The MOJO Family: Kayaking the Stockholm Archipelago

Before I share the details of our 3 day, 2 night guided kayaking trip in the Stockholm Archipelago, I have to back up and share a bit of background on booking this adventure.

While in Sweden, we wanted to do something that was special and unique to Sweden. We weren't able to go to Northern Sweden for winter activities, the Northern Lights, reindeer, or awesome hiking. But kayaking in either of the two main archipelagos sounded pretty awesome. But booking posed several questions:

1) Where?

I debated back and forth between the archipelago on the southwest coast, near Goteborg vs the Stockholm archipelago. I ended up picking Stockholm because it's supposed to be much calmer water.

2) Guided or not guided?

Our kids haven't done too much paddling and have never been on an overnight kayaking trip. I wasn't sure how far they could paddle. I read that there are possibly >1000 islands and you can camp on many of them, but I wasn't sure what that looked like and didn't have marine charts of the area. Jason and I have loads of camping experience but not really a lot of experience kayaking. Going on our own and renting boats was certainly much cheaper... I debated about this back and forth...

3) Our gear or rent gear?

The cost of renting gear is a lot. But carrying around our own tent, sleeping bags and sleeping mats from place to place hasn't been fun. Our packs are large and heavy and we are tired of lugging them around on trains, boats and transit. Because we also camped in Iceland and will camp in Denmark, we committed to bringing our own gear. We are looking forward to mailing home a large and expensive package of stuff to lighten our loads in a few weeks.

4) What company to go with?

I enquired with many tour companies and looked at many more websites. But nobody would rent to children under a certain age. It turns out that renting kayaks without a guide would have been really difficult, because nobody wanted to rent a boat to someone under 12 years old. Finally a company called "True Nature Sweden" said yes to a guided tour with kids. It turns out that the rational here is equipment related. Apparently all multi-day trips choose to have single kayaks packed with food and gear, and it is unusual to pack double kayaks for multi-day trips. The thinking is that there is not enough room in double kayaks for two people and all of their stuff/food/gear. But our kids wouldn't have managed in single kayaks, and we needed two double kayaks with one adult/one child in each boat. We made it work just fine, and perhaps we even showed our guide that there are many things about packing into a double that is easier than packing into singles...

So I had it booked and in our itinerary and paid for... we were excited to have this fun adventure!

Day 1

We stored some of our things and left our lodging in Stockholm old town. Walked to the metro, and took the metro to the kayak office where we met our guide. His name was Daniel, and he drove us to the starting place of Dalaro - about 45 min drive southwest of Stockholm.

We packed all of our gear and the food he had packed and brought into our boats, so I don't think we actually got paddling until about 11:30am. The weather was delightful and the water was calm. The paddling and scenery was very similar to home, except for the cute houses here and there. We paddled a few kilometers and then stopped for a snack. The Swedish word for "tea time" is "fika"... so if a Swede asks you to have "fika", it means coffee/tea/snacks and hanging out eating for a bit. It's lovely.

The archipelago is a brackish water - it is in the sea, but it's close to fresh water sources and it's all quite protected, so the wildlife found can be fresh or salt water and the water is only slightly salty. There is almost no current and no tide.

Our total paddling for the first day was about 5km or so (3miles). The paddling was easy and comfortable and we had plenty of time to enjoy our campsite once we arrived. We had a whole island to ourselves with a lovely campsite. The sun was shining and we jumped into the water several times. Daniel made a fire and a huge feast for us of roast, potatoes and vegetables.

Day 2

The weather changed during the evening. It rained hard overnight and into the morning, and there were serious wind warnings for day 2. We slept in, cozy in our 3 person tent, while Daniel made us breakfast. The rain slowed down as we ate bacon, toast with nutella and jam, and hot chocolate under a tarp and beside the fire that was already made. Pretty lux!

We debated about the weather and what to do. The rain stopped but the wind was likely to pick up. The original itinerary had us packing up our stuff and paddling a decent length to a new island for the second night of camping. But we had to be careful not to get out into big waves or big wind and not be safe somewhere, or not be able to get home the next day if the wind continued. We debated about staying put on the same island, but that didn't seem very interesting and the waves around us still seemed fine. So we made a plan, packed up, and went for it.

Our first crossing was going to be the longest / hardest / most exposed. So we talked about the option of using a tow line and encourgaed the kids to contribute to hard paddling. But it ended up being totally fine. And then we cruised along in easy water, protected by an island for a while. And then we had another crossing that was a little bit more strenuous, but still with no real waves. After about 5km of paddling, we came to our destination island and made camp. The wind was breezy but fine, and the temperature was pleasant. Daniel had never been to this particular island before, so we explored together and made a solid camp. The girls were great helpers. Plus, there were wild blueberries and lingon berries everywhere to snack on!

Ava did some extra paddling in the single boat in our protected little bay and we enjoyed the campfire. Again, we had this little island totally to ourselves. It was very similar to the kayaking trip we took at home last year in the Broughton Archipelago, except that was a trip with four adults and no kids, and the current/waves/winds/tide there were more intense. And for this trip, we had a guide making us our meals and teaching our kids his strategy for fire making and tarp setting up.

Blueberries

Our guide Daniel teaches R how he splits wood with his knife

We all worked to help Daniel make this amazine fire ring,
and that center rock was huge (heavy to carry!)

Day 3

It rained again overnight and most of our stuff was damp. We were all feeling a bit tired and ready to go home. We had more bacon at breakfast and a slow packing up process. The rain stopped in time for us to have a lovely calm paddle through some protected islands. The wind was done and the sun was trying to re-appear. We paddled through some really narrow little channels and under a bridge. One obstacle was large waves from ferry boats going by, one of which did get Jason and Ava a bit wet. The other obstacle was our endurance / tolerance for the trip and ready to be done, but we still had some paddling to do. We took an extra hot chocolate break and then a longer lunch break before we made it back to the dock. I think we paddled about 5km again today before we emptied the boats and cleaned them, put our gear away, and loaded up in the van.