Meritaten — Boatworks

Early in the morning, calm and warm. Meritaten waits in her berth for long sail to come.

I visit my boat for the last time, she is loaded with all equipment which belongs to her: old sails, tools, electronics, spare parts.

She is about to sail to Västervik in coming days.

Long sailing but Ulf and Christina are no beginners.
They just came back after sixteen years of sailing around the world.

They had many boats - big and small, sailboats and motorboats. Meritaten is their 30th boat.

By coincidence - my first trip, while searching for Laurinkoster, was to Västervik. The owner, Hans, got too old to sail his boat so she was standing on land for many years. He had tears in his eyes when he talked about memories gathered during 35 years sailing his boat with family and friends.

I have mixed feelings after parting with such a project.
At the same time I feel good that Christina and Ulf chose my boat.
I am confident that they will like Meritaten.
And she will certainly get sailed much, much more than under my careship.

All the best Christina and Ulf!

The plan was to sail in Arholma archipelago, staying mostly on anchor at small islands around the main one. Having grocery shop available on the main island can prolong the exploration of the vicinity.

Upon leaving on Tuesday afternoon the weather forecast was shaky, threatening with strong wind at night. Not the most comfortable conditions on anchor, especially that Idskär, the island I wanted to stay at as first, is open to northerly winds and it was blowing from North.

So we change plans en route and decide to sail to Flaten. First part, short distance in Vätö sund, done on engine, with rather stiff wind directly into the nose (red line on chart).

Once we rounded North cape of Vätö I could shut off Yanmar-san and unroll sails. With broad reach we go only on genoa, fast and steady.

As always when sailing with family I take rubber boat - to explore shallows and as a life-boat, just in case.

Girls sleep or read inside the cabin, Ray is holding the helm so I can stand at the bow and pretend I’m Corto Maltese.

Just after 2-3 hours of sailing we arrive at Flaten. The inner harbor is filled with boats, same with external pontoon so we sail between islands and moor to the side pontoon. A few sailor friends run aground somewhere there but the water level is high and Meritaten, being an old, long-keel boat, is a shallow draft vessel for today standards.

North wind shall, according to weather forecast, change into southerly during the night. Several boats leave my pontoon to find better protected place for the night - inside the harbor or on the other side of the island. We stay and enjoy the whole pontoon for ourselves.

The day is hot, water is ice-cold so we jump and take a bath. After that we go exploring in our rubber dinghy.

The wind calms down, motor-boaters leave the sea to re-fuel for next day and we are left in peace.

As foretasted, the wind shifts 180 degrees during the night and blows directly into our ass. I add one more line to the second buoy, to keep us from running onto the pontoon.

It’s gusty and forecast warns for squalls and yet another wind change - this time into westerly. We stay on the island and enjoy the sunset.

During the night the wind indeed changes so we have a night in wind-shade of the neighbor island.
We shall check the forecast in the morning - we still consider sailing to Arholma.

Reading books, playing board game, chit-chat with old friends from NSS-sailing club.

I re-take the picture I made 5 years ago:

The day after the wind stays westerly and is blowing stiff. Sailing to Arholma would be very fast and pleasant but coming back would take too long - we are running out of time. The forecast is changing every hour, warning for heavy squalls of 14 m/s around late afternoon.
We decide to start early and sail back home, in a hope of avoiding staying on water when the weather deteriorates.

I had two choices of sailing back - either the same route, around Vätö from East, in wide Björköfjärd, at close reach - or into Norrtäljeviken, with strong wind directly into nose and narrow water. Going Norrtäljeviken would certainly mean beating into the wind and probably long journey on engine in narrow Vätösund.

I chose sailing Björköfjärden. There was a chance to sail beam or close reach, water is mostly wide with plenty of space in case something goes wrong. Weather forecast gave us 8 hours before heavy squalls come.

We leave Flaten and set jib, beam reach course. It looked good, wind was stiff but at this course we sailed steady and safe.

After rounding Käringsö we started beating close hauled so I rose main sail, with one reef. Jib rolled into small triangle. It was fine for one hour but then came squalls…

We got caught with too much canvas up in the air. The boat was healing heavily, I was riding squalls by getting height with each blow but blows became longer and longer and I was afraid that something will break.

The sea was too disturbed and the wind too strong to start autopilot and go to mast, to set the second reef.
I had to withstand the weather.
I was mostly afraid for my girls - at such moments one can get scared for life and be discouraged from sailing.

Meritaten is a Laurinkoster. She was designed and build for bad weather. Such conditions are not a problem for this boat - they are more a problem for the crew. I was once in such situation but I was alone. I was not at all nervous then. Today was different - being responsible for others is a heavy burden in bad weather.

Steadily we rode squalls and slowly came to the entrance of Vätösund. That was a blessing - shielded by high Vätö island the wind calmed as if the hell we were leaving behind was never there.

Still on reduced sails - to not get caught again - we sailed all the way to our harbor. Just before the berth we started the engine and without any more adventures entered the safety of mooring.

Shortly after disembarking it started to rain.

In the safety of harbor I checked again the weather forecast.
Yes, it has changed again and it turned out that we were sailing in the weather which we were trying to avoid by leaving early. Gusts up to 14 m/s, confused sea after all these wind changes… that was a mess.

What would I do differently next time?
Well, I would rely even less on weather forecast and probably would stay on Flaten. It would be boring and would mean that we would sail in rain and cold a day or two after but hopefully at moderate winds.

Or I would leave, as we did, but put two or even three reefs at once.
It is always easier to shake the reef than to put one when conditions are too bad. Taking just one reef was not prudent, lessons learned.

I could have also heave-to and set this second reef. I got blinded by the fact that my autopilot cannot cope with the weather and forgot the best and oldest technique: heaving-to. At Björköfjärd there is enough space for this and with two reefs we could ride the squalls without so much heeling.

Ah, well…

Last visit

Being crew at Meritaten

Daysailing with friends

Weather forecast is just a guideline!

Midsommar!