Passage to Denmark...

On to Göteborg!

Göteborg is the big city of Sweden's western coast and as I discovered during my brief visit (I was in the city not more than 20 minutes), it is a bustling modern harbor exchanging cargoes on a scale I have never seen before--including New York Harbor (which is almost a ghost town since containerization took over).

Ole, Annette, and I drove here to catch one of these ugly space-age high-speed car ferries across the Danish Straits to Denmark. Unfortunately, our near-perfect timing did not allow us to poke about the city or visit the maritime museum (I will return!) and so we went straight through town to the dock and drove aboard.

Here's a map I ripped off the internet showing a bunch of international ferry routes. Our little route is not marked, but it runs from Göteborg ("Gothenborg" by their spelling) straight across the channel to a place called Frederikshavn (not shown). Note that ships are still the way to travel around here. Denmark has over 70 domestic ferry routes in operation all year.

So we parked in the spacious car deck and then went topside to see what there was to see.


As soon as I came out on deck I was greeted by a wonderful sight; a big ro-ro (roll-on, roll-off automobile carrier) was just easing in toward one of the city's big shipyards.

The not-so-little tug tethered to the behemoth pulled and frothed as it tried to haul the big ship (amusingly named "Madame Butterfly") toward the drydock.

Ole explained to me that Wallenius Wilhelmsen is the main carrier for Volvo exports.
Note all the green ventilators on deck to vent the exhaust fumes when the cars are being driven on and off the ship.

A second tug alongside gives a big push on the ship's starboard quarter to aim her into the floating drydock. Note the Swedish courtesy flag flying from the ship's signal mast.

Rushing around to the other side, the second tug stands by to give another nudge as the pair finishes working the ship up to the dock.

Amidst all this excitement I was fianlly beginning to look around and see what a big and bustling port Göteborg really is. This is just one shipyard we are looking at, and although Ole laments how many have closed in recent years, the harbor still retains a very active shipyard industry. Here an enormous trans-channel car ferry sits in a drydock for maintenance and repairs.

As our ferry pulled out from the pier and we began to make our way down the channel, we got a good look into the drydocks. The ferry's drydock is just being flooded again, slowly settling into the harbor to let the ship float free. Meanwhile, a tanker sits in a smaller dock high and dry. Note that the anchors and the many tons of chain have been lowered onto the drydock to reduce the pressure of the tanker's weight on the hull plating.

Picking up speed, the ferry gurgles and whines along (it has jet-turbine engines, hence the whine) and we pass under the high bridge that divides the residential side of Göteborg from its industrial, commercial side.

Along one bank stands the Swedish Navy's old powder house where the fleet's gunpowder was prepared and stored in bygone eras.

Across the channel stands the impressive remains of one of Göteborg's biggest shipyards, the Eriksberg crane. I am not sure how to communicate to you how big this thing is. It is absolutely huge! For example, those things underneath it are big cruising sailboats--there's a whole marina under there!!! Look at the apartment complexes on the right! This thing is mind-bogglingly enormous....

Just to the right of it is the little shipyard (now also gone) where the East Indiaman Götheborg was built.

Götheborg is a replica of an East Indiaman (long-range trading vessel) that tragicly sank right outside the harbor after a voyage all the way to China and back in the 1770s. Resurrected in the form of this new ship launched two years ago, the new East Indiaman Götheborg is now enroute to China. The most recent report was that she has now made landfall in Australia. In a few months she will dock in Shanghai.

A little further down the channel we found the heart of Götheborg harbor. Dozens of ships of every size and description were there loading and unloading cargoes of infinite variety. Here a small containership loads containers aboard while a much bigger, medium-sized vessel astern unloads.

Here's a summary photo; from front to back, containers, cars, and oil tanks. Just a few representatives of the many cargoes flowing through this major port city.

At the oil depot (which was huge!) tankers lined the shores and the piers taking on and discharging oil. They came in every size; some small enough to head up the Göte Canal into central Sweden, other bigger ships just arriving from Dutch refineries overseas.

Here a couple of mid-sized tankers are riding high in the bows as the oil surges ashore to the big storage tanks on the hill.

Meanwhile, some coastal tankers, turned around and ready to sail, top off their tanks before taking their precious cargoes south around southern Sweden and onward to the Baltic ports of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Finaland, and Sweden.

Götheborg also displayed the newest designs in commercial shipping including this multi-purpose vessel that was half Ro-ro and half container freighter...interesting...

...or these pecualiar looking vessels that are reportedly long-range ferries.

Yet, these modern designs are still hemmed in by history, having to sail past the old fort that has stood as the sentinal of Göteborg for centuries.

We had not even squeezed out of the channel before more ships came through. This big tanker (but still not of the scale of the fabled supertankers) came churning down the channel, skirting the rocks...

A tug stood by to lend a hand if one should be needed to assist in steering the unwieldy vessel.

Then we passed the final lighthouse in the little archipelago of islands dotting the entrance to Göteborg harbor--and indeed, the entire Swedish coast.

Meanwhile I spotted a little orange boat barrelling along astern of us and closing the distance fast...

As she got closer I could see she was a pilot boat, charging out to sea to deliver or retrieve a harbor pilot put aboard transient ships to guide them safely in or out of the harbor.

She was certainly in a hurry, spewing huge fans of white water out in front of her every time she struck a wave.

For a minute I thought she was coming to us to remove a pilot from our ship, but then she charged past, intent on catching another vessel.

Off our starboard beam was a tanker making its way out of the harbor. She was heavily loaded and slow so she hung to the side of the channel to let the fast and light ferry cruise by.

When the pilot boat reached her, it slowed down and hung along its flank like a little dog, waiting for the moment to receive its treat and run home.

What a picture of the energy industry (and maybe the future); an oil tanker and wind generators. A shift in the offing.

Soon we left the tanker, the pilot boat, the lighthouses and indeed, Sweden, behind and headed out onto the open water.

As the jet-engines revved up and we gathered speed, maxing out at around 45 knots, we left Sweden astern...

...and made our passage to Denmark.

We were not alone out here. Since 1500 this channel between Denmark and Sweden has been the busiest shipping lane in the world (surpassed in recent years by the Straits of Melacca and the Panama Canal). Off our port beam...and then our port quarter, and then finally astern of us; we were trailed by another car ferry trudging across the shipping lanes to Denmark. The crossing was difficult, like crossing a busy street in New York. At any given moment there were a minimum of 8 huge ships in sight going in or out of the Baltic at a steady clip of 20 knots or more. The ferry, considerably more maneuverable than these heavily loaded transports, was constantly dodging ships.

As we neared the Danish coast we were spotted by a Danish Navy patrol that heaved around and followed us for a bit...

But soon lost interest in the faster ferry and trotted off to look at a freighter hugging the Danish coast.

Yes, we were in Danish waters now. After just 2 hours at 45 knots, we were coming into port. Those who had been enjoying the benefits of international travel and spent the crossing gambling and buying duty-free alcohol had to call it 'quits' and start ambling back to their cars down below.

As we approached the harbor we were welcomed by what is probably the single most recognized symbol of Denmark these days, the windmills. Denmark uses more wind energy than any other nation in the world and is constantly improving the efficiency of these machines which are almost exclusively a product of Denamrk.

Then, alas we sailed past the light on the breakwater and entered the port of Fredrikshavn.

The engines whining down, we glided across the harbor (noting how far astern the traditional ferry was) and swung toward the dock.

This little man-made harbor was also a busy spot, cluttered with off-duty icebreakers, Danish naval training vessels and this peculiar ferry designed to transport trains.

Then, while I was admiring the Orskov Shipyard and the fascinating 'hole-in-the-water' visual effect of looking down into an emptied graving dock, the PA system came on and although I could not speak Danish, I knew we were being asked to return to our cars.

Thus we were in Denmark...