The massive structure of Svartklubben lighthouse looms on the horizon. Standing on the small Swedish island of Singö, it guards the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia. Passing it feels like we’re opening the pages of a new book.

That morning, we’d hauled our anchor out of the mud in the beautiful Arholma anchorage, the northernmost island of the Stockholm archipelago. Sweden has so many excellent cruising grounds, each of which can keep you busy for a lifetime.

We’d spent a month on the south-east coast of Sweden, meandering between the thousands of islands. But now we were going to where even Swedes rarely sail: the Gulf of Bothnia. From the Stockholm archipelago to the northernmost point of the Gulf it’s roughly 400 miles in a straight line. But we will be sailing a circuitous route, and there are many distractions along the way.

Choosing sides

The first thing to decide is whether we’re going to loop around the Gulf of Bothnia clockwise or anticlockwise. The prevailing winds are south-westerly, but when we were there they tended to blow from the south-south-east.

To avoid having to sail dead downwind, we decide to sail north along the Swedish coast and south again along the Finnish coast.

Our first stop is the quaint village of Öregrund, where we find a good spot in the small guest harbour. Öregrund is one of those little towns where it seems as if time has stood still. Wooden houses are painted in the typical red or yellow, trimmed with white. You can tell that it gets very cold here in winter: each dwelling has small windows, big chimneys.

There are sturdy churches, each with a neighbouring bell tower, and fishing boats in the harbour. Tourists stroll around and we join the throngs for an alfresco dinner at one of the many terrace restaurants, celebrating our first step into the relatively unknown Gulf of Bothnia.

Cherry picking

When you ask Swedes about the northern Swedish coast, they invariably talk about Höga Kusten, the High Coast. This is an area in the middle of the Gulf, just south of the island Kvarken. Between Stockholm and the High Coast, the land is relatively flat and covered with forest.

Many islands dot the coast, so there are lots of options to anchor or tie to a rock ‘Scandinavian style’ with a stern anchor to keep the bow away from the hard stuff. In many places along the Swedish and Finnish coast, you have the choice to head ‘outside’, where there is more sea room, or ‘inside’ between the islands where you find more shelter.

We moor Anna Caroline in a club harbour on the island Granskär. These club harbours are quite common in Nordic countries. Basically, it’s a harbour at a lovely island that has been owned or leased by a club for decades and members come from their different home ports to spend the summer vacation there. Visitors are often very welcome.

A clubhouse, including the inevitable sauna, is standard, but sometimes the harbour has a restaurant or café as well. At Granskär, they rarely see a foreign boat, so we receive a warm welcome and are spoiled with all sorts of useful advice for our journey further north.

To decide on our next stops, we look at the map and at the time we have available to sail here; summers are short in this part of the world. “Why don’t we cherry pick?” Wietze muses. We choose to sail overnight to the High Coast to maximise our time there.

When we cast off it’s midsummer: we sail through a night in which the sun doesn’t set and the skies keep amazing us with their hues of yellow, orange and red. In the early hours of the next morning the wind drops and we motor into the Lustholmen club harbour. There’s not a soul to be seen on the moored yachts; only fresh leaves rustling in the wind.

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After tying up, we put the kettle on and wonder what midsummer partying went on the night before as the island slowly comes back to life. Again we receive kind hospitality and lots of information about great places on the High Coast. “Ulvön and Trysunda are well-known and beautiful islands,” fellow cruiser Stig comments, “but come to my village Häggvik. We have a harbour that can accommodate your boat. It’s the best spot on the High Coast.”

It’s a wonderful sail to Häggvik: the high cliffs create sudden windshifts and keep us on our toes. It feels like dinghy sailing again. When the channel narrows we drop the sails and look for the narrow passage to Häggvik – it’s much narrower than we thought.

After some nail-biting moments, with the depth sounder screaming at us, the fairway widens again and we arrive at the loveliest little marina shared with enthusiastic cruisers. For provisioning we can borrow bikes to cycle to the nearest town with a supermarket.

We spot reindeer on the shore of an island on the other side of the Ratan anchorage, after a brisk sail from the High Coast to Ratan, a beautiful secluded bay. This is close to the narrowest part of the Gulf of Bothnia; the part where the landrise is most visible.

Once the last Ice Age retreated the land of the Nordic countries started to bounce back. And it’s still going on, albeit at different rates. In the northern part of the Gulf, it’s roughly 9mm per year. Rocks that were marked at sea level hundreds of years ago are now metres higher.

The far north

From Ratan we make use of a steady, 20-knot south-easterly. We’re enjoying such a great sail, with hardly any waves, that we decide to keep going and do an overnighter to Luleå, one of the bigger cities of northern Sweden. There’s a nasty low approaching, so we tie up in the large marina.

While we wait for the weather to pass, we visit the site where Luleå was first built; due to the landrise they had to move the town 7km further east to keep the harbour at sufficient depth. There’s a beautiful old town built of 404 tiny wooden cottages around a 15th century stone church.

Sailing through the Luleå archipelago is at times challenging with our 2.15m draught, but we enjoy the solitude of this relatively unknown cruising ground. We see fishermen working trout and salmon nets, and a handful of sailing yachts. But mostly it is us, the birds, wooded islands and the high summer sun.

The club harbour on the island Bergön is a particularly magical place. Members have built a clubhouse, a wood-burning sauna and a fireplace under a circular roof. On long tables on the jetty, members and cruisers meet and share tales on endless summer days.

From Bergön we motor eight miles to Töre, the northernmost navigable point on the Gulf of Bothnia, a literal high point, and turning mark of our voyage in the Gulf. A big yellow buoy marks the spot. Together with two Finnish boats, we round the mark, then tie up to a wall and walk to the nearby campsite. Just 30 miles south of the Arctic circle, we’re in shorts and T-shirts, enjoying bright sunshine and 25°C temperatures. Töre has only 1,100 inhabitants, but is a significant stopover for yachts because of the iconic yellow buoy. At the local campsite we even get a certificate for rounding it.

Bergön is popular with Finnish cruisers, so we take the opportunity to gather up-to-date information. We meet Niklas and Johanna sailing their Grand Soleil 40 Zeieten around the Gulf anticlockwise, and discuss the best strategy for the Finnish coast. For miles and miles offshore it’s very shallow. Rocks are everywhere, and tend to move with the ice in winter. So, there are dredged and marked channels to the bigger cities and the main ports.

Lighthouse route

To get in, you often have to sail up to 20 miles through a channel. And the same distance out again; which deters most people from sailing along this coast. “Go for the lighthouses,” Niklas says.

“When Finland was part of Russia, the government wanted the cargo ships to travel along the Finnish and not the Swedish coast. So, they built a whole series of lighthouses with small harbours on islands all along the westernmost rim of the shallow part of the coast. These harbours can accommodate government vessels, so they are deep enough for a yacht.

“Pick the destinations on the mainland where you want to go and for the rest you stay ‘outside’ and use the lighthouses.” It’s a splendid idea.

We’d sailed into Bergön as strangers and leave as friends; it’s that kind of place. Unexpectedly, the wind turns to the north. We rush south, to make good use of it. A quick visit to university town Vaasa, then on in more northerly winds to historic Rauma, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Both marinas in Rauma are too shallow for us, so we end up in the fishing harbour, where we find a warm welcome.

Our first lighthouse harbour is Kylmäpihlaja, a tight fit for our boat, with a stiff breeze blowing across the basin. With the help of Ari, a Finnish fellow cruiser, we got our lines ashore and safely tied up. But it was worth it: the island is a gem. It takes about 20 minutes to walk around it and we make several laps to enjoy the ever-changing light. Ari also offers excellent tips for anchorages in the famous Turku archipelago, further south. “It’s the best cruising ground in Finland,” he promises.

We take a week to meander through more beautiful islands: another lighthouse landmark, and yet more cute anchorages or villages where we can tie up. The archipelago can get quite crowded in July, but by August things are slowing down, and slowly the nights get darker. It is sufficiently quiet that as we approach Turku through a winding, shallow channel, an elk swims across our bow.

Back to the west

The city of Turku feels very cosmopolitan after the small villages we’ve visited. We sail right into the centre of town, where a marina is situated on the banks of the Aura river. It’s a popular place for crew changes, restocking and sightseeing. But after a few days we head back into the archipelago.

The narrow, winding, and in places shallow, track makes for challenging sailing in the shifts and calms. Our last stop in the Turku archipelago is the small island Kumlinge, where the name of the tiny harbour and adjacent restaurant is Glada Laxen: the Laughing Salmon. When we ask manager Markku what their speciality is, he replies: “Perch.” We now know why the salmon is laughing.

The next archipelago is nestled between Finland and Sweden. Åland is officially Finnish, but Swedish is spoken. Again, you can opt for the wider channels that are used by the big ferries that ply the route between Helsinki, Turku, Mariehamn and Stockholm. Or you choose one of many narrower fairways between the smaller islands.

In a steady south-westerly breeze we sail from island to island before we reach Åland’s capital, Mariehamn, and finally complete our Gulf of Bothnia loop. But I’m not sure this chapter of our cruising is completely closed.

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