Tärna's odyssée Anno 2000

Introduction

This is the adventurous story of how I, Fredrik Olsson and Julia Sandberg cruised the middle parts of the Baltic for a month in the summer of 2000.

A trip such as this is of course nothing compared to a circumnavigation or even a crossing of the Atlantic but nevertheless puts high demands on boat, equipment and the crews ability to cooperate under severe conditions. Before the trip we had talked things over. The financial parts were very clearly specified to avoid misunderstandings, we had agreed that; OK, we will probably start hating and loving each other at least ten times so when we start hating each other the first time it?s no big deal?

Fitting the boat out

After celebrating Frediks 21st birthday with a lot of homedistilled booze me and Julia spent two days fitting Tärna out with a forepulpit, readying the outboard, buying food and a thousand other little things that is needed for a trip like this. The same day that Fredrik arrived we left port, southward bound.

The first two days we made our way southwards through the archipelago to Nynäshamn. The weather was really bad. Not much wind but rain, fog and generally a lot of water drifting in the air. Everything was wet. The same day that we reached Nynäshamn a highpressure fortunately started to press the rain away, there was like a sharp edge between the two weather systems. Over a day or so we could see how the edge gained on and finally caught up with us.

We spent a day in Nynäshamn generally drying and loading up and after two nights, at 1400 hours, we left for Gotska Sandön("Gothic Sandy Island"). The wind was mostly calm and from behind and after half a day and a night at sea, just at dawn, the island rose over the horizon, confirming that the navigation had worked out correctly. That was at about 0400 hours. Five hours later we could anchor off the shore,  thanks to the calm weather.

Gotska Sandön

I think this is the place to tell something about that island. It's considered to be one of the most difficult places to reach in Sweden. It's located about 20M north of Gotland and 51M from the mainland. It's shores are shallow at least a hundred metres out. There is no sheltered place, no harbour.

The story of the island is the story of its shipwrecks. It seems to pull ships like magnets. In 1967 even a yacht stranded there and was wrecked a few days later when a storm blew up.

For at least a hundred years there has been a lighthouse there and before the helicopters the guardians of that lighthouse would sometimes be isolated for up to five months before the conditions would be good enough for anyone to get either to or from the island. There is almost no fresh water on the island.

Gotska Sandön in sight 9.00 a.m.

The place is like a constant struggle between the sand and the forest and between the sand and the sea. The trees closest to the shore have grown in the direction of the prevailing winds, for least resistance.

The dramatic escape from the island

The conditions were very calm so we decided(despite having slept only for two hours the previous night) to go ashore in the dinghy.

We spent the day seeing the place, walking it's sandy shores. It's like something out of the caribbean and feels very exotic. In the afternoon Fredrik went off on his own(which I shouldn't have let him) and me and Julia went slowly back to the dinghy which took a few hours. Once we got back we realised the wind had increased and so had the waves. It took every ounce of power(and skin on the palms of my hands) that I could muster to get us back to Tärna. Then we sat there waiting while the wind and the waves increased, hoping that the anchor would hold and that Fredrik would understand the seriousness of the situation.

Several hours later, just before darkness fell a small figure appeared on the shore, waving frantically. I had seriously considered leaving Fredrik on the island because I was afraid I wouldn?t get on board again if I left in the dinghy to pick him up but decided to make an attempt to rescue him despite the rather severe conditions.

I took Tärna as close to shore as I dared, well knowing that every meter might mean the difference between failure and success. Now we had only about 2 dm of water under the keel, so I really hope the anchor would hold, otherwise we would drift ashore and make our way into Sandön?s long history of shipwrecks.

Fredrik started wading out towards me, he climbed into the dinghy when he reached me and we managed to get on board Tärna although we got some bruises while climbing aboard since Tärna was rolling and bucking heavily.

It turned out that Fredrik had got lost, understood the seriousness of the situation and run 20 km in the loose sand and in bathing shoes to get back. When we left that seductively beautiful but dangerous island the team-spirit on board was really high.

Fårö ahead!

We first went westward for about 10M then tacked and steered south for a SW wind of about 8-9 m/s. Already at this point I was so tired that i started hallucinating. Every time I looked down into the water that rushed by on the leeward side thought I saw the bottom.

The night that followed I slept about 2 hours, the rest of the time I was mostly in the pit or reading the chart in Tärna?s dim cabinlight. Reading the chart was by no means easy to do since my stomach would protest every time I looked down. Sitting in the pit was OK, sitting in the cabin was OK, just not reading. This was the first time in my life that I?ve felt anything like sea-sickness and it was probably because of lack of sleep and food.

It was cool sailing though, it was "edge" as we put it on board. The only way to tell we made any speed was the spray that sometimes would smash against hour faces, the only way to tell we made any progress towards the northernmost cape of Gotland was the positions on the GPS that were plotted in the chart and the digits on the log display that told us Tärna was trashing forward into the darkness with insane speeds. During the night we never went under 5.5 knots which is quite a lot when you can't even see the bow of the boat..

As I lay in my bunk I knew that Fredrik and Julia in the pit saw as much as I did from where I was. It was really a weird feeling. Tärna is lacking a radio and any kind of collision could therefore be fatal.

When dawn came we had Fårö(an island just north of Gotland) and Gotland's northernmost cape in sight a few nautical miles ahead. As the sun rose we met a big sailing ship under sail. It had the red golden light of the rising sun in it's sails, and so had we I realised when I looked up. It was really a striking sight. In my memory this was one of the most beautiful moment during the trip. So beautiful that I could appreciate it despite having slept about 4 hours in 40.

We arrived at Fårösund, a small harbour at Gotland's nrthernmost cape at about 6.30 in the morning. I had then slept about 5 hours in 45. The last nautical miles me and Julia took 15 min turns at the rudder and while one steered the other would immediately fall asleep in the pit.

Sightseeing Fårö

We spent two days resting and we rented bikes and biked around Fårö. At Fårö's southernmost tip the military has a training field. The place is just stony rubble, really bare and harsh. There amidst the craters, fragments of grenadeshells and other military waste a fig-tree, of all things, has managed to root. Fig-trees is hardly a native species in Sweden, at least not in modern times, so what the heck is it doing there, and where did it come from? It was really a weird thing, but poetic and beautiful!

We also saw an english churchyard from the years of when cholera was a common cause of death, especially among the crews of sailing vessels.

Along the coast

After Fårösund we followed Gotland's coast in SW direction, mostly in weak winds. We saw a lot of "raukar". Gotland consists exclusively of limestone, gathered from the sea by the billions of microorganisms that formed the reef that Gotland originally was, when the baltic was a lot warmer. A rauk consists of a harder kind of stone and is left when the softer limestone is eroded away. They look like giant statues. A little Easter Island feeling....

One harbour that we visited was close to a place called Lummelunda. Close to Lummelunda there are some pretty famous caves. They were discovered by three boys in 1955 and they kept it to themselves for five years, exploring the caves on their own. The caves are now explored to a depth of 4 km and are believed to be at least another 4 km long. Awesome!

To Visby

We spent five days in Visby, seeing the city, meeting friends that came with the ferry from the mainland and getting awfully drunk. At least some of us. Dear crewmember, you know who you are if you read this.

We arrived to Visby, which is a very old town, in just before the medieval festival which was fun. A lot of people were dressed up in medieval clothes, there were lots of activities going on and so forth.

Going home

During our stay in Visby a few friends had been sleeping in Tärna(which had some complications, but this part is CONFIDENTIAL!) and one of them, Martin now went with us on our trip back to the mainland.

Nothing much happened on the way back. It was 66M in calm, mostly westerly winds and it took almost 24 hours after which we arrived in the city of Västervik. Just to mention, the sunrise over the Baltic north of Öland was one of the more beautiful I?ve seen, and no other ship was in sight. It was as if the rest of the world hadn?t existed?

We slowly made our way north and after a few days we reached Nynäshamn. Fredrik left the ship here since he had to get home and find a job while Julia and I continued homeward.

By now, me and Julia were no longer just friends but also lovers. The change was in Visby but the details shall forever be unknown to everybody except the people that were there.

Anyway, this complicated things a bit.

On a Saturday afternoon Tärna gently drifted alongside the buoy and was home after almost a month. We spent the afternoon and evening cleaning up and then went home to my parents.

Afterwards

Home again, I've got the famous harbour-lice. My body seems to itch with the lust to get out there again. Offshore sailing at night is like a drug that you can't get enough of.

The relation between me and Julia is uncertain but positively so. Fredrik has gone to Norway to work and Tärna is resting at her buoy. Autumn is slowly settling and I'm back in Uppsala for studies or work.