Rassavikar to Ringson

Up fairly late after the strenuous sailing of yesterday but were away by 0900 heading for the exit bridge at Tottnas. The forecast was for light southerly breezes. We were passed outside Rassavikar by a Vindo heading south who would be forced to go through the more exposed passages north or south of Oja. As we headed through the wriggles I wondered why the Vindo had gone south. I eventually twigged that once free of Oja he would have an easy beam wind sail west in fairly open water to Savosundet while we had a longer and more tortuous route. The passage to Tottnas always tsakes us longer than expected and is always enjoyable and we arrived about 15 minutes before the bridge opened. We duly headed SSW under motor and main down the passage between Liso and Svardso slightly puzzled by the odd buoyage ( two green buoys close together on the same side of the channel with a passage for small craft between them. There’s a navigational oddity compounded by a rather over specified lighthouse here which may relate to a former factory site.

Leaving this query behind we turne NW at the end of the fjord and unfurled the jib having a gorgeous run to Galklubb light but peering out cautiously at the northern end of Ramsholm in case a big ship was behind it going to Sodertalje. There wasn’t so we scooted across the big ship channel and wriggled our way past a series of rocks before joinging a passage going WSW to Svarthall light and later to the complicated passage through Bokosund. Here we started to meet the high speed motor boats cutting up the water and making life miserable. In addition we were now heading south with the wind on the nose – suffering for not having gone south like the Vindo.

The motor boats were soon gone but so was the sun for a while and we furled the jib and motored on to Savosundet, taking a short cut through a magnetic anomaly which proved to be too feeble to register. After Savosundet we could sail again but there was much sailing traffic and with the wind from our port side we had to do the avoiding. We were now gradually turning to the south to get to Ringson so eventually lowered sail and motored south and into Ringson’s southern entrance to anchor in a fleet of about twenty yachts and good shelter.