sailing would not have given us sufficient control . Having said that, we had sailed for most of the seventeen miles and we’d really enjoyed it, especially the open water piece where we sailed close to the almost perfectly round island Blå Jungfrun (the Blue Maiden), home of demons, trolls and witches in folklore. We saw yet another eagle and whilst on the subject of wildlife, I must confess to have completely forgotten to mention a major event on the 29^th when we were early into the journey to Figeholm. It was then that I spotted a head in the water, leading a strong ‘v’, trail as the swimmer’s body pushed it towards the near shore. By the time the whole animal had emerged, we had gone past but Julie was able to spot it with her binoculars and she is absolutely certain that it was an otter. This is the very first that we have ever seen in the wild so we were both delighted. So much so that I completely forgot to mention it on the relevant day!

Back to today. The entrance to the bay that is the anchorage is just off the channel but as I said, even in the buoyed channel it was quite shallow so going ‘off piste’ raised the adrenalin somewhat . We came across 2 rock-huggers at the entrance to the bay but once round the corner, the whole expanse was ours. All we had to do was avoid one rock at about a metre under the surface (charted) and then gingerly get to the head of the bay and we anchored in, 0.3 metres! I put out 15 metres of chain (theory says you need 3 x the depth) and knew that we would be safe for the night. We had the anchorage all to ourselves for a few hours but later, two rock-huggers came and settled in for the night, both at least 100 metres away from us so they were no bother. In fact one of them did us a favour, as mother and young son went swimming, overseen by dad and found the rock and stood on it (see picture) so we knew exactly where it was.

Have you ever seen a zombie film such as ‘The Night of the Living Dead’? In that, corpses come back to a sort of life and they will do anything to get at you, so if you’re behind locked doors or windows, they beat senselessly against the barrier to try to get at living people. Well mosquitos are like that I think. There were quite a few around and we had netting covering any hatches that were open. It was quite scary watching the numbers build up and see them aimlessly trying to get in to the juicy blood-filled flesh just inside the boat, out of reach, thank goodness. And so, unbitten, two juicy blood filled non-zombies went to bed.