Day 38 – Karlskrona’s “Bermuda triangle” – 8 April

Day 38. 8th of April. Slädö til ca. Konungshamn. 43 km, 6.6 km/hr average speed.

After a pleasant breakfast in the company of Christian and Hélène, we set off about 1000, in splendid weather looking to round another “cape” and turn the bows of the boats from east to north.

It was a pleasant paddle, a bit too pleasant perhaps, because about a third of the way we managed to do a wrong turn, crisscrossing back through the archipelago cost us about 4 km. Incidentally this happened in the exact same area where a Russian submarine (in) famously misnavigated and ran on ground back in 1981. Karlskrona’s “Bermuda triangle”? Probably not.

That mishap behind us we got around “Torhamn’s udde” without further ado, in totally calm seas except for minor ocean swell.

The waters near shore here are treacherous. It is washed out moraine, and big boulders are strewn across the shallow sand bottom. Had the weather been more challenging we would have had to go further out to sea.

We are camping on a small islet outside Konungshamn. We may be trespassing into a protected area, where birds are supposed to be left alone from April to September. We looked carefully for signs, but saw none. However, well-informed followers of the blog claims we are indeed trespassing. Too late, too cold and too dark now to do anything but promise to improve and check more carefully next time.

Tomorrow we plan a relatively short paddle to Bergkvara. Bergkvara looks like an adequate place to spend another day or two waiting on weather (WOW), which is what yr.no suggest we have in store. We sure have underestimated the amount of WOW we run into.

Then again Erling needs to work on his new boat. Still some water in the cockpit today, but much less. However, today the waves hardly ever washed over the boat, whereas yesterday it happened constantly. The jury is still out.