Reaching the archipelago

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Thu 4 Nov 2021 00:11
Several hundred nautical miles of the Swedish eastcoast is archipelago with tenthousands of rocks and islands scattered from north to south. It reaches a good way north of Stockholm and especially the Stockholm archipelago is a very popular cruisingground in the summer.
Leaving Borgholm we made landfall in the archipelago after sunset and with a force 7 from ssw. This can be tricky and the fairways are much easier to follow if you use help from the lighthouses and proceed in their white sectors.
The problem here is the electronic charts/chartplotters which are not really up to the task. To use the cursor and pinpoint each lighthouse for it´s character is timeconsuming and you loose the overall perspective. A great aid then is to have papercharts for the perspective and characters of lights,radar with waypoints for the immidiate reality and electronic charts as a base.
In the end when you need accuracy withing meters you need to have a good handheld searchlight.

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