Delphinus

After a short night stop anchored in the Blidosund we sailed through the picturesque Stockholm Archipelago to Wasahamnen marina and moored up close to our friends Tina and Braun who we had sailed with on the OCC rally. Within a couple of hours of tying up a huge summer storm swept through Stockholm, be experienced up to 60 knot winds and sustained some damage to our genoa has it somehow managed to partially unfurl itself, also our bimini seams split open, it took a frantic half hour in pounding rain to secure everything. That evening we met up with most of the OCC rally participants and had our farewell dinner together along with funny stories of the rally! We were amazed to see the destruction the storm had caused tree were down and some of our friends boats had been damaged. Our plan was to leave the boat in Stockholm for a few days whilst we flew back to the UK for a family wedding, so it was reassuring that we were moored next to Tina and Braun who had kindly offered to keep an eye on Delphinus.

Wasahamen marina is situated on Djurgården island, which has plenty to do we enjoyed a fun day out at Skansen, the world's first open-air museum, founded in 1891. Here you can stroll through five centuries of Swedish history, with a real sense of the past all around in the histori¬cal buildings, farms, shops and dwellings, peop¬led by characters in period dress. We particularly enjoyed the fresh cakes baked in traditional ovens, the traditional children's games and delivering a letter for the Post Office, this was particularly fun for Lily as she was given a postman's satchel and horn, on approach to the recipients farm we had to blow the horn to warn them of our arrival, then delivered the letter which the farmers wife read out. There is also a fair ground, aquarium and the famous Wasa museum.

On our return from the UK the glorious hot summer weather we had left behind had quite clearly changed since the storm, the winds were increasing and unfortunately from the SW, the direction we were heading back to the uk in. Our plans after Sweden were to head to Copenhagen to meet Paul's brother, wife and 2 boys and onto Gothenburg to meet back up with Jo who was rejoining us, then Southern Norway and across the North Sea back to SE UK. Unfortunately we soon realised that the weather was going to hold us back and ended up moored in Karlskrona southern Sweden for over a week. We felt so disheartened, since we set sail the previous spring we have always managed to meet our deadlines. Fortunately though we were only 3 hours drive from Copenhagen so decided to drive there and stay in a hotel for a couple of nights.