Tall Ships in Stockholm

The Tall ships race came to Stockholm this year. I went a little wild with the camera: I managed to pick 70-something photos from over 200. Click here to see them and notice how the weather changed.

The last time the race stopped in Stockholm was in 2000 (and I happened to be in Stockholm at the time). They race in the Baltic every four years.

This year there are 119 ships moored at the Stockholm quays. The Tall Ships races have been going on since 1956. Part of the mission is to engage youth in cultural exchange, teach seamanship and pass on maritime traditions. Half the crew must be between the ages of 15 and 25. The fleet will be moored for four days during which almost a million visitors are expected.

What is a tall ship? Well from what I can tell the signature of a tall ship is tall masts with horizontally secured sails (square-rigged). Wikipedia tells more plus it gives a complete list of all the world's tall ships and pictures and facts about most of them. I was on the Norwegian Statsraad Lehmkuhl, for example. Although these ships can sail into the wind, they cannot do it as well as the newer sailboats with the sails secured vertically. The reason is that most of the propulsion of the sail is from the wing-effect. It's easier to get the wing effect with vertically mounted sails.



One of the brochures at the exhibition indicated seven types of tall ships: the full-rigged ship identified by at least three masts and is square rigged, the barque recognized by three or more masts and square rigging except for the fore-and-aft rigging, the brig which has two square rigged masts, the barquentine which has three or more masts all fore-and-aft rigged except the foremast which is entirely square rigged, the brigantine sporting a square rigged foremast and fore-and-aft rigged main mast, the topsail schooner having two or more masts with a square rigged foremast, and a schooner which has two or more fore-and-aft rigged masts.

I think Pirates of the Caribbean was a full-rigged or barque.

What's a Cutty Sark? What's a clipper ship? How to they fit in? From what I glean from Wikipedia, the Cutty Sark is a clipper ship. Clipper ships are tall ships mostly made in Britain and the US in the 19'th century. Clipper ships are a category of tall ships.



Sailing boats get even more complicated. There are sloops (like the John B the Beach Boys sing about), cutters, and many more. This web site has a short summary.

Hard Job, missing vowels, colors and a Fokker

Last Thursday J and I went to the Zagreb, Croatia office. I had several business meetings (and is now dreaming up some more for the future). J got a few hours to walk around the center of Zagreb. Later that evening we got to experience a very fine Croatian meal which included some Croatian fig brandy, Croatian fish, Croatian squid salad, Croatian wine, and Croatian desserts. At 5:30 AM the next morning, one of my colleagues allowed us to ride with him on the four hour drive to Split, on the Dalmatian coast. Along the way we paused at a rest stop to look out over the canyon into the blue waters of the KrKa National Park. By the way, some of you haven't been waiting long enough for the images to load with maximum sharpness. These should be really nice images so if it's blurry, you have a slow connection and need to wait.

Later, he dropped us off at a hotel and came back later to pick me up for the meetings. After the meetings, we had a short guided tour of Diocletian's palace: he's the Roman emperor that killed a few Christians. In the beginning of his reign, he tolerated Christians but later decided not to keep them around. Read all about Diocletian on wikipedia.

Diocletian is also the first, if not the last, Roman emperor to voluntarily retire. He is also sometimes cited as the emperor that accelerated the demise of the empire by breaking it into four parts, so that there were four envious, suspicious, power hungry leaders. He was a Croatian and, therefore, thought it fitting to build his retirement home in Split, not far from where he grew up. It was a four star palace until he died and the Christians decided to vent some anger. They demolished all the statues and busts of Diocletian and completely ransacked his sarcophagus. They turned his chapel to the Roman god Jupiter into a baptismal room with Jupiter replaced with John the Baptist. They had other decorating ideas, too, but to avoid boring you too much I'll move on....


Split was just excellent (and cheap). Apparently lots of other tourists discovered that before me. In fact, I think if Croatia didn't have tourists, they'd be in dire straights. Check out my 50 or so Split pictures here.

We took a day trip to the island of Hvar. It's got some history behind it, too, which (don't click away yet), I won't bore you with. My pictures from the ferry ride from Split to Hvar are here. My photos on Hvar itself are here.

One thing you will not find in Croatia is an abundance of vowels. In fact, sometimes they just do without for the whole word. How about the Island of Krk? These folks would have been good programmers back in the long forgotten day when programmers had to use mnemonics of six characters or less. So we'd abbreviate "Next Value" with "NxtVal." Seems like Croatian to me.

Croatian is one of the Slavic languages. English is a Germanic language (and I always thought it was romantic! Uh, I mean a romance language.). Both languages are Indo-European.

Both Split and Hvar are on the Adriatic sea. The water is so clear you wouldn't believe it. Those tourist photos I used to suspect were photographically doctored are probably not.

We came to Croatia on a jet from Stockholm to Vienna and then took a small prop plane, a Fokker, to Zagreb. We left on a Fokker 100 from Split back to Vienna. I thought Fokker was long gone and Airbus and Boeing were the last two contestants. Guess not.

Descending down to Stockholm as the sun was low (as it is just about all day long) we saw the amazing number of islands and waterways. The water was granite grey, the island flush with green but dotted with the typical Swedish burnt red, custard yellow or white buildings. The green pastures were littered with the giant hay bails covered in the white plastic. The skies were blue with the white fluffy clouds. Contrast those colors with the colors in Croatia. Deep blue water with some greens mixed in, white rocks, white or grey buildings with the red Mediterranean tile roofs, and blue cloudless skies.

That's when I began to think how people correlate with the colors, or maybe it's the temperature. Hmmm. Guns, Germs, and Steel and Colors? I guess I have to factor in the Swedish winter's too where the colors change. In fact, most summer days have not had blue skies and white clouds: they had grey clouds and not much sun. No wonder Swedes worship the sun.

A few notes on the paint: The red paint so popular in Sweden uses a residue from copper mines, the most famous, which was in operation before the year 1000 is near Dalarna. This paint, although it tends to look old quickly is an excellent protector of wood. The wood can last hundreds of years in harsh weather with a fresh coat every 15 years. The yellow paint is sometimes associated with wealth because long ago the wealthy folks painted their palaces this color, I'm not sure why.

Sik, Abborre, Gädda, and Gös

These are the most prevalent fish in Lake Mäleren. Sik are whitefish, abborre are perch, and gädda are pike. gädda is pictured in the first photo, which was taken from Atomeyes' collection.

The grilled sik (whitefish) are from photographer Olidaone.


One interesting thing about Gädda is that they are slow, often just hanging still in the water. Some fishermen have exploited this characteristic by making a lasso, dropping the lasso in front of the fish, and then startling the fish right into the lasso.

In the ten months that I've been here in the Stockholm area, I've scarely seen a single person in the act of fishing and I'm near water a lot. However, this past weekend, in a beautiful break in the otherwise gray and dim weather, I went on a bike ride from Hornstull to Vårby. In Vårby I saw at least ten people fishing from the Målaren shore. There must be a lot of fisherpersons in the area because there's a very popular fishing supply store just a block from me and the one time I went in there to check the price of a legendary Abu-Garcia reel, made in Sweden. The store was crowded with customers and sales seemed brisk.

Drottningholm and a little further

Saturday morning. I took a morning bike ride before B got up and before the rain comes down and while J was doing other things. I headed toward Drottningholm and got slightly lost a few times. Nevertheless, I took some photos which you can find here. The area just beyond Drottnigholm where the city becomes country is really special. There's forests, wheat fields, horse farms, and an occasional building. I found a church out in the middle of nowhere, although there must have been a population center nearby, just hidden.

B Visits

Our first visitor from home: our youngest son Benton. We had a grand time. He was here for about a month in the year 2000, so it was fun for him to re-visit some things. Some of the highlights of his visit were kayaking. He and I went from Svima Sports all the way around Stora Essingen, Långholmen, and Kungsholmen and then up Ulvsundasjön to the big bridge. I took ibupfofen for two days after. Later in his visit he went again with J in Brunnsviken. B also had some fun enjoying the Stockholm nightlife. Nobody is a stranger to him! we walked along Strandvägen. We hit several nice restaurants including the trendy summertime-only floating restaurant called Stranbryggan and the sushi restaurant in our neighborhood called Raw. We saw Die Hard 4, visited the Nordic Museum, wandered around Gamla Stan, worked out at the fitness center several times, and B got royally cheated by a taxi driver late one night. He was out so late the buses and subway had stopped. B had spent all his kroner and told the driver "I only have American dollars." The driver said "That's ok, you American's are rich." B said "Not this American." After a very short ride from T-Centralen to S:T Eriksplan, the driver said "$40." He paid and later found out it should've been $6.

We'd like to take this time to express our appreciation to B for taking care of some of our business while we are away.

Utö and Ålö - a perfect day trip

B is visiting so we decided to take a long day trip from Stockholm to the island of Utö (pronounced ew-ter). We left the apartment at around 7 AM, took the pendeltåg from Karlberg to Västerhaninge, a bus to Årsta brygga, and finally a ferry to Gruvbyn pier on Utö. Each leg was about 40 minutes.


Right off the boat is the quaint center of Gruvbyn. It's mostly tourist and Swedes visiting their archipelago cabins. The permanent residents of Utö number around 400, IIRC. We then rented "urban" bike. It was still misting rain and the skies were the color of faded asphalt. We rode the bikes south from Gruvbyn on the primary dirt road toward a fish restaurant we'd been told about on another island called Ålö (pronounced oh-ler). There is a small bridge connecting Utö with Ålö. The ride passed through plush green forest and meadows loaded with ferns. "This is the Sweden I love," said J. It looked like the movie set from Jurassic Park. There were some houses and farms, too. The whole bike ride one way was about 10 kilometers (6 miles). Once at Ålö, we had to wait on the restaurant to open so we explored around the small bay and sat on the dock watching the sea gulls, a few boats passing, and talking.
The restaurant served mostly smoked seafood from the nearby waters. J had smoked salmon. B and I had a combo plate with smoke salmon, raw salmon thinly sliced, and smoked prawns. All served in a wooden box. The prawns still had eggs in them. We ate the big black eyes, some red organs, the meat and the eggs. Not bad. The cost of this lunch was high, IMHO. One beer, two waters, and the three meals was 495 SEK, $71.
The ride back was much nicer because the sun came out, the clouds parted and became the white billowy cumulus clouds. It seed the grays all became blues. You can see how the colors changed by viewing the Flickr slide show (66 photos) from start to finish.

Ice Bar

The Stockholm Ice Bar is a a tourist trap but a trap a tourist might want to experience once. The glasses, chairs, walls, and the bar itself are ice. The inside temperature is kept at 27 degree F (-5 C). The ice comes from ice harvested from the Torne River on the border between Sweden and Finland in Northern Sweden. Absolut Vodka is a sponsor so all the drinks are vodka based. The cover charge of 160 SEK (approximately $23) gets you in for 45 minutes and one drink. Additional drinks are 85 SEK (approximately $12). Ouch. However, given the expense, I'd have to say the novelty of it is worth seeing, once. As you can see from the photos, they provide a warm cloak with a hood and gloves. The glasses are also of ice. They replace all the ice (the walls, bar, seats) twice per year. The seats are covered with deer skin (or reindeer?).