A sailing trip around the archipelago of Stockholm seemed like a good compromise between a city break and a sailing holiday. The guides say there are a ridiculous 24,000 odd islands or rocks in the area, so it would be a sailing challenge to navigate them successfully, while being a capital city there was plenty of cosmopolitan land based entertainment and attractions. Once we’d acknowledged how important the cosmopolitan side of things was to most of the crew it was decided that the main region to be explored should be the central islands, it would take longer than our allotted two weeks to spread out much further.

The first job is to get hold of some Swedish charts which plot the area much more clearly – very important when you consider the number of rocks lying just below the surface and large numbers of potential harbours. The first one we went for was Wasahamnen and we alternated nights in marinas and nights anchored in sheltered bays to keep the costs down. This is the norm in Sweden. Alternatively the laws allow you to camp on any private property as long as you’re out of sight of the owner and move your camp first thing in the morning – very useful to know if you have people on board who preper to sleep on land. The islands of Munso, Moja, Agno and Sandhamn were some of the most beautiful we visited, but some planning is needed to reach them, with so many islands and channels to choose from it’s difficult to know what island you’re looking at some times. The secret is GPS. Going in and out of Stockholm proper was also a bit tricky considering the traffic on the channels, so go at a quiet time, but staying in Wasahamnen was much cheaper than booking a hotel and if we had have wanted we could have sailed on the city’s canals into the lagoon.

A summer trip will ensure plenty of light, though beware the cooler nights. The thing I yet to mention is that it’s just a beautiful place. Despite the rocks the waters are still and the many islands varied and interesting. The crew consensus was that it was both a freeing and welcoming experience – we had far less trouble with Swedish than we had expected to.

Written by  Dan Baker.

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