Gotska sandön

The first time I sailed to Gotland the weather was good. A distance of seventy nautical miles took us ten hours – with the boat we had back then it was a remarkable time, averaging seven knots the entire way.

The journey home was another story.

Our last stop before returning to the Stockholm archipelago was an island north of Gotland called Gotska Sandön. The island is protected and is said to have been the home of pirates once upon a time. The waters are too shallow for keel boats to dock by land, so the only option is to anchor off the shore and row to land if you want to visit the island. We had a beautiful day snorkeling and tanning, the forecast saying the weather would stay steady. This turned out to be completely false.

The wind picked up that night and so did the waves. With the island being so low – practically just a pile of sand with some trees – it provided us with little to no shelter. That first night it rained, the clouds upsetting the direction of the wind making it twist us back and forth. Early at four the next morning I heard my mum cry out a string of curses from outside: our inflatable rubber dinghy had come loose in the unforgiving weather.

As my mum had cried tears of frustration my dad said, “We can sit here and feel sorry for ourselves, curse the things we didn’t do, but the truth still stands: our dinghy is halfway to Estonia by now and there is nothing we can do to change that. We need to focus on our current situation.”

He was right of course, and my mother knew that as well. So after a few more swears, a few more tears, she got back inside.

As morning dawned and the sun showed its face the winds still did not subdue. The swell of the sea did not falter, and with the waves beating us one way and the wind pushing us back we were stuck in a to and fro worse than a tivoli ride. Dad and I retreated out to the cockpit where we treated our seasickness with fresh air and a constant sugar intake. Mum was the only one immune to the movement, left alone to overlook the boat as well as nursing us.

Stuck with us in this sunny storm were two other boats. One was a giant: a fifty foot long sailing yacht, strong enough to master the weather; it left sometime during that first night. Our second neighbor was a small Maxi with a young couple onboard. They were getting tossed around by the waters much worse than us, and by the second evening they must have had enough. And so had we.

As we were getting ready to leave we found the Maxi drifting with no one visible on deck. We pulled our anchor and beelined to them, dad pulling out our old horn bellowing out in the dusk. An alarmed man came stumbling out of the cabin fully dressed in sailing gear.

“You’re drifting!” my dad yelled.

“We know!” the man yelled back, his words almost getting lost in the wind. “We’re about to leave!”

We parted ways, us choosing a heading straight north for the archipelago, them turning west towards the mainland.

The Maxi quickly left our mind as we sailed beyond the cover of land and were hit with the full blast of the storm. The winds out there were much worse, the waves towering the hull of the boat, cascading down over deck and into the cockpit. We fought Mother Nature for a good two hours before turning back the way we came – in that time we hadn’t even lost sight of the low sliver of land behind us. With the wind at our back we covered the same distance in a mere 30 minutes, beating our own personal speed record – that with only a third of our headsail rolled out. With our last bit of stamina we managed to toss anchor close to our old spot, where the water had evened out enough for all of us to sleep inside.

“I wonder what happened to them,” my mother had said right before sleep claimed us. “The Maxi.”

“I hope they made it,” I whispered back.

The scream of a woman woke me up. I was up in a second, still dad beat me to the doors out to the cockpit. When I peeked out behind him it was like seeing a ghost.

The Maxi was dipping behind us, the woman of the young couple yelling at the top of her lungs. It’s headsail was hurriedly tied down, crumples up like tissue paper across the deck. When the woman saw us come out she completely broke down.

“We didn’t make it,” she cried. “We dropped both our anchors when we left, we have nothing to keep us in place.” It was a struggle to hear her over the wind.

“Toss us a rope and we’ll give you our spare.” The sun had risen a hand’s breadth by the time the Maxi was safe again, this time by a borrowed anchor. And as midday came we made our second attempt at leaving.

Stopping by the Maxi we exchanged numbers and bid farewell, the wind no less mighty but the sea less daunting. By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the Stockholm archipelago the sun had set once more, and we crashed back into bed, leaving this eventful trip behind us.

A few weeks later we were contacted by the owners of the Maxi. They had left two days after us when the winds had calmed and had made it back to the mainland in one piece, and were now visiting Stockholm by car for the weekend with our anchor in tow. Dad met up with them and as a thanks for the help we were given a brass candlestick that still decorates our living room.