Huvudskär

Huvudskär was roughly ten miles from out buoy in Utö, so we had a relaxed morning, after a great nights’ sleep.

The sailing was easy and uneventful, even though the wind had picked up more than the forecast had said a couple of days earlier. The mobile reception wasn’t the greatest, and we were going further out.

Huvudskär is an old pilot’s island. In the days it supported three pilot families. The landscape is quite rough, so if you see idyllic pictures of small red houses basking in the sun, you might think life has been easy. Somehow I think we romanticise the past a little bit too much. Walking around in the small village, we could still see that the old customs had to be followed. Small girls running to the water pump with their empty jug and carrying the full one back together. An elderly gentleman had come in with his boat and carried water back to it and took off to some smaller island where he lived.

But you just can’t beat the beauty of the outer archipelago.