Quiet weekend in Trosa, 25 - 27 May

Trosa is a small town one hour drive out of Stockholm and 4 hours sailing from Nynäshamn. A very relaxing place for a summer weekend after a busy week. Only 5000 inhabitants, but a long history as an important medieval city. Trosa is the entry port to the Sörmlands archipelago coming from southward from the Stockholm archipelago.

We met a 22° halo on the way. This kind of halo is associated with ice crystals in the upper atmosphere related to cirrus and cirrostratus. These may indicate the arrival of a warm front and therefore have been considered as possibly announcing rain to come. However, this one seemed more related to contrails having spread over time as this location is the entry point over Sweden of planes coming from southern Europe and aiming at Skasta or Arlanda airports.

22° halo in a cirrus aviaticus, as are called the spreading contrails 

 This is the 20 mile route we used, mooring in Akarhudden on Friday night, on our way.

Trosa was one of the harbour I had investigated when looking for a berth for La Malouine. However, with 1.8 metre depth, Trosa was not accessible for her. Trosa is one of these areas along the Swedish coast where it is becoming so shallow that it is getting difficult to get there. We moored at the jetty, alongside, and the sonar got blank as there was no water left under the hull. The harbour captain told us that the depth is "unpredictable" in the harbour these days!

Welcome to Trosa, "the end of the world".

There is a bit of fun about Trosa as all village, town and city names in Sweden have a meaning. And Trosa means "panty" in modern Swedish. However, she is named after the river Trosaå whose name derives from the icelandic "trauður", meaning slow, and referring to the flow in the river.

Yet a very well preserved small historical town in Sweden.

Note the contrails spreading in the sky

The XVI century church, the only building spared at the time of the Russian invasion

Old Trosa Lands church, 7 km from the harbour

For a full month now, we have had summer temperature in Stockholm area. We have never seen so many flowers blooming at the same time, nor so much pollen in the air. In Sweden, spring is defined as an average temperature over 0°C for 5 consecutive days, and summer as an average temperature over 10°C for 5 consecutive days. In 2018, spring was declared in Stockholm on 2nd of April compared to an average of 25 March in past years (therefore a week later than expected) while summer was declared on 2nd of May compared to an average of 1st of June as observed in past years (therefore a month earlier than expected). Just one month of spring this year. How long will be the summer though?