Anyone travelling to Gothenburg will be familiar with the problem: the route from Læsø or Anholt to the Swedish coast is teeming with tankers, freighters and fishermen. They run like a string of pearls along the Tango route to the south and north. It's not easy to find a gap to cross the main shipping lane without getting too close to the big ships.
In fact, the Tango route is so heavily frequented by shipping traffic travelling in and out of the Baltic Sea that it often gets dicey among freighters. For this reason, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has decided to develop an alternative route closer to the coast. The new Sierra route begins at Kummel Bank north of Læsø and runs east of the Fladen and Lilla Middelgrund shoals to the northern entrance to the Öresund at Kullen. In the area of Kummel Bank, where the Tango and Sierra routes separate, a caution area will be established, as a particularly large number of ship movements on different courses can be expected here.
Along the new shipping lane, new traffic separation schemes will be set up at the Fladen and Lilla Middelgrund shoals and at the northern entrance to the Öresund, which are mandatory for vessels over 20 metres in length and should, as usual, not be crossed. If a crossing cannot be avoided, a course at right angles to the direction of traffic must be maintained and all vessels in the traffic separation scheme must be granted the right of way.
In addition to Route Sierra, a caution area and two new traffic separation schemes, Skagen West and Skagen East, will be established north of Skagen, along with a coastal traffic zone.
For sailors who want to cross the Kattegat, the new traffic routing means that two commercial shipping routes have to be crossed at the same time, and you should also be prepared for an increased volume of traffic off the Swedish coast. Until now, it was almost exclusively yachts and fishermen that travelled there. However, it remains to be seen how much the traffic flows will actually shift. This is because the Sierra route is only of interest to ships that pass through the Öresund, and larger freighters with a draught of more than 10 metres will continue to use the Tango route.
The new traffic routing was decided a few years ago and will come into force on 1 July 2020. Details of the shipping route will be announced in the "Nachrichten für Seefahrer". The message from the Sjöfartsverket can be found here.
