Well, the last days have certainly been ones I could easily do without. What a depressing, irritating and unhappy experience this part of Skåne has been. While the ghastly weather hasn't help, it was really the total lack of facilities for visitors that has finally been the last straw. There is a myth that all people who sail are filthy rich, therefore anyone who offers a service connected with boats feels as though they have the right to charge the earth for anything as obviously we can afford it. We have long been annoyed by the prices charged for spare boat parts or anything that may have the word "marine" in it and are resigned to being robbed or to finding cheaper, creative solutions.

Our annoyance over the last couple of days has been over the complete lack of mooring places at any large sized town and the usurious rates extracted by smaller harbours to simply tie up your boat, plus their willingness to overcrowd a harbour excessively to extract the last cent from people regardless of safety. In this part of Sweden, they charge for everything - tie up your boat is one fee, if you want electricity, that's extra. Want a shower? That's extra. Ditto for using the laundry or even going to the toilet. You get the sneaking suspicion that your wallet is very welcome but that you are not.

And all of that is contingent on you finding a space in their tiny, shallow, polluted harbour. I had to laugh when I discovered that the guest harbour in Malmö was located seven kilometres away from the town itself and had a whopping TWO guest places. We are talking about Sweden's third largest city here. Even a little backwater like Nynäshamn has a guest harbour for 200 boats. But in Skåne, you are forced to beg along the coast, look at tiny, shallow fishing harbours or hope for a spare spot at one of the boat clubs. One begins to feel very unwelcome.

When we left Råå, we knew it was going to be a wet, cold, miserable day. We were mentally prepared for it and in addition we were well dressed for rain and wind and had made sure that the pets were safe and warm. We didn't have long to wait before the first squall hit and it rained torrentially for an hour. Visibility was only a few metres and we kept a good lookout for other boats but only saw one coast guard boat. Everyone else had obviously decided to stay in port for the day. I'm sure the commercial ships were out, but we stayed well away from the shipping lanes and close to the Swedish coast. Our only concern was avoiding fishing nets, so I peered into the gloom constantly for signs of net markers.

As we glided down the coastline, we passed several full harbours - Ålanbodarna, Borstahusen, Landskrona. The weather cleared for a short time and a few Danish boats appeared as we passed Barsebäckshamn, with a view of the twin cubes of the contoversial Barsebäck nuclear power station facing the water. The reactors have been closed after enormous political pressure, but they have yet to be decommissioned.




The weather reprieve was shortlived, however and shortly more clouds and rain descended. It was rather interesting to watch the weather that day. The dark patches indicating rain were sweeping over from Denmark. We would watch them cross the strait miles in from of us, like a solid mass. It would be clear for a little while, then another one would appear on the Danish side and then make its way across the water to Malmö. We got caught in the tail end of a couple of them, but there was nothing like the downpour we experienced in the morning.

In the early afternoon we spotted Malmö, with the well known (and controversial) landmark building Turning Torso standing out even in the poor visibility.




The rest of the city was barely visible with the mist and rain obscuring much of the view, but we were hopeful of seeing a great deal of it over the next few days. We wanted to find a vet for Lambi as well as catch up with five friends who live in the town. I had been in contact with them all and looked forward to a relaxing few days of gasbagging.

At this point, our plans began to unravel. We approached the impressive spans of Öresund Bridge, knowing that this is where the guest harbour was located.




There are two harbours listed. Surely there was a place at one of them you would think. Well, you'd be wrong. Lagunen has no permanent guest places at all. You simply have to scan the harbour looking for a space and hoping it is marked with a green disk. With the bad weather, the local boat owners are in port so there was no room. At nearby Limhamn, there are two spaces at the end of one pier (and there were ten German boats tied up to those two places).

I was really upset as I had so looked forward to relaxing with my friends for a few days. Lars-Göran realised this, so he scanned the chart and thought we could go a little further south to another place that seemed to have a nature harbour. It was close enough for us to venture to Malmö and I readily agreed, so we left Limhamn and went under the bridge.

I was worried that we might be too far away in Klagshamn, especially remembering how hard it was to get from Råå to Helsingborg. What if there were no buses to Malmö from here? Lars-Göran assured me that the bus companies in regional areas were usually pretty good and that this place was popular as a nature area, so there was bound to be a public transport link.




While sailing there, I read a little in our coast guide about the area and saw that it used to be a limestone quarry but that had closed in the 1930s. There was a guest harbour located there, but we were intrigued by the harbour basin you can see on the left in this overhead photo.

You can tell from the photo that the areas around Klagshamn are shallow and prone to sand drifts, so we kept a good eye on the depth metre to avoid hitting the bottom. We went inside the first sea wall and turned left to look and see if we could drop anchor in that area, which had no boats at all there. We scanned the shore and saw remains of the old limestone works and cement works and a couple of broken piers. We looked carefully to see if there were signs to prohibit anchoring or warnings for cables and finding none, we happily prepared to anchor.





I steered while Lars-Göran dropped anchor and commenced to dig it in. At this point, we heard someone call from the shore and he said we could not anchor there. We asked why and he had no real satisfactory answer apart from that occasionally the navy boats came there and they needed the whole space to turn around. Neither of us believed this for a second. The entrance was extremely shallow (under 2 metres) so how could they get into the harbour. We pointed out that there were no signs about this and that we live in an area dominated by the navy so we know they signpost every rock in the place where they go. He went off then, but returned with another man and they both started saying that we couldn't stay there. The guest harbour was next door, not in this bay.

Another guy joined them and we saw them pointing and at this stage we both decided that we would not have a minute's peace with these people around and while we both consider that we could stay where we were under the Swedish right of public access, it seemed less trouble to leave. They were happy to see us pull up our anchor and ran along the shore to direct us to the guest harbour. We had no intention of staying there, feeling as though this was simply harrassment, so despite the late hour we prepared to head south again. They saw us turn out towards the exit and called out that we were going the wrong way and continued the shouting and trying to wave us back long after we left.




Lars-Göran was really angry with how we were treated and just wanted to leave the area as fast as possible. I agreed that it was not the best, but I still hoped that we could stop at Höllviken, right by the canal at Falsterbo and perhaps things might look better in the morning and we could see what we could do. The Turning Torso was still visible in the distance and I hoped we could go back to Malmö.

That hope was dashed when we were woken up in the night by a knock on our boat and a demand to pay for mooring to an old disused pier at the entrance to the canal. Apparently the boat club has been given permission to collect a staggering fee simply for being there. We pointed out that this was not the guest harbour, but a disused area and he said it made no difference. They had the right to collect a fee for any boat moored anywhere in the whole 2 km stretch of the canal. Pay up or move. Much to his surprise, we chose to move and we used the plotter to moor in the same position, but on the outside of the sea wall in a deep, open bay. We had heard the forecast and felt safe there provided the winds kept to the south.




We woke to a sunnier day, with Malmö still visible in the distance. I thought we should stay the day and decide how to proceed from here as well as give me a chance to do the washing and bake some bread. I had no sooner put the dough away to rise when we heard the sound of powerboats and felt rocking waves. A group of people with jet skis had arrived and they drove around and around our boat, producing big waves and making it impossible to be on the boat. It is beginning to feel like a conspiracy.

I tried to put a bright, cheerful slant on things, but Lars-Göran was too angry and tense to take heed. He just wanted to be as far away from there as possible, so reluctantly I had to accept that we would not be going to Malmö. Instead I had to batten down and prepare to go through the canal and head up the east coast. I have no idea where we are going at this stage. "Just away from here" is as far as Lars-Göran will commit himself. With worsening weather forecast and even gales predicted in the area in a few days, I admit that I am feeling very low. I just hope the change of scene will perk us both up.