Mossholmens Marina

Mossholmens Marina lies on the west side of Tjörn at the bridgehead just inside Klädesholmen, well out towards the open sea in the Bohuslän archipelago. The harbour is calm and well sheltered, and the approach is from the north. The operator gives the harbour depth as between one and six metres, so it is worth asking for a berth to suit your draught. Three webcams look over the basin and can be checked before arrival.

With three hundred berths in summer, forty of them set aside for visitors, this is a sizeable place — and one of the few on the coast open all year. Mooring is to booms, piles or alongside.

It is family-run and has an unusual back story. In the mid-1700s one of Sweden's largest train-oil boileries stood on Bockholmen just south of the harbour, and after the great herring period the islet was used for years to dry stockfish. Rune Johansson bought Mossholmen in 1964, when the site held oil tanks and the office of his oil business; the small-boat harbour and its pontoons only came in the mid-1970s. The guest harbour and the large winter hall followed in the 1990s, and oil distribution continued until 2005.

The shop is worth a mention because it looks nothing like a typical marina shop: alongside charts, lifejackets, gas bottles and chandlery it sells clothing and shoes. The workshop is an authorised Suzuki dealer and takes both inboard and outboard engines.

Across the bridge lies Klädesholmen — Sweden's herring island — with restaurants, a museum, a grocery shop and bathing rocks a couple of hundred metres away. There is a small bathing spot on the marina site itself, a bus stop at the entrance with connections to Stenungsund and Gothenburg, and four kilometres to Skärhamn for doctor, pharmacy and tourist office.