Göta Canal cruising
Mark Blackburn recalls happy memories of his final cruise with his father David along the Göta Canal
As veterans of UK and French inland waterways we thought we knew it all: we were wrong. Dad’s Hallberg Rassy 352, Amarylla, surged about in the fierce surface currents of the first Göta Canal lock, bouncing off the other boats. Our first lock keeper after leaving Mem instructed us on the Swedish lock tying up method but we didn’t listen. By the third lock we were paying attention. On each up lock we now tied a short stern line and secured it to the iron rings on the top of the lock sides, then ran a long line from a sheet winch through a bow fairlead (we threaded ours through the centre of a cleat), before securing it as far forward as we could to keep the line taut. As the lock filled and the boat rose, we took in the slack on the sheet winch. The method required a crew member ashore but there were five of us onboard – Dad, my brother Tim, his children Arthur, 13, and Alfie, 11, and myself, plus Sandy, the dog.
Dad had sailed Amarylla from Ipswich to Denmark the previous year, cruising Denmark before overwintering the boat there. Before we sailed home, we wanted to explore the Stockholm Archipelago on the Swedish east coast, and then sail back west via the Göta Canal. This waterway is in fact two canals: the Trollhätte and the original Göta, connected by two large inland lakes, and many smaller ones.
The hard work transiting the locks was rewarded the second day at Söderköping, a town famous for its ice cream. The scenery beyond Söderköping was gorgeous and reminded me of rural France – meadows and mature woodlands, farms and grazing livestock. We serenely glided through the middle on a hot, cloudless day.
It was a 13-mile sail across Lake Roxen before arriving at Berg, where we were delighted to find a beach. Thankfully, the water in the lakes was a lot warmer than the Baltic.
A rest was certainly needed as we faced a set of seven step locks and then more at Borensberg, although the beautiful sandy beaches and clear, warm waters made it worth it. It was here that we encountered the Victorian river hotel boat, Diana, one of the Grand Old Ladies that ply this route in the summer from Gothenburg to Stockholm. These fabulous boats navigate the canal with no thrusters, tugs or any assistance. To this end, they go super-slow where the canal meanders and you are not allowed to overtake: not a problem unless you are in a hurry. The Göta Canal App tracks all commercial traffic but we never checked it, preferring to be surprised instead.
Generally the canal was free flowing, but snarl-ups did happen. At the western end of Lake Boren we were delayed for four hours. This left us slightly stressed when the wind increased to a steady southeasterly Force 6 as we tried to navigate through the choppy waters and into the narrow, tiny harbour.
There was some alleged queue jumping and tempers got frayed.
Motala was the most urban stop on the Göta Canal and is often busy. Luckily, the lock keepers are fantastically helpful and speak perfect English, and taking their advice, we arrived early at the city’s marina to make sure we got a berth. The Motala Motor Museum is right on the harbour, and we enjoyed several hours exploring the exhibits before dining out.
After Motala is the first of the two large lakes, Lake Vättern. It was a 17-mile sail across, and the water was very clear. At Karlsborg, on the other side, we were serenaded with drunken Swedish folk songs most of the night by six lads onboard a neighbouring speedboat. Lake Viken, at 91.6m above sea level, was the highest point of the canal. The flora and fauna changed remarkably here, reminiscent of an Alpine meadow. The bridge was broken at Vassbakken so we stopped for the night while it was repaired, and were overjoyed to be joined again by our speedboat of folk singers.
It was now downhill all the way and line handling was much more convenient locking down, as we could easily secure the lines to the iron rings and pay them out as the water levels dropped.
Sjötorp on day 10 of the transit marked the end of the original Göta Canal and an exit to Lake Vänern. It also marked the end of the free marinas and facilities covered by the transit pass. Sjötorp was pleasant although there were few facilities: the diesel was also overpriced.
Lake Vänern is more like an inland sea and we took two days to sail it so we could explore. The highlight was mooring right beneath the castle at Läckö Slott where we caught the occasional sounds, drifting on the wind, of a performance of The Marriage of Figaro and had fun watching the Peasant Chorus running around the outside between acts. A stiff southwesterly forced us to stop on the second day at Granh, where the beach more than made up for the inconvenience. We arrived at Vänersborg, the entrance to the Trollhätte Canal, and everything was bigger. Huge ships, bridges and locks. At this point Tim, Arthur and Alfie left Amarylla for some sightseeing along the coast.
This is an industrial part of Sweden, and the scenery was not the same as the Göta, although it still held our interest. The locks filled and emptied from underneath with breathtaking speed, so there was not the surface turbulence to deal with. There were also fewer places for tying-up so Dad and I made liberal use of the metal ladders. The channel is marked by suspended booms on either side of the canal which prevent you from dozing off.
With just one day to Gothenburg we stopped at Kungälv, just before the bridge, to explore the Bohus Fastning castle and some very quaint Scandinavian wooden houses. The next day we arrived by canal right in the very centre of the extremely cosmopolitan city of Gothenburg, marking the end of our 17-day transit.