Single-handed
Hamish had a flight from Tampere in the late evening the next day, so caught the lunchtime train. I had a week before Jodie, my next crew, would arrive, and was in two minds whether to stay in one place for a few days and get a few of the remaining jobs done on the boat, or whether to try some single-handed sailing and see if I could get to Helsinki before she arrived. I put it to the vote; all hands decided unanimously that Hanko wasn’t particularly appealing (as well as being rather expensive) so it looked like we would be continuing.
I tacked out of the confined harbour under just stays’l and mizzen, a slow but relatively safe means of progressing – the mizzen can easily be backed if there is any danger of missing stays, making her very manouverable. But out in more open water we needed a bit more power if we wanted a decent rate of progress, so I got more sail up. It was blowing up to a force 5, so I didn’t really want more than the main and small jib, but in a lubberly moment I let go of the jib halyard as I hoisted it and it disappeared up the mast. I tried the stays’l and main, but she wasn't keen to turn to windward like that. Then in a moment of cunning I solved the problem by hoisting the jib on the topsail halyard.
To begin with the sea was fairly open, just a few small hump-backed rocky islets scattered unevenly along the coast. But presently the band of islands began to thicken, and we soon had a choice of channels to take through them. Towards evening we came to a very narrow gap that there was barely room to tack through. I realised too late that I wasn’t going to get through on the tack I was on, so swung the helm right across to gybe round and try again. It was so narrow that just in gybing round we left the buoyed channel, and my heart was in my mouth as we gathered speed downwind and I steered us back into safety. But we didn’t hit anything, and on the second attempt I kept further upwind and shot the gap without incident. We anchored a mile further on in a quiet sound.
I climbed the mast first thing in the morning to re-reeve the jib halyard, and then set off again. Again we had a choice of several routes. Offshore, the whale-backs of the pink skerries rolled from the water, blowing spray into the air as the surf crashed onto them and boiled among the reefs. Inland, the rocks were higher, iced with the guano of countless seabirds, and on the lee side of the bigger islets a few bent, windswept plants clung to a precarious existence wherever a crevice provided a toehold. Further inland yet the islands were bigger and crowned with forest, bilberry and moss, and the passages of open water between became quieter and narrower. Just before the sea gave way entirely to land, a peaceful channel lay behind the biggest islands, muddy, shallow and bordered with reeds – an entirely different world to the bare rock and wild water offshore. This was the channel I took, although I did wonder if I had made the right decision when I realised that the little wind that did reach the sheltered water was being funnelled by the wooded banks straight towards me. I lost count of the number of times I tacked along that stretch – it was so narrow that I often only made a few boatlengths on each tack. It was around 15 miles before the buoyed route swung a little further offshore into more open waters, but I didn’t reach that point before the end of the day, my hands raw from the endless handling of the headsail sheets. It was beautiful scenery though, and there was barely another soul about. Occasionally a small motor boat would chug by, some stopping to fish. One boat came up to chat – a father and son curious to know what I was doing. At least the father was curious, but spoke no English, so all the questions were put through his young son, who was extremely fluent. I saw no other sails though all day. The yachts that teemed offshore seemed to have forgotten this quiet world.
After a sheltered night at anchor by a wooded bank, the quiet channel finally nosed out from behind the big islands and turned south to a crossroads with another channel that ran along the coast a little further offshore. A steady stream of yachts churned past here, a few sailing west but the majority motoring east towards Helsinki. Preferring solitude, I looked both ways and crossed, and took another less-used channel, though this time it lay further offshore than the main channel.
The winds were light now, though still easterly, and I spent much of the time reading as we sailed, for Teal was quite capable of sailing herself to windward. I just had to make sure that I didn’t get too engrossed in my book, for even here we had to tack every few minutes to avoid the rocks and islands.
As it happened, I had a copy of Slocum with me, and there couldn’t be better company while sailing single handed. It was interesting to note that he had also decided his rig was a trifle too big after his first ocean crossing. But he lopped 7 feet from his mast, as well as 4 feet from the boom and 5 feet from the bowsprit, which made my mast-shortening in Denmark seem trifling in comparison. There were other differences between our voyages too. Teal and I took more tacks in 10 minutes worming through the islands than Spray did the whole way across the Pacific. On the other hand, I didn't feel the Finnish natives needed a sprinkling of carpet tacks on the deck to dissuade them from climbing aboard at night, as Slocum had resorted to in Terra del Fuego.
Very few other boats heading east were bothering to sail into the headwind, but glancing behind I noticed another set of white wings fluttering back and forth across the channel. They gradually caught us, and as they did so they gave a hail, for it turned out to be none other than the yacht that had kindly given us a tow through the Lemstrom canal. We had a quick chat as we crossed tacks, and then bit by bit they drew ahead.
The wind was slowly dying, and amongst the outer skerries where we were now there are few anchorages. In the end it died completely, and I rowed into a shallow patch and anchored, though there was little shelter and I would have to move if the wind did return. It had been a boiling hot day, so I jumped overboard to cool off, and swam ashore to collect some bilberries.
Unfortunately the island I was on was a nature reserve and strictly off limits - later when I looked at the chart I realised that that was what the green line around it must have meant, though my Finnish wasn’t up to translating the caption that accompanied it. A couple of miles away a customs officer in one of the high lookouts that occur periodically along the coast had seen me, and radioed the warden who lived on the island, who then came down to politely ask me to move. He was interested in this boat that had suddenly appeared on his doorstep though – it seems he lived there alone in the summer, and he must have had little human contact.
But I did have to move, so I took to the oars again, hoisted sail when a breath ruffled the water, and eventually in the moonlight made another anchorage a couple of miles further on.
For nearly two weeks now we had had scorching sun, and I was as brown as a berry. The high pressure continued, although the following day the light winds were at least occasionally behind, making progress much easier and faster. In places here the water was so thick with algae that it was like sailing through a pea soup.
I ended that day just a few miles short of Helsinki, and arrived there late the following morning. There are a number of marinas and yacht clubs around Helsinki, but I decided to take one a little way out of town, as it was likely to be cheaper and it was a couple of days yet before Jodie arrived. Also, I wanted to investigate places to lay Teal up for the winter, for the season was drawing to a close and Helsinki would be a convenient place to leave her, and again somewhere a little out of town would probably be best. A biggish marina was shown on the island of Lauttasaari on the western outskirts of the city, so I thought I would try there first.
Sailing out of a marina single-handed had been daunting enough – stopping on one of the bow-to-pontoon berths with only one pair of hands and no engine had even more potential for making a large hole in the side of an expensive gin palace. The usual plan of action for mooring in these marinas is to attach a stern line to the buoy that lies off the pontoon as you slip past, then nose up to the pontoon to allow a crewmember to step casually off the bow. Ideally I needed one person to steer, a crewmember to jump ashore with the bow rope, another to tie us to the stern buoy, and several more to drop the sails at the right moment. I would somehow have to manage all those jobs myself.
Most local yachts have a clever long metal clip for lassoing the stern buoy without any fumbling with knots as it slides past, for it has to be done quickly so that the boat can maintain steerage way. I had no such device, but I had attached one of the life-harness lanyards to a length of rope so I could use the clip on that. We were approaching downwind, so I scrambled up to the foredeck and dumped the sails, stuffing the headsails in the canoe and tying up the main with one sailtie for the present. Then, while we still had steerage way, I scrambled back to grab the tiller and put us back on course; let go again to lean precariously over the side and clip the stern line onto the buoy; ran back to the tiller, for the pontoons were busy and there were expensive plastic yachts inches away on either side, took a turn round a cleat to slow us as we neared the pontoon, tightened it to stop us completely before we rammed it, and finally ran up onto the foredeck and along the bowsprit, and jumped ashore with a bow line to secure the bows before we blew off onto one of the neighbouring yachts.
Phew. I was rather pleased with myself as I busied myself making everything a bit more shipshape. Then an elderly chap who had watched my performance wandered up and began to chat. ‘But don’t you know all the visitors berths are over there?’ he said, pointing. ‘These are all private moorings.’
So I had to do it all again.
I had a couple of days before Jodie arrive, and I spent some time making an attempt to find anywhere suitable to lay up Teal for the winter. I traipsed round a number of marinas and boat yards, but most seemed to be attached to yacht clubs, were full in any case, and weren't particularly interested in a small old boat just turning up for the winter. Perhaps further along the coast in more rural areas I would have more success. A friendly chart agent also suggested I should try Tallinn, where prices were likely to be cheaper.
Tied up alongside me in the marina in Helsinki was the ugliest yacht I have ever seen: squat, hull the shape of a bath, with topsides that towered halfway up Teal's mast. The windage on them must have been something incredible . One day the caretaker of the yard wandered along the quay as I was sitting on deck repairing the stitching on the big jib (a never-ending task). 'Mmmm...., nice boat' he opined to me, and I looked up, pleased that Teal had found yet another admirer. To my shock his eyes were on the hideous slab-sided caravan next door. Each to his own.