Splendid isolation

The Swedish school holidays are over, the summer is drawing to a close – the islands are purple with heather, it’s actually dark at night for a while (dark enough that last night I saw the stars reflected in the water when I got up for a pee) and the archipelago is dramatically empty. Yesterday we barely saw a single boat but did see three eagles and a seal. Nature is reclaiming its kingdom and it’s well worth a slight drop in temperature to be able to moor in such splendid solitude.

As the only representatives of humanity, we felt obliged to take a quick selfie.

And this was the sunset – the bay was completely sheltered from the wind. Today we sailed in warm sunshine through an area clustered thickly with islands. The wind was coming from the back, so we couldn’t really feel it. It was my favourite kind of archipelago sailing. We moored in a bay that was described as being very sheltered but a bit close to civilisation, and to our amazement we saw a car driving along a road only a hundred metres or so away. A succession of bridges links a chain of islands all the way to Furusund and the road happens to pass Akerholmen.