A slow start to today. Having been moored for a couple of days we went to leave, pressed the button to start the engine and ….. nothing ….. This is never a good look and led to some determined head scratching, the eventual conclusion of which was that the engine start battery was knackered. We reckon that it had lost some charge over a couple of days and there was not enough left in it to turn the engine over. So, one phone call and email later we had ordered a new battery. Now though we had to play musical batteries, something not as straightforward as it perhaps should have been given that they are all installed slightly differently. However, an hour and a half later and one of the bow thruster batteries had a new life with the far more important mission of starting the whole engine. We hoped that it felt suitably proud of its new, much more important role …..
With this battery in place, the button was pressed once more accompanied by the sweet sound of a diesel engine starting up – at least on this occasion, it was a sweet sound as it was an improvement on the previous silence! So, we finally left a couple of hours later than planned. We motored under the Uddevalla bridge and then headed south. Once we turned we hoisted the main and staysail and had a lovely sail for a few hours (despite the shifty and gusty winds!) before the wind increased further and headed us completely. With a large tug coming down behind us and another in front looking like it was practising firefighting we felt it best to motor rather than tack around them.
Once into Stenungsund we headed for the guest harbour. Though it is a huge yachting centre, Stenungsund seems to just have a ‘bite-size’ guest harbour with only around 10-15 berths. We went into one of them, but with the neighbouring exclaiming emphatically in what sounded like double-dutch, we wondered what we had done to offend them. It turned out that they were just warning us that the berth I had headed for was really shallow – something I realised when I looked at the depth sounder and realised that it read zero. So, we moved again a couple of berths. The depth sounder still read zero, but they all seemed happier!
The guest harbour is inauspiciously located outside the main shopping centre – not a particularly stunning location, but a convenient one for stocking up with the supermarket two minutes walk away. As is so often the case though, none of the facilities seem to be open – something I discovered after I had paid online …..
The name Stenungsund apparently comes from the village Stenunge which means “village at the foot of the mouintain” and it was once an idyllic bathing and vacation location, not monikers you would now use to describe the town; functional and utilitarian would seem more appropriate now. Its key claim to fame though seems to be that it hosted the 2008 tug-of-war championships. This included teams from various countries including apparently Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, and Serbia. The event also featured a strong presence from clubs like Kilroe Ladies and Lincoln, which showcased their dominance in multiple weight classes. History (or at least the interweb!) though doesn’t seem to record who actually won – not perhaps something we will be losing sleep over.
The town now is one of the largest chemical producers in Sweden producing plastics and various other chemicals in plants around the town – many of them evident as we sailed in. In other news, in September 2023 a quick clay landslide on the E6 highway took place, injuring three people and destroying the motorway, a local road, a fuel station and a fastfood restaurant. As a result, a shop selling wood and building materials lost its access to the road network. It is just left to us to imagine the headlines this would have led to in the local newspapers!