Romance bulletin update: You will be pleased to know we are through the last lock on the Trollhӓtte Canal and remain steadfast on completing the second 25 years of our marriage.

###

By now, you may be a bit confused about all these canals, as we initially were.

Upon first hearing of the Gӧta Canal, we understood that it connected the Baltic Sea with the Skaggerak, thus avoiding a lengthy passage around the south of Sweden and through the Kattegat for those wishing to return to Sweden’s west coast from the east. We assumed one canal served the entire route. And indeed, many use the term “Gӧta Canal” (a.k.a. the “divorce ditch”) as shorthand when referring to the waterway between Sweden’s east and west coast.

But, in fact, two canals make up the route – the Gӧta Canal and the Trollhӓtte Canal.

The Gӧta Canal starts in the town of Mem about 100 miles southwest of Stockholm and runs 85 miles to Lake Vӓnern in the country’s interior, leaving one approximately 50 miles from the sea. To get the final distance, one must transit the Trollhӓtte Canal, which connects Lake Vӓnern with the Gӧta Alv, or river, flowing to the sea at Gӧteborg.

We started through the Trollhӓtte Canal after a 40-mile downwind sail across the southern end of Lake Vӓnern. Before encountering our first lock, we waited at Vӓnersborg for two bridges to be raised, allowing us passage into the canal.

Immediately upon entering the first lock, the differences between this canal and the Gӧta Canal become obvious.

First, the locks are much, much bigger – big enough for 90-meter-long ships to pass through, which serve the logging and manufacturing industries on Lake Vӓnern. Our boat is dwarfed once inside the lock. With the water drained, it feels like the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Second, the water moves through the lock very gently. No roiling waters as in Gӧta Canal uplocking and no need for nerve wracking fender work or line control. All we have to do is hold loosely to knobs recessed into the lock wall to maintain control of the boat as she slowly descends.

Third, the people running the lock are grizzled veterans in mid-career, not cherubic youngsters working a summer job. These folks are all business.

And a business it is. Before we are permitted to leave the third lock, we must pay a lock fee of 825 Swedish Crowns ($125) on top of the 7100 Crowns ($1,000) we already paid for the Gӧta Canal lock fee, making canal transit as costly as a Disneyland vacation.

We stop for the night at the canal marina in the town of Trollhӓttan, from which the canal gets its name. (Oddly, the town of Gӧta is downstream, nowhere near the Gӧta Canal.) Here, we witness large ships transiting locks two through five on their way through the canal. While we felt small inside the locks, these boats are barely contained by them, and we marvel at the skill with which the helmsmen guide their ships through, only inches from the walls and gates all around.

We take a self-guided walking tour through the network of old locks, now abandoned, that pre-date the ones currently in use. Here, we see the first set of locks built in 1795, which became obsolete once the Gӧta Canal was built. To replace them, a larger set was cut in 1844. A story board tells us that commercial ship traffic through the canal caused large jams at the Trollhӓttan locks during the latter half of the 19^th century. Then, in 1916, new, bigger locks were blasted through the rock just above the old locks to accommodate ever larger ships.

Leaving Trollhӓttan, we take a final look at the interior of Sweden as we descend the Gӧta Alv through rolling farmland and small towns, and then on to the outskirts and finally the center of Gӧteborg, Sweden's "second city."