Last year, we acquired Svalen, then called Annamaria and registered in Keil, Germany. Now, she has been re-named and registered in Inverness, Scotland. We did it because of Karen’s new job in Sweden and my forthcoming retirement. We needed somewhere to live in Sweden, and the new boat had to be well insulated and heated for the Swedish winters. After a long search, and quite unexpectedly, we decided on this beautiful Haalberg-Rassy 49, built in their boatyard near Goteborg in Western Sweden in 1992.
We sailed Svalen from Amsterdam to Stockholm via the Keil canal and the Limfjord (and many other places en route including beautiful Gotland in the Baltic sea), with the help of friends and family. This allowed us to get to know the boat, and discover any problems, most now happily resolved.
In 2017 we mainly pottered about in the Stockholm archepelago, getting to know our local surroundings.
In 2018, we plan to sail to Denmark, Norway and Shetland before having a tour around Scotland, again all with family and friends. We plan to leave Stockholm towards the end of May. We will return to Stockholm in September.
This blog follows on from our previous one at aldarionrundtrussia2104.com which was about our adventures with the staysail schooner Aldarion, including the sail around western Russia and Scandinavia using the Russian inland waterways, lakes and rivers, the White Sea, the Barents Sea and North Cape, completed in 2014. It is simply a space for friends to follow us on new sailing adventures.
Svalen can also be followed in real time while sailing on the marinetraffic.com website, her callsign being MBLN 3, and her MMSI being 232009732.
Sailing with Svalen 