The Amber Sea
The coast changes character near Vaasa. Another archipelago splurges out from the Finnish coast, almost closing the gap to Sweden. The gaps that do remain on either side of the Swedish island of Holmon are only a few miles wide and barely 20m deep, isolating the deep water of the northern Bothnian basin from the rest of the Baltic.
Looking at the chart for the group of islands we were about to enter, I realised the truth of what Arnie had told us in Turku. On Finnish charts there is one variety of cross that symbolises a rock that just pokes its head above the water, meaning that there is a fair chance that you might see it before you hit it. A slightly different cross denotes a rock that is awash so you are very unlikely to see it, and there is yet another cross that means the rock is just below water, so you don't have a snowballs chance. Around the Vaasa archipelago the chart has more crosses than a war cemetery. It's like an over-enthusiastic italian waiter has attacked it with an enormous pepper grinder, spilling thousands upon thousands of boulders over the landscape. As we shot through the narrow gap between the islands of Bergö and Bredskär and gazed at the rock-pimpled sea that lay before us we were very grateful for the twin lines of close-spaced spar buoys that marked a tortuous safe passage through. The rocks we could see were frightening enough- there were twice as many again that were invisible in the surf, or lying in wait just below the surface.
We blessed the efficient Finnish navigation authorities, and the wind that blew us through the channels without having to tack in the confined waters. It was a fascinating landscape, and one I would have loved to spend more time exploring - perhaps by canoe rather than in Teal, for navigating outside the marked channels would have been suicide.
We tied up in a small harbour just beyond the bridge that connects Raippaluoto to the mainland. Mosquitoes, the road and a soul-less modern restaurant nearby conspired to make it an unexciting anchorage and we had little time to explore anyway, for we arrived late and were off again first thing in the morning. Time was getting short. We were now unlikely to make the very north of Bothnia before Jamie and Carrie had to leave, and even Oulu, the only sizeable town en route and a convenient dropping-off point, was still a fair distance away.
As we passed through the northern limits of the Vaasa archipelago we came across a number of fishing nets strung along our path. Marked at 100 yd intervals by little buoys with flags on, they seemed to stretch right across the horizon. Seeing flags in the distance we would try and work out which end was nearest, but sometimes we we needed to detour sail for miles until we came to the little group of brightly coloured flags that marked the fish trap at the end. We were soon fed up with this game, and decided to see what would happen if we just sailed over one of the nets. At least - unlike most yachts - we didn't have a propellor to get caught in the line. We approached the taut line floating on top of the water, began to ride up over it - and stopped. It was a remarkably effective barrier, for the line was as tight as a bowstring. We got the oars to try to push ourselves over it, and with a great downwards heave it slid along the keel and reappeared again in our wake.
While the light winds drifted us along Jamie and I made yet another assault on the leaky foredeck. When I had looked at it before I had thought the sealant around the mast step itself was sound. Now that I peered more closely I could see it had one little dimple in it. Poking at it revealed the tiniest flap of rubber coming away from the mast. It was a minute hole, but the dimple collected water like a funnel and aimed it down past the flap of rubber to the cabin beneath. We pulled away the rim of rubbery sealant, and once again we got out the tube of Sikaflex. There was luckily just enough goo remaining to seal it up, and the forecabin was much drier after that. When it was very lumpy a dollop of water would still occasionally find its way under the forehatch seal, which was beginning to perish, but the worst of the constant drips from the base of the mast were fixed.
It was again very late when we nosed in behind another set of islands, wormed our way past some more nets laid across our path, peered from a distance at a little harbour set beside a little fishing village before we decided it looked a bit too shallow and tricky to get into, and anchored instead in a sheltered sound nearby.
We went ashore in the morning to paint the town red, but found that someone else had got there first. Every building was the lovely rusty russet of ochre and oil that has served as paint and preservative for generations in these parts. There was a scattering of simple huts, the only water supplies a little dipping well in the woods behind, and water butts fed from the steeply sloping wooden roofs. Just one shed stood apart, thatched, unpainted and windowless. The little village was deserted apart from a healthy, but ravenous mosquito population that clouded around us in delight, and an elderly couple who watched us snooping round the nets drying on the sturdy wooden racks. They spoke no English; we no Swedish - for as with many of the islands, the fishing folk are Swedish in descent - but we soon understood they were offering us some fish. The little thatched hut turned out to be an ice-house, stuffed two-thirds of the way to the roof with ice cut from the sea in the winter. On it a couple of small boxes full of small silvery fish lay. The old lady produced a plastic bag and stuffed in some handfuls of fish. 'Can we give you something for this?' we mimed. They smiled and shook their heads, and we waved our thanks as we paddled back out to Teal.
We fried up the fish and had them for dinner. I'd like to say they were exquisitely fresh and toothsome, but sadly no. They were rather bland and uninspiring.
We crept on up the coast, wildly zig-zagging to avoid fishing nets. The natives seemed to go to an awful lot of effort to catch a few bucketfuls of boring fish. The sun shone and we turned pinker, but the winds stayed obstinately light. We kept going through the night - not that it accounted to much now, for every day we sailed north the evenings grew longer and longer. It was quite possible to sit in the cockpit reading at midnight.
The afternoon of the following day we tucked inside the little island of Iso Kraaseli for another short break, tieing up at a little ferry jetty and pottering ashore to stretch our legs in the shady woods. An enormous wooden structure towered above our heads, a triangulated contraption of tree trunks stripped bare of bark. It was a daymark, a beacon built especially for us GPS-less navigators so we could identify at least one point on the low-lying land, as from a distance the coast was otherwise featureless. Every 20 miles or so up the coast we had seen the structures, some with pointy hats, some square; some ochre-red and some white. We took our paraffin stove ashore and cooked on a picnic table on a grassy bank, overlooking Teal lying at the jetty and the shallow sound beyond.
After dinner we set off again for another night sail. Oulu was only 40 miles away now; surely it couldn't take us long to get there. We might as well have stayed at the island, for we had barely cleared the rocky channel that lead back out to sea when the fickle wind faded once more. As the sun glided imperceptibly towards the horizon we sat bobbing on a silent sea.
The sea had changed complexion again up here in the sun-softened northern summer. We had left Tollesbury on a brown tide, earthy with the suspended silt of the east coast rivers. The North Sea had faded from grey-brown to a sparkling, multi-faceted grey-blue where the fresh combers washed against the Danish coast. Further south in Denmark it became glass-clear, tinged with green, and amongst the southern Finnish islands congealed into pea soup where the algae bloomed. But here, towards the north, as the low sun span slowly along the horizon it turned the water into amber; fossilised sunlight redolent with the smell of pines.
We were completely becalmed for 12 hours. Bizarrely, we could see wind turbines on the coast just a mile or so away that were spinning merrily. But not a breath reached us.
When, at last, the wind did return we headed for the shallow channel between Hailuoto and the mainland. Hailuoto is a strange place; 5 centuries ago it did not exist. The land is rising fast here - a metre a century - and the low-lying land rarely reaches 5m in height. The channel we sailed through was only 2m deep, so in 60 years Teal will no longer be able to squeeze through, and 140 years after that you will be able to walk dryshod over the sands that our keel was passing over. Real estate on the Finnish coast is a good investment - buy a little rock poking out the sea now, and when you retire it may have grown into a decent sized island.
The wind came and went again all that day. We'd make a few miles, then drift for an hour or so. Four miles from Oulu it died once again. I no longer found it frustrating. It was simply the way it was. If the wind blew - great, we could go sailing. If not, sitting in the sun and not doing very much is what passes for holidays for most people anyway. We had good books with us. They were an equally good way of passing the time. We did get the oars out though, and over the next couple of hours rowed most of the way to the port. A zephyr crept up to blow us finally into the mouth of the river, and up the channel to the port in the centre of town.