Monthly Archives: September 2022

Grisslehamn

Murielle, Mike and I finally put the misery of Grepen Marin behind us on Monday, June 27^th, motoring down towards Grisslehamn, which is about 19nm SSE. But due to our late start and my taking inadvertently taking a wrong turn because I was so fixated on what work the boat still needed, we didn’t make it into the harbor at Grisslehamn until almost midnight. Fortunately my companions are easy going and flexible, and for them the beauty of the Swedish countryside was still a novelty so there were no complaints or gripes. And after tying up we cracked open some wine, and put on some music while I made dinner, Swedish meatballs and new potatoes, content to final be on our journey. I say finally. It was really a delay of little more than 24 hours for my guests, but for me it felt longer because of the stress of managing both agonizing foot pain and the management at Grepen Marin.

Blidö

We all slept well, and Tuesday 28^th dawned bright and sunny. Mike is an avid runner and he was able to diagnose my foot pain as plantar fasciitis. It is common among middle aged men and runners in particular and he showed me some simple exercises to mitigate the pain, but recommended I ask my next crew to bring me over some Superfeet brand shoe inserts, and the newest good athletic shoes I owned. I could also have taken a detour to a big town and bought a new pair and tried to some source some orthotic inserts, but I did not want to delay my crew any longer.

    Mike and Murielle spent an hour wandering around the tiny town, which is divided into an eastern and western harbor. The eastern side opens into the Baltic and is well served by car ferries from across the Baltic, meaning it’s you see lots of camper vans from Finland, Poland and the Baltic States, for whom the first step is often the campground on the western side, which overlooks our berth. But there is no easy sea access between the two sides unless you are on a dinghy or other low-slung craft. Our next stop was Blidö, some 33nm distant if we took the inside passage, rather than retracing some of our steps northwards to get out into the Baltic proper. But given that this would have meant facing 30kt headwinds with a new crew and an untuned rig AND added another 15 miles to the passage it was a no-brainer to simply fire up the iron jenny and take a gentle ride through the inside route, known as the Vaddö Canal, where the wind was calm, the water flat and the countryside in full bloom. There are only two lifting bridges to negotiate here, and after an uneventful day we found ourself at the waterside town of Graddö at the mouth of the inlet to Norrtalje, from there we turned to port and followed the coastline down to the island of Blidö, whose namesake gasthamn (guest harbor) I have visited several times and always enjoyed…until now.

Turned out it too had changed owners, and while the new trustees were pleasant enough, it was early in the season for them and they had not routed the fresh water supply to the dock nor installed the orange stern buoys after their winter maintenance. On the plus side their excellent restaurant was open, as was their free laundry facilities and wifi. About a mile down the road is a well-stocked ICA supermarket, so after a quiet night on the boat we rose early on Wednesday 29^th, did a quick provision stop and cast off for Paradiset, about 11 nautical miles to the south.

June 21st, 2022. It was about 9pm as I approached Grepen Marin in Oregrund in  my rented Volvo SUV. And I was feeling good. The ambience was classic Swedish summer: empty roads, a long, sunny twilight, the faintest breath of wind in the air. Winding, leafy lanes and clean, crisp air. The prospect of a long, adventurous summer on the water ahead of me.

   Thanks to the epidemic the last time I was in these parts was August 2019. That’s three years apart from my beloved Arcturus and I couldn’t wait to go sailing on her again. 90 minutes earlier I had picked up the Volvo from the Hertz office at Arlanda Airport and now here I was, barely able to contain my anticipation.

   Until I reached the parking lot of the boatyard and saw my boat was still on the hard. It was Tuesday evening and I had guests arriving from LA on Saturday, and I needed to get a lot of work done in the interim, plus Thursday was an office work day for me.

   I had emailed Grepen Marin half a dozen times since January telling them exact date of my arrival and requesting the boat be launched by then. No answer. But there was nothing unusual in that. I had kept the boat there since 2018 and they were poor communicators, but the work I requested was always done and the boat was always in the water when I arrived. I brushed aside my disappointment, climbed up the ladder and stowed my gear. There was a box of red wine on the cabin sole that I had left there three years previously. After making an inventory of work to be done and unpacking, I downed a glass. It was still very palatable. So I had another, before slipping on my eye mask and turning in for the night.

How VERY un-Swedish

   About 8am the next morning I found an employee of the yard, Daniel, who looked very sheepish and was quite evasive when I asked him, very gently, why my boat was not in the water and when I could expect her to be launched. He told me, in the round-about way Swedes sometimes do when they are uncomfortable, that the boatyard had changed hands since my last visit, and that he knew nothing of my launch schedule, but that with the Midsummer festival just two days hence (the biggest party day in the Swedish calendar) the earliest they could launch would be ‘next week – maybe’.

   This upped my blood pressure considerably. Turns out the new owner was a man named Robin, and he ‘should be in later today’, but Daniel couldn’t say when. To make matters worse, when I had woken up that morning and put my right foot on the cabin floor I got a searing pain shooting from my heel that made walking – and doing boat work – very challenging.  To make matters worse I thought I had left a pair of hard-soled topsiders onboard but they were nowhere to be seen, only some very flimsy flip flops and water shoes or the hiking boots I had arrived in. To add to my discomfort, the boatyard surface was mainly cinders. It was excruciating simply to fetch water or walk to the bathroom. But  more of that later….

   Robin did show up later that day and studiously avoided talking to me as he did his rounds of the yard, forcing me to corner him in his office and ask firmly but politely, if he had not received my messages and, more importantly, when the boat could be launched. He denied receiving any emails, a claim I know to be untrue because someone had responded to one just a few days before when I told them my arrival date and time and requested the key code for the showers and kitchen. Worse, he took zero responsibility for his lack of communication and when I asked him for the key to my storage unit behind his office, he claimed he had no idea where it was. Later he came up to me and told me the storage unit was unlocked. I looked inside and saw a bunch of stuff that was NOT mine – sails, lines, shackles, assorted hardware, etc, ON TOP of my belongings. Turns out Robin had sublet my space. Without any discussion with me, and no discount on what I had paid!

   In America of course many of us would start shouting, threaten legal action, promise bad reviews, etc but in rural Sweden that approach simply doesn’t work. I realized that Robin would never cooperate in any way, and that if I were to get my boat into the water and out of that yard, I had to try to appeal to Daniel, who did at least seem embarrassed by the shocking treatment I had received.

   After a few conversations with Daniel I gleaned the news that when the previous owner, Lennart, had decied to retire there was a power struggle between the two senior workmen, Robin and Daniel, for ownership of the yard, and Robin had won. But they were both power boaters and knew very little of the needs of sailors, who comprised perhaps 25 of their clientele. Worse, they had not had a rigger on the staff for more than six months. So even if I could get the boat in the water and the stick in, I could not get the rig tuned. Every time I saw Daniel in the yard over the next two days I approached him and asked him if he could find the time to launch the boat himself. He finally relented and agreed to come in early Saturday morning, after the previous evening’s midsummer celebrations, on his day off, and launch the boat for me. But he was adamant that he could not put the mast in.

So by Saturday 10am the boat was in the water. Fortunately she floated and the engine started first time. I hastily did some last minute chores before heading off to Arlanda to pick up my guests, Mike and Murielle, local Los Angeles sailors. On the train ride back I told them my tale of woe and they were wonderfully understanding and flexible. You gotta love sailors! So we used Sunday to show them round the charming town of Oregrund and provision. Late Sunday evening I moved the boat to a prime position under the boatyard crane, and when the crew arrived, with a long list of boats they needed to rig, I simply told them I was not moving my boat until they put the mast in.

   This simple bit of leverage worked, and thankfully while Robin was complaining about my attitude two or three other boaters arrived looking to get their boats in the water. This made him work a little harder and a little faster and by 11am the stick was in. They refused to put in the mizzen, but no biggie, I could do that myself. I tightened the stays as best I could. Took one last look at my storage unit to see if there was anything I needed and left the rest for Robin to deal with. I fired up the engine and left that boatyard, never to return. They still haven’t sent me a bill. And I doubt they ever will.