Sailing to Landsort – sweet, nice, yucky and scary...
The voyage started well after waving bye-bye to our Midsummer friends Sofia and Martin. We started sailing southwards for real. First sweet stop at Dalarö in order to get some little things fixed. We are anchored by an island overnight and then continue to one of the favorite stops in this area of the archipelago – Landsort, the lighthouse island.
Sweet Landsort village on the south tip of Öja Island is a super-sweet spot, but with very limited possibilities to anchor. Here we are on the west side, protected from the south-eastern winds and waves. There is also a tiny little dock on the Eastern side...a personal favorite not too many sailors use...
Nice anchoring south of Dalarö
Late at night, with a sleeping crew, we anchored by a random island south of Dalarö, We then started the day with a soft morning and a homeschooling class with Kaikāne – about spelling and reading, something he enjoys depending on the words and the mood:-)
Homeschooling is accepted in the USA where Kaikane is born. Enabling children and families to design their education at a pace that suits the child's interests and desires. And allows them to travel without skipping school...
Yucky algae encounter north of Öja/Landsort
The next day we continued in nice winds southwards and spotted this summer's first algae belt. At first just a slim line, but then later on we sailed through really yucky, deep, and wide belts of algae. See images from our Insta-story below:
Just three deciliters of urine can fertilize 1.000 liters of water with toxic algae. An experiment from Stockholm University clearly shows why we should not forget that the sea is not endless when we need to pee.
ANTI-PEE LAW IN SWEDEN SINCE 2015 It has been prohibited to discharge toilet waste into seas, lakes, and inland waterways since 2015. Few boaters know that the ban applies to all recreational boats and that Sweden's entire maritime territory is covered by the law.
We are proud to say we haven't dropped any human waste into the seawater since 2020 when we, in fact, first came across the law. Read more about how we are dealing with black water here. By not releasing toilet waste, you help reduce the eutrophication of our waters. You also contribute to improving the local environment when smaller amounts of bacteria are spread in seas and lakes.
We did see other things than algae...i.e the classic lighthouse on the south tip of the island. It was built already in1658 when the Baltic Sea was healthy and brimming with fish and oxygen.
A scary thunderstorm is passing just by...
If increasing algae in the seawater is a consequence of human behaviors, one can assume that the sudden and harsh thunderstorms with extreme rainfalls are another sign. Both are signs that correspond with what the scientists are claiming. We experienced both of them.
After a nice evening dinner onboard by the Öja Island we fell asleep and had no idea about what was coming. No reports warned us. However, a very loud thunder woke us up. The rain was dumping and pounding on our deck. Then we could hear that thunderstorm coming closer to us, the lightning lit up the sky and inside the boat more and more. Should we stay in our beds or dress up in our rain gear and get up on land? Here is an image from the app Blixtvakt. It is a great helper in those situations, it registers every single lightning in real-time with a red dot, and keeps them fading away over time so one can see how a thunderstorm develops and in what direction it moves. We were lucky this time. It passed just northeast of Landsort.
