At six I took off from Kråkelund in very little wind, far from what was forecasted by the Windy models. When I checked Norwegian met.no they hade a more accurate view of the reality. For a change, yesterday they were as bad as the other. They promised more wind from ten and even more around eleven, and that turned out to be pretty much exact. From then I had some hilarious sailing the rest of the day that will stay in my memory for a long time. I was going this fairway last year, but then I started much longer north, coming across the sea from Byxelkrok on Öland. Now I entered at the start, with a hope to go all the way where the route ends in Bråviken, not so far from the Stockholm archipelago.

For those who haven't seen the Swedish archipelagos it is hard to imagine what it is like to sail inside them. In Swedish we have a word for going through the archipelagos, it is to go "inomskärs", which means inside the skerries. If you go outside at sea, you go "utomskärs", outside the skerries. I took two screen dumps of parts of the route from the Navionics charts from my phone that I will post here, and you will get some hint of what it looks like. You have to stick to the fairways to be on the safe side, unless you have very good local knowledge. The water is completely littered with rocks, some visible and some not. Plus all the islands and skerries. That means of course you can't go on a straight course, you have to zig zag through the obstacles. It also means you can't sail the fairways against the wind, it's rarely any room for tacking. For a motor vessel that's no big problem, for a sailboat it can be quite challenging.

Last year I was going for the genoa only, which was possible because of strong winds. Today that would have taken too much time so I had to use both the main and the genoa. When I am sailing at sea I normally have a lot of time for other tasks, I can go under deck and make food, read the internet newspapers and whatever I want to. "Inomskärs" I have to make a plan even for going to the toilet, that intense it can be at times. Luckily most fairway goes over some open areas where one can do what one need to do. Well, there is pros and cons sailing singlehanded.

The most daunting thing is you have to gybe every so often. That is with the wind from behind, like today. With the wind from the sides it's much easier. Gybing both the main and the genoa singlehanded repeatedly a whole day takes a toll, especially when it is something you don't do on a daily basis. Plus you have to keep a sharp eye on the charts all the time, there is dangers all around you. At the end of the afternoon I was a bit exhausted, and when the wind seemed to go down around five I called it a day, 20ish miles short from my initial goal, Arkösund. And the anchorage I choosed looked so inviting, I couldn't resist the temptation.