After wintering in Amsterdam, James and Jennifer Hamilton left the slip they and their Nordhavn 52 Dirona have called home the past five months and departed for Sweden. They arrived in Utklippan yesterday and will be spending the rest of the summer cruising up the Swedish east coast to Finland through the Stockholm Archipelago, Finland’s Åland Islands, Helsinki, and Lake Saimaa. Before returning west to spend a few weeks in Stockholm and pass through the Göta Canal to cruise the Swedish west coast and southern Norway before returning south through Copenhagen in the fall.

Jennifer wrote this morning that on their way to Sweden upon crossing the German Bight, they stopped for duty-free fuel in Heligoland, DE and ran close to the big ships in the Kiel Canal. (Close is an understatement. Check out the photo below and Kiel Canal Baltic Sea Lock video.)