3-5th August

Having climbed the ladder of locks at Berg the night before and feeling pleased for having got ahead of ourselves we had showers in the morning and noticed people queuing up to go further up the locks. The nice wooden boat was first in the queue with another sailing boat also waiting. We thought we’d better join the queue so went along and secured to the opposite side of the lock to the others, the port side, and soon the lock operator came down to say he’d take the other two first and we’d go up next. We also noticed that the wooden boat had lost the top of it’s mast, having googled her and seeing that her mast was 24 metres tall we assumed she’d attempted the canal injudiciously. We later found out that this wasn’t the case and she’d lost it whilst sailing and was going to Motala for repairs to it. We sat patiently and soon the lock gate opened and we went in. Once we’d done the first double lock the lock keeper told us we’d have to wait as a passenger boat, they have priority, was coming up next and we’d go after him. We waited for about 45 minutes as the unattractive boat came up and went past us, then we carried on. We’d hoped to get to the Castle on lake Vattern on the Sunday but the lock keeper didn’t think that we’d manage as it was now after ten and we were still in Berg but we pressed on, passing Borensberg, where he had recommended that we stop, and to be fair it looked like a nice place, we had lunch in Lake Boren sailing most of it at a good lick and ended up at Motala, just before lake Vattern with the Castle about an hour into Lake Vattern in our sights. Unfortunately there was a broken bridge at Motala so we ended up stopping here at an interesting museum / venue with a steam locomotive on display as it had been a locomotive manufacturing plant in the steam era. It was, however,  closed by the time we reached it. We had to walk over the canal on a floating  swing bridge where we’d hear in the morning about whether the bridge ahead of us was working or not. We had a good dinner sharing 3 plates of caeser salad, poke bowl, and pizza like but not pizza dish of salami and cheese on a thin crust at the Cafe opposite our berth.

The next morning after showering we learned that the bridge was now working so we set off again, passed the floating swing bridge and a couple of others and were soon in Lake Vattern, we motored to the castle and moored in the moat and went for a walk. The castle was quite castley with an impressive chapel complete with tiny organ, although, to be fair, it looked hundreds of years old. There were cannons in the tower and an exhibition on armour manufacture by a chap who’d taught himself and could knock you up a bespoke set of working, rather than costume, armour in just six months and it looked impressively engineered, if not much good against a drone or bullet. 

We wandered around the town, visiting the Cathedral where St Bridget had left some relics and an impressive building it is, it’s still visited by pilgrims and has reverted to Catholicism having been protestant for some centuries. We then wandered around the town looking at the shops, all interestingly individual but not selling anything we actually wanted or needed. We had lunch of open prawn sandwiches and coffee before wending our way back to the boat for a 1400 departure, according to my schedule, and we were  soon sailing well again, under just the genoa towards and then past Karlsborg where I was going to have a beer but as I’d omitted to top up the fridge and they were warm I didn’t and we carried on  towards Forsvik. At the bridge at Karlsborg a Swedish boat was waiting on the lay by berth. The bridge wasn’t opening and it was a narrow canal with a strong wind on our port quarter, after a couple of astern / ahead evolutions with us drifting towards the leeward bank on the starboard side  I  thought we may not manage to stop ouselves running aground as we turned to starboard a lot going astern and then when we corrected it going ahead were running out of room ahead. Luckily the bridge started opening and, although Ailsa asked the other boat if we could just shoot through whilst they were in the midst of letting go, they, and then ourselves were soon making our way through the bridge and we  followed them out into the lake, wending our way behind them to Forsvik. As we approached I dropped a little astern to give ourselves some thinking time. They arrived and took a pontoon berth to port, we nosed our way in and were thinking about going to an alongside berth on the opposite side but it wasn’t clear as to whether there was enough depth whilst an appealing berth to their starboard side, on the pontoons, seemed like a good enough place to try, particularly as an enthusiastic, elderly, inebriated Swedish lady, was on the berths also waving us in, in a sort of happy, give it a go, what could go wrong sort of a  way. We did, she took our headlines, we, sort of just about, fitted in between the arms of the pontoons and soon we were re rigging our ladder onto the pulpit having secured ourselves in place. Once  tidied up we  settled down to a gin and tonic and some crisps and then Ailsa and I went for an explore whilst Jean cooked dinner. The canal at this point had been blasted out of the bedrock and was really narrow, we walked up to the lock and had a look around, not a lot to see really, then came back and had some fajitas and trimmings for dinner before a game of monopoly cards before bed.

In the morning once showered and breakfasted I went up to the lock office to ask about going through the lock. The weather forecast was for SWly gales and some boats beside us had elected to stay put for the time being. Once we had a clearer picture of how things worked and assurance that no big passenger boats were coming the other way we thought it was time to head off. There were a couple of boats coming the other way and, inevitably, once we’d let go and were sorting ourselves out at  the canal entrance, they had exited the lock and heading our way. As space was limited I chickened out and turned around to exit the tight space in order to turn around so as to make our way up towards to the lock and the  first one out of the lock, wanting to berth, also, because of the tight space, also elected to proceed outbound before turning around to come. back in again In the meantime another boat had arrived from Karlsborg and, seeing the green light, for us, had proceeded up the canal into the lock. We also went up to the lock and at the last minute had to change from a port side to plan to a starboard side to plan as this other boat had decided to go port side to, despite having landed her crew on the starboard side before going in. Anyway we crowded her into the lock, a special lock, as it was also blasted out of the bedrock so  had uneven rocky sides, more like a climbing wall than a brick wall and slightly fearsome in it’s likelyhood of scratching shiny fibreglass boat sides. The other boat was a father and son team on a new 33 ft boat. They hadn’t really gone far enough forward to make things easy for us but, with some mucking about with fenders and lines we all were raised the final few metres up to the top elevation of the Gota canal and soon were exiting the lock to follow the canal out into Lake Viken. There are a series of narrow channels early on in the lake, again all cut from bedrock before the lake opens out a bit and here we pulled out a double reefed genoa and sailed up to the Northern end of the lake where we had to turn to port to go SW, into the wind, now gusting to 30 knots and we furled the sail and motored the rest of the way, it was quite rough but not too bad.  Arriving at the other end we had a few minutes of peace, sheltered behind trees before the first lock and used this time to put the fenders back over the side and prepare. There was a bridge before the lock and it was signalling red but the lock keeper waved us on and we approached gingerly, not wanting to run out of room before arriving. After a minute or two, nail biting, the bridge withdrew and we had a clear path into the lock and went all the way forward as the other boat came up astern of us on the other side. The lake had been the highest of the locks and so this one was now going down,  the first down one we’d encountered and it was very peaceful, it was also the second, hand driven one so Ailsa did her thing, opening one of the gates with the capstan. After we’d exited it was lovely and peaceful pottering along the canal with most of the gale of wind passing above us. It was a ‘sunshine with showers’ sort of a day and we had a couple of showers, quite heavy to keep us amused. There were about 5 bridges to go before we were to get to Toreboda where we were meeting Sheena. The penultimate bridge was a rail bridge and arriving here, in a bit of a gusty period, the signpost said welcome to Toreboda, the next bridge opening will be at 1500, which was in about 20  minutes so we tied up to a layby berth and then helped the boat astern with his lines as a heavy, squally shower passed through. Once the bridge opened we followed the other boats through (there was also the Polish boat from our first lock at Soderkoping ahead of us)  and we were arriving at the berths on the South side of the canal. There weren’t many spaces left there but was one at the end and we turned around to face the wind (to make the spray hood more useful) and tied up alongside. After some shopping we went to the station to meet Sheena and all returned to the boat for tea, gin and gravadlax. We had intended to make a chicken pie for dinner and had decided to buy the chicken rather than use some from the freezer but the local supermarket was fresh out of chicken so we ended up, having had the starter aboard, going out to a restaurant  beside the canal for a selection of good food which was not as described on the menu but good and plentiful. The waitress was nice but after we’d procrastinated about ordering drinks, went off and had dinner herself with her boyfriend before returning to take our order 15 minutes later (at which time we had decided on food but were still faffing when thinking about drinks). Back on the boat some Belgian chocolates accompanied some digestifs and soon we were asleep.

Sent from my iPad