We bought Lovisa at the end of the 2023 summer season and we sailed her only a few weekends. The willingness to set sail towards the Caribbean already in summer 2024 was strong since we knew Lovisa was close to ready to go, but after mature reflection, we decided to stay in Sweden that summer to test and get to know the boat a bit more. This decision may sound logical or straight forward but for us it was’t. We had to reflect for a long time to really make sure this ”wise decision” to delay the departure was actually not ”an excuse” not to get going. Once we decided to stay in Sweden, we chose Gotland as destination to test the boat.
We left our home harbor on June 18 with Lovisa loaded with fresh water, food and diesel. We set sail first toward a small island near Häradskär where we anchored during the night. To celebrate the first day of sailing, the wireless wind instrument decided to stop sending data.
We left the anchorage in the early morning the day after and began our way toward Gotland. The wind had died during the night so we started the journey on engine for about 4 hours. The wind picked up around midday and we could finally stop the engine and continue on sail. When we approached Visby, we had a pleasant 5 m/s of wind (that’s a best guess since the wind instrument still didn’t want to work).
We left Visby after midsummer on June 23 and sailed south toward Klintehamn with northerly winds, fog and 1 m waves. In Klintehamn, we decided to complete the installation of the radar that had been sleeping in the rear cabin since we left our home harbor. We also took opportunity of the very little wind to go up in the mast and check the wind instrument … and didn’t solve anything except to confirm there was something wrong with the signal strength.
We spent June 24 on Stora Karlsö and walked through the nature reserve, a fantastic islands with huge colonies of birds such as Razorbill (Tordmule) and Common Murre (Sillgrissla).
We set sail again on June 25 towards Fårö just north of Gotland that we reached the day after, on June 26. This was a good opportunity to train sailing by night with one of us steering, the other one sleeping. On this leg we also tried the Gennaker for the first time. If we don’t count the fact that we attached the clew and the tack the other way around, everything went good!
We spent 3 days visiting Fårö including the Sudersand beach (with 27 degrees C it felt like a first taste of Caribbean) and rauks. We decided to head back to mainland on June 29. With west north west winds and 2-3 m waves we headed straight towards Nynäshamn. Wind was about 9-12 m/s according to Windy so we took one reef and put the brand new jib up on the cutter stay for the first time. In this configuration we maintained stable speed around 6 knots. We have been sailing Esmeralda in similar weather and sea conditions earlier and we could really feel how comfortable Lovisa is in such conditions.
Talking about Esmeralda, we actually came across her on our way in to Nynäshamn. This was a quite improbable meet up but she was there with the new owner heading south from Nynäshamn. And she still looked so great!
We spent 2 days in Nynäshamn, took the opportunity to meet the family that was occasionally nearby and also did some cleaning. On the 3rd day, July 2, when it was time to start the engine, we heard that the start was not as ”smooth” as it used to be. We first thought about a start battery issue so we tested its health. It was not bad but not completely healthy either so we decided to replace it. The issue kind of disappeared after the replacement of the battery so we left Nynäshamn toward Landsort… and we write ”kind of” because the issue reappeared a few days later and after a bit more investigations we found out that the connections of the start motor were actually sparking when the start motor was engaged.
Landsort harbour was full when we arrived so we spent the night along a small dock on Torö, just north of Landsort and made our way toward Stendörren nature reserve the day after on early morning. We anchored in a small bay on Klovskär, an island south of Stendörren nature reserve and continued our way the day after.
The wind picked up the day after, July 4 and we ended up with strong winds right on the nose so we decided to motor our way down. Our plan was initially to cross Bråviken and stop on a tiny island called Svartskogskär but we ended up with 14-18 m/s winds and 2-3 m waves just outside Oxelösund. These conditions were not really a big issue but the weather forecast looked way better the day after so we just decided to stop in Oxelösund… but we didn’t look at our harbor guide and that’s the mistake we made that day. We discovered that this harbor had not wave breaker so all the waves we met outside were reaching the guest harbor completely undisturbed, moving the docks like crazy and damaging some boats around… We spent nearly an hour trying to tie the boat adding shock absorbers on all the lines we could but we were still not happy about the result. We decided to try to look for a place to tie further inside the harbour where the waves didn’t reach and decided to tie up along side the fuel station.
We left our fuel station early morning at 3:30 and caught lovely 7 m/s south westerly winds to cross Bråviken under a lovely blue sky. What a lovely day ! We ended the day trip around 8:00 along Lånjö, a small island south of Arkösund. We took the opportunity of having an entire day ahead of us to explore the surroundings with the dinghy and use the outboard engine for the first time of the holiday !
We left Lånjö in the morning on July 6 under south west winds 7 m/s. On the way we met a groups of 20/30 kayaks. We saw them from far away paddling along the shore on our starboard side but at some point and unexpectedly they started to cross the channel in which we were sailing downwind at 5 knots. In a few minutes we ended with a long train of kayaks spread out in front of us and some already paddling to cross behind us. We were basically surrounded with limited possibility to make any maneuver without running on one of these guys. The problem was that some in the group were still paddling right in a collision route, head down, without showing any sign that they actually saw us. We believed at some point they would just stop paddling to avoid us but as they were getting closer and closer we shout at them to get their attention. They finally stopped when they realized the 7 ton problem on their way and we could finally passed through the group.
We were actually a bit uncertain about what is the give way rule for a sailboat meeting a kayak. We always try to stay far from kayaks and they generally also do so in the archipelago. We believe we couldn’t give way to such an big group that decided to cross just in front of us… where should we go when they are everywhere? We have cleared that question for curiosity and the answer is that a kayak shall give way to a sailboat …
We reached our home harbor later in the afternoon and enjoyed the rest of the day on board. Although we came back with a wind instrument not working and have to fix a couple of water leakages in the boat, our sensations sailing Lovisa were very good and gave us a lot of confidence for our trip coming.
Thank you Lovisa for having taking care of us under this holiday!