Our anchorage on Angso was a lovely one, but was exposed to the north. Although the wind was not forecast to go round to the north until this afternoon, sods law dictated that it should do this early morning. Around 6.15am the anchor alarm went off. While never particularly a fan of alarms, anchor alarms are always good … I was awake anyway as the noise from the anchor chain had changed, but the alarm going off jolted me into action. After monitoring it for 10-15 minutes, I decided we were very slowly dragging and with gusts of around 15 knots from the north making the rocks a lee shore, it was time to make a move. So, I called Leslie and we weighed anchor and pottered out of Angso Norrviken. After a cup of tea and a gentle drift, we started heading off to Arholma down the main channel from Stockholm to Kappellskar. With a forecast of strong northerlies, we put a reef in the main from the off and this proved a good move.
After a couple of hours we rounded the point at Kappellskar and started heading north. The wind by this time was F5-6 gusting 7, so we took some job in, but still had a lovely beat. A couple of miles short of the turn into Arholma we took the job in and motor-sailed for a couple of miles to the final turn north into Arholma Osterhamn. There is some staging in Osterhamn, but it looked a little exposed to the strong northerly, so we decided to anchor. The only other boat there was a very solid looking British motorboat with a defaced red ensign. We think it was for the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk YC.
The anchor dug in well and the wind eased gradually during the evening, so we had a comfortable, if fairly chilly evening. The distance sailed was 31.3 miles. For details of our track, follow the link below: