Sailing Positive Waves

Freja helped us with line handling on the last lock going up.  After a two week interlude at stugan (the family summer cottage on the Baltic Sea in northern Sweden), the next leg of our adventure took us through the Göta Canal. We had (still have?) hopes of spending the winter in northern Norway but border restrictions due to Covid may make that impossible. Regardless, we had a trip booked through the Göta Canal on September 14 in order to quickly get us to the west coast of Sweden. The canal is an absolute marvel of civil engineering. The total distance is 190km (102 nautical miles, 118 statute miles), 87 of which were dug by hand by 58,000 Swedish soldiers between 1810 and  1832. Not too big of a deal if you're digging through dirt, but most of the surface is solid granite. Not to mention the long winters. There are 58 locks that rise the boats a total of 91.8 meters above sea level. You can read more about the canal here:  Gota Kanal history . Fellow sailors and kid boat s/v Ran

Sunset off the coast of Denmark. Massive wind farms and shipping traffic were the two most common things we had to avoid.  We spent a couple days at a marina just north of Kiel, refilling water and resupplying milk, eggs, and produce. Of course it was also important to stock up on German chocolate and wine! We also had a mechanic complete the 50 hour service of our Volvo diesel engine. It is very important to check up on the engine and also to maintain the warranty so we were happy to find a full-service mechanic.  We left Laboe with beautiful conditions to sail to Sweden. We had plans to sail either to Visby, in Gotland, or further north to one of the islands in the Stockholm archipelago. However after a fantastic 24 hours (save some pretty sloppy conditions just south of Denmark where we lost the wind and were surrounded by some wake-producing ships), the wind and seas really picked up and the kids started to feel uncomfortable and maybe a little scared. While I was taking a morning

 Here's a little video I made highlighting our sail from France to Sweden. Music courtesy of a street band in Treguier, France. Enjoy!

We arrived at the western entrance to the Kiel Canal around 5:30 in the morning. The sun hadn't risen yet, but we had enough light to see where we were going. I woke the kids up because they didn't want to miss the "boat elevator." We called the lock master who directed us to enter "Kiel Canal Eins," the older and smaller lock, separate from the huge lock for commercial ships.  The locks closing on the Elbe River Locks can initially seem daunting--there are rules as to when to enter, where to tie up, how to tie up, and then there is the notion of lots of rushing water raising your boat (or lowering it). In practice, however, they are simple. We entered the lock area, motored alongside one of the floating docks, I jumped off, and Freja tossed me the lines. I ran each line through a metal ring on the dock and handed the bitter end back to Freja. Hans tied them off on board, I got back aboard, and we waited for the opposite entrance to open. Because we entered