Gällnö, Norrskogen-Västerholmen

Going 3-4 knots at Gällnö. We are traveling with our 1-year-old Bavaria 32. Following a 1-month-old Beneteau Oceanis 40-foot which is going faster. Looking at the chart and Garmin’s navigator. Nothing in the inlet between Västerholmen-Norrskogen except a shoal and a reef on the edge towards Norrskogen. As we travel in Sweden’s “congested archipelago,” which should be well-visited, I don’t open the Arholma-Landsort guide as I usually do. Suddenly, the Beneteau hits something. The boat rises over a reef, probably the one marked much further in towards Norrskogen. But it is much further out than on the chart. Those on board panic slightly, unable to alert the sea rescue. I go forward, water is rushing into their new boat. They want to try to reach their home port on Ljusterö again. I stop them and alert the sea rescue for them. SSRS Möja comes out with two units. The boat has to be towed from there, with severe damage. It could just as well have been us, errors in position both on the chart and the navigator, but when I later opened the guide, it was there, in the correct position (see guide 2010 p. 196). Considering our boat had a draft of about 2 m, and theirs about 2.40, it should be the 1.8-meter shoal that lies even further out than what is even stated in the guide. I think it was reasonably normal water level. It shouldn’t have been the 2.5 m shoal considering how much they rose when they hit it. We then went and settled for the night at Hjälmö Västerholme, when everything had calmed down. Spoke then with an Englishman, who sailed in the Stockholm archipelago every year. He had gone through that passage about 20 times in the last year, and he had never noticed the shoal (had a sailboat our size). Additionally, his perception was also that the shoal should be much further in. Not entirely sure of the date it happened.