Summer on Sandhamn...

With the coming of the Swedish summer, it was time to head for the beach!

Time to go to the lovely island of Sandhamn.

Sandhamn ('Sand Harbor') is a small island on the outer edge of the Stockholm archipelago, that tangled mass of 40,000+ rocky little islets and islands that barricade the approaches to the city. For Stockholmers, Sandhamn is among the most popular vacation spots in the islands and one can reach it by ferry from the city center in about two hours (they're fast ferries...as you will see later on).

So, one day after dragging himself up from the cold, dim depths of the Vasa Museum's collections storage area, Ole announced that he wanted to go out to the islands. Knowing I was always game for a little adventure and exploration, He invited me to come along.

On a bright, sunny morning, I met Ole and Annette at the ferry dock and we boarded the Cinderella II for Sandhamn (I was hoping to get through life without ever having to ride on a vessel with such a name).

Before long, she throttled up and we went skittering out of the harbor past the Djurgården ferries, the crowded amusement park, the overloaded busses, and then on out past the cruiseship berths (where the Jewel of the Seas was moored, quite possibly the largest cruiseship I've ever seen, dwarfing the competition).

We trotted along the shore past all the rich Stockholmers' summer cabins, and snaked our way through incredibly narrow channels--sometimes having leafy tree branches swishing along the ship's stacks, and once, a very outraged powerboat skipper thumping along the hull.

...and then beyond the city limits into the wild, forested islands. Freedom!

Swinging by the last finger of the mainland, we paused in Waxholm, the old gateway to the approaches to Stockholm. There, the mighty island fortress still sits amid the narrow channel, bristling with cannon. Then, after exchanging a few passengers, we moved on.

She was a noisy, stinky little gas-guzzler of a ferry, but under the practiced hands of her laid-back pilot, she skipped her way through the islands, nosing into little docks here and there like a bumblebee in a poppy field.

Then we arrived at Sandhamn. What a beautiful little island.....

The little village of Sandhamn, a cluster of houses near the ferry landing, was charming beyond description from its little fisherman's boathouses...

...to its gated yards overlooking the sea...

...to its overgrown gardens...

...and pleasing refinements.

Crossing to the island's Baltic side, we found even more remarkable places bearing all the trademarks of traditional rural Swedish living.

Then, after this short walk through the scrubby, windblown pine forest, we came to the luscious sands of Sandhamn's seaward shore. The water was still icy, saving us from the coming summer crowds, but the beach was still wonderful... and the view out over that open water to the horizon!

However, I found evidence that Sandhamn was not always an idyllic haven. On its rocky points stand the remains of numerous gun emplacements watching over the approaches to Stockholm and the mainland coast.

Having been raised in the Pacific Northwest, I naturally had to go 'mucking about' in the rocky tidepools.

However, as there is no tide here and salinity is low to begin with, the tidepools were just full of tadpoles.

As the aimless afternoon wore on, we decided it was time to hustle back to Sandhamn village to get to the dock and meet the boat.

Back aboard the Cinderella II, we churned up the waters and streaked for home.

We hit all the little stops along the way, checking in at one little island after another like the Skärgård steamers ahve been doing out here for more than a century. At this spot, a cow came down to the dock to see off a human friend, and thus satisfied, trotted home.

Dashing along through the sparkling waters, dodging little islets and the ominous green glow of submerged rocks, we roared further and further from the open sea.

Soon we were weaving down those little channels again past all the expensive summer homes and plastic yachts.

There were still a few bold Baltic navigators raising sail and poking about these inner parts of the archipelago, but the city was drawing nigh.

Before long the gates to Stockholm hove into sight, the Waxholm fortress. There it stood center channel, challenging all those who dared to pass.

The sentinel's military purpose was abandoned decades ago and now she stands as a traffic warden, offering an imposing presence behind the blue traffic signs directing freighters and liners into the narrow channel on one side and small craft on the other.

Naturally, it has also become something of a tourist attraction, adding picnic tables and flower gardens to its lethal array of cannon.

Then as we darted through the narrow channel on the fort's western side, a small plane came ripping through the channel at wavetop height. A billow of thick white smoke swirled behind him, obscurring the ferry's other passengers. Nearly snapping my neck to watch him blast by not more than 30 meters away, I watched him make a perfect swooping climb, rollin gover at the top of his loop in a textbook Immelman.

He was a stunt pilot, out for an afternoon in his snappy little Extra 300. Designed for aerobatics and little else, he took that thing in a dizzying maze of smoke-tailed twists, rolls, dives, and intentional stalls over Waxholm for the next ten minutes or so--a full fuel tank in those little things.

Passengers on the other ferries (the steamer Stockholm and a flat, motorbarge kind of a car ferry) coming and going from Waxholm were all glued to the one-man airshow.

Then it was back up the channel to Stockholm Harbor. Along the way we plowed past the Statoil depot where a small tanker was unloading...


...and the closed facility of one of Statoil's former competitors.

...Speaking of competitors, that's where we came abeam of the comparable passenger ferry, Vaxö. The race was on!

The burbling bowwave under Vaxö rose up until she had a hissing, white 'bone in her teeth'. As she edged up on us, our skipper opened the throttle a little wider, leaving a nice, greasy, black exhaust cloud astern and plenty of frothing white water. We moved up. Then Vaxö revved her engines up a notch higher and the passengers around me began to notice what was going on. With a lurch, Cinderella II cracked the whip and boy, that little pumpkin carriage really flew!

Engines roaring, we edged ahead of the Vaxö, the short, steep waves of our wake closing on her stern quarter. They surged under her stern and she rolled sharply, veering one way and then the other as she surfed over them. Realizing we had her, Vaxö throttled back and swung into the smoother water dead astern of us, admitting defeat. Hurrah for Cinderella II!

By then we were passing the big shipping warehouses on the outskirts of Stockholm itself. They've been shut down since container shipping took over in the 1970s and 1980s, waiting for the artists in need of studio space, the development investors, and then the residents that will all eventually come looking for them. But for now, the offer a stately but ghostly backdrop for the little passenger steamers to chug past, vessels that remember when these quays were jammed with laden steamships from all over the world.

Those closer to the city already have the big "FOR RENT" signs up and construction crews converting the interiors from bulk storage to cozy apartments and stylish new offices.

Through the roar of our engines came a deep rumble and the trans-Baltic ferry Gabriella came surging by close off the starboard side...

..her enormous mass throbbing past with the seemingly unstoppable momentum of an iceberg or a ship going down the builder's ways.

...a ship of such unfathomable mass.

...until we reached the Jewel of the Seas preparing to get under way. She had all six of her bow and stern thrusters going as she tried to pivot around and get herself pointed towards the open sea again. She was so alarmingly enormous that she could barely turn around in the broad basin of Stockholm Harbor, very nearly grazing the shallows under bow and stern.

Towering some 12 decks above the waterline (passenger decks only, the crew could go higher), her gigantic shadow swept over us as we puttered toward her like an Ostrich chick running home.

The rumble of her thrusters was even more powerful than the main engines of the Gabriella, kicking up a churning, bubbling slick of icy water from the harbor bottom.

As she swung around, we scuttled past her stern and lit out for the dock, all the glory of having beaten Vaxö being tempered by our sheer insignificance beneath this behemouth.

And with that, we were back at the pier in Stockholm after a delightful trip into the Stockholm archipelago, through the beauty of those islands and that of Sandhamn in particular.

Tre Kronor on the move...

Recently, the brig Tre Kronor was towed back from the Beckholmen drydocks to her own little shipyard opposite the Vasa Museum again to continue the rigging process. Being such a stately vessel and generally referred to as Stockholmsbriggen, or "Stockholm's brig," she got an enthusiastic escort from some of the harbor's other historic vessels. It was a nice sight.

Jack Tar today...

The other day, a rather extravegant bark came into Stockholm Harbor and moored alongside the quay at Gamla Stan. She was some kind of a luxury cruise ship for the rich and famous and therefore lacked not a single excess. However, for all her elegant rigging, varnished mohogany, and carefuly furled sails, she was a fake. Her modern welded hull and spotless paint job exposed her for what she was, a steel hotel put to sea. The big stern with its imperial restaurant/bar inside, the covered fiberglass shoreparty motor launches common to cruise ships, the 'flag of convenience', and the open air bar on the weather deck revealed her lack of history all too well. Such a ship has no business sporting the rig of the classics...yet I suppose she was more pleasing to look at than the floating casinos that usually frequent the port.

As a chronic maritime history junky, I had to pace along side her all the same. Even if only to scoff at all her unnecessary adornments. It was then that I encountered the modern Jack Tar again, the working stiffs that toil day-in and day-out to keep these floating palaces glittering away as they criss-cross the oceans, tiptoing around unsavory weather chasing white sand beaches and 'Kodak moment' sunsets.
As has become the norm, on this particular encounter Jack Tar was once again a pair of Filipino sailors. The Philippines are the lastest nation to supply the world's merchant fleets with hardworking men willing to endure all kinds of hardship and injustice to make ends meet. The American, British, and Italian sailors have all but vanished from the waves.

The inequity that sailors suffer today was all too obvious when looking at these fellows working onboard (or rather, outboard) the Sea Cloud II. Here she was, one of the most luxurious and striking cruise ships in European waters and these guys, the crew of this magnificent ship, were spending a magical evening in the great, timeless metropolis of Stockholm...painting the hull.

It is the story of so many sailors, especially these days. No longer is there time for 'a girl in every port' or even the legendary sailors' taverns. Now, port visits are all work, be it loading cargo (formerly a duty strictly reserved for the stevedores) or doing vessel maintenance (smaller crews on bigger ships means this can't be accomplished at sea anymore). What's more, none of this work is particularly safe. These fellows were hanging high over a stone quay and balancing on a wobbly, multi-ton anchor that could easily crush a limb against the hull with the slightest shift. Yet they toil on because the money is good...because no one else will take the job.

A sight worthy of reflection.

Trosa Boat-building School...

On a fine Friday afternoon, Ole and Annette invited me to join them on a trip to the Trosa Boat-building School about an hour south of Stockholm.


Trosa, the little fishing town with its maze of centuries-old canals that we had visited on our way to Denmark in April, was much more green and lively now.


Little boats puttered up the canal against the current, squeezing past other craft and working their way up the 'S' turns toward the town center.

There, in a little square surrounded by shops and cafes, the summer 'locals' gathered to soak up the small town feel and a bit of coffee. Having satisfied ourselves with this check-up on the town, Ole, Annette, and I drove out to the nearby peninsula that was home to the boat-building school.

We walked down to the marshy edge of the Baltic, a littoral zone more akin to the Great Lakes' shorelines than that of a salty sea (although, not that salty. Only about 30% as much as the Atlantic or Pacific). The School had a nice little red boathouse out on an islet and it was there that we went to wait for the fleet.


As a prominent member of the Scandinavian wooden boat world, Ole knows the head of the school quite well and had been invited down to meet the 'graduating class' as they completed their 'final exams'.

The final exam consisted of a week-long sailing trip through the Stockholm Archipelago aboard the craft they had spent the last 8 months building. We had the fine pleasure of watching the little fleet come bobbing around the point and skitter over the water towards the cove.

The school is officially a Folkhögskol, or 'Folk High School'. It is a very common Swedish establishment for adults of all ages to attend for up to a year or two at some random point intheir lives--usually between jobs--and study some cultural art form be it music, dance, gardening, boatbuilding or whatever. It is a very uniquely Scandinavian kind of institution, reflective of the cultural philosophy for life-long self-improvement. Most people can get a sabbatical from their employer to take time for attending a Folkhögskol and they are curiously encouraging to employees wishing to take time off to learn the fiddle or synchronized swimming or whatever.

Well, anyway, as they came closer we could see that a few had only 'scraped by on the final exam'. Some of the craft were pretty visibly unstable, slab-sided walnutshells with ugly sharp angles that flopped from port to starboard as they rolled over the wavelets. But for the most part, it was an impressive end-of-the-year achievement--especially for a group of people, few of whom had ever been sailing before, much less built a boat.

Sailing right in to the shore, they beagn beaching the little craft one by one. A few of the new sailors stepped out dripping wet--apparently not all the seams were caulked tight--and began to haul gear ashore. Regardless of any shortcomings they may have found in their craft during the passage, they were all having a great time. I've never met an unhappy boat-builder--especially one new to the craft.

Indeed, building a wooden boat with one's own hands, transforming those raw planks and a daydream into a vessel that can carry a person over the expanse of the sea, is an experience like no other, giving its maker a thrill all too few people know these days. It is a power and self-confidence, a bond with a creation, and an appreciation for handcrafts that no other practice or method can teach.

Shortly after the students began running their craft up on the beach, the professors hove in sight, lumbering their way down the channel in a larger, square-rigged Norwegian fishing boat.

The wind was light but steady and they glided in effortlessly, leaving nothing more than a faint ripple astern.


...such beautiful boats...

After chatting with the 'graduates' for a bit, we left them to their unpacking and drying out while Ole, Annette, and I took to poking about the grounds, looking at the remains of long-abandoned skiffs in the bushes and the newly-built coastal fishing boats moored along the low, wooden seawall.

Some of them were really gorgeous constructions built with the finest wood and craftmanship.

They glistened with new paint and fresh tar, the pine-pitch smell eminating from the decks warming in the sun and flavoring the entire boatyard.

One of the 'professors' (his joke) took us up into the loft of an old barn-now-boathouse where a number of craft were being stored, restored, or even built. The floor was covered with a soft layer of fragrant sawdust and wood shavings, the inseparablly timeless trademark of a wooden boat yard.

I poked about, admiring the workmanship in these craft, most of which were built a half century ago or more by true, master boatbuilders. There was no woodfiller to be found, no shims or wedges driven into unsightly gaps, nor any open joints. They were flawlessly constructed and although they had obviously been decayed by exposure to weather and time, these craft retained all their physical perfection to the top.

Then I was shown a particularly interesting craft. She was only 18 feet long, but her builder--a fairly famous guy in Swedish boat-building history--had taken her on an incredible voyage in the late 1940s. He started from Sweden, sailed along the southern coast of Norway, then across the violent North Sea to England. Next, he went overland by train to the Irish Sea and onward to Dublin. From there he kept going west, over Ireland to sail the fabled Galway Bay.

...Then he went all the way back.

Such an amazing feat...and the lasting evidence of that spectacular voyage lay under a pile of plywood scrap and a thick layer of sawdust in a quiet little boathouse on the shores of the Baltic.

But alas, it was time to get going on our way back to Stockholm...

On the route home, we stopped at a former Swedish Nobleman's estate--now an event hall.


...and saw a moose in a field. Oddly, it was the first I've ever seen despite a life-time inthe US.


...and a mile or two further along the road, we spotted another out grazing in a farmer's field at dusk.

So, that was the quaint little Trosa Boat-building School.