Aug. 1st: The journey from Toreboda to Sjötorp was busy. 10nm, 19 locks and a dozen remote controlled bridges. But by now we were going downhill, having passed the highest elevation of the trip (91.8m at Forsvik). And downhill was SO much easier. Slide into the locks at the top, no clambering up inclines required. Run the lines through the loop and keep tension on as the water drops. By now the end of the Gota Canal was in sight and we were all feeling a little giddy. Little did we know that the most testing part of the journey lay just around the corner.
We entered the lock at Sjötorp late in the afternoon. It was a glorious sunny day with a dazzling blue sky as the lockkeeper congratulated us on reaching the end of the road and ceremoniously snipped off the tag from our forestay. Just around the corner we pulled into the harbor which had plenty of space and we tied up and found an excellent lakeside restaurant about ten minutes away, enjoying a good seafood dinner and terrific views of Lake Vänern, which we planned to cross the next day.
August 2nd: It’s 64nm from Sjötorp at the eastern shore of the lake, to Vänersborg on the south west corner. We left bright and early on a windless day and by 1pm had reached the peninsula of Kallandsö, which, as you can see from the graphic below, boasts a maze of channels and harbors to escape bad weather, but more importantly allows you a shortcut to save time rather than going up and around. I had checked the weather forecast and saw a nasty localized weather system would be blowing 25kts directly onto our nose as we exited the peninsula but it was only 25nm and we had plenty of time and daylight.
I was wrong. I’m not an experienced lake sailor and although I had read plenty of tales of how uncomfortable motoring into a chop can be, I hadn’t quite expected it to be so bad. I had reefed the main but my boat does not point well at the best of times, and with our repowered Beta Marine engine only giving us 16hp it was slow going. The waves were hitting us about every two seconds, throwing water over the bow and making it very hard to make any headway. Things got better when fell off a little and I was able to get some speed, but all that achieved was allowing me to make 5kts at a 90 degree angle to my destination. To my discredit, I hadn’t fully briefed my family about how lumpy the conditions would be, and they were NOT happy and also a little anxious. After about 90 minutes of persevering I turned the boat around and headed back to the complete shelter of Kallandsö, where we pulled over onto a little jetty two miles up a creek. I opened up a bottle of tempranillo and debriefed the crew about the days’ events. Then I made meatballs and marinara sauce. Suddenly the world seemed a lot better for everyone. I explained that the weather conditions were not going to change for another 3-4 days, and that tomorrow I would put in another reef in the main, swap the headsail out for something smaller and that they should expect uncomfortable conditions for 10-12 hours the following day.
August 2nd: My bad feelings about the previous day’s events were tempered somewhat when I filled up with diesel at a tiny marina just down the way from our overnight jetty. I fell into conversation with a local Swede on a Hallberg Rassy who had a similar experience to mine and was going to ‘try again today’. We headed out of the shelter of the peninsula about 9am but the wind had not eased, and to make things more uncomfortable we now had thunderstorms to contend with. The ladies stayed below, leaving just Angus and myself to trim and steer. It was a long, hard, wet beat, and to add to the fun the bunt in my reefed main collected a few buckets of rainwater which it would periodically dump on my head. After the third or fourth time I just had to laugh. This was fun! But the boat was in no danger, it was just uncomfortable. In the end my 25nm as the crow flies rounded out to about 54 nautical miles. Ten hours of hard tacking later the wind eased and the sun came peeking out just as we fetched the safe harbor of Vänersborg marina. My daughter had already scoped out the local restaurant scene, and we essentially just tied up and hopped off for a welcome meal and several bottles of wine. The boat was a mess down below, but that could wait till morning.
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