Back to Finland
It was time to change crew again. At least I would again have someone familiar on the next leg, for Julian was coming back out for a week. He was also bringing his brother, Jay, and a friend Pete, who I had met briefly at Easter while cycling through Reading. I had arranged to stay at Julians flat, and cycled up there from the house of an old school friend in Surrey. I arrived, worn out, to be greeted with ‘Oh. Ah, yes... um.... I normally go out mountain biking with Jay and Pete on Wednesday evenings.... fancy coming along? I was knackered by the end of the evening - but at least I had filled another week of the jigsaw that was the crewing schedule for the summer.
With four on board it was going to be cramped again. I decided against using the tiny cramped quarterberth, and slept on the floor instead. It was luxurious.
I was in two minds about which way to go from Umea. The boys would be flying back from Tampere in Finland, and my next crew would also be arriving there. So we needed to be on the Finnish coast by the end of the week. I was tempted to head south down the Swedish Coast for a day or two before crossing, in order to see some of the ‘High Coast’ around Ornskoldvik, where you can be lying tied to the shore in a natural rock harbour and still have 30 fathoms of water under your keel. But the Gulf widens considerably south of Umea - from Umea to Finland was a 30-mile crossing - it would become 90 miles if I headed south first. That wouldn’t be a problem if the weather was kind, but there would always be a risk we wouldn’t make it in time for their flight if it decided to blow up a gale or indeed give us one of those long idle Bothnian calms. The weather was looking looking fine for crossing the following day, so we decided to head straight across.
So off we set the next morning, though yet again the wind was so light we had to row out the harbour. After a couple of hours a very light headwind sprung up, and we inched our way crabwise away from the Swedish coast.
We were never far from land, as the Finnish islands here extend well across the Gulf. But the aspect of the islands changed ever so slowly as the sun swung blazing across our heads, and by late evening we were still far from an anchorage. I hadn’t particularly intended to give the boys a night sail on their first night on board, but there was nothing for it but to continue. It was 5am before we entered the little winding channel that runs through the islands about Ronnskar, and dropped the anchor for a few hours of well-deserved sleep. Ironically the wind was now rising, and the anchor dragged in the night. I got up and let a little more chain out, and it took a better hold.
We put the canoe together for a paddle ashore to the main island in the group after we woke again late in the morning. A huge daymark dominated the island, an enormous wooden tower that had proved its worth while we had been navigating towards the island at dawn, for it was visible many miles away. There was also a radar station and several military accomodation buildings, together with a couple of more homely cottages.
There was still a strong wind when we got back to the boat, so we set off to make use of it. Our course lay dead to windward, but once we were beyond the islands we could lay long tacks and we made steady progress. After about 20 miles of this a sudden wind shift brought the wind astern and we started flying along. It was another long passage though, and it turned into another night sail, for we didn’t reach Gashallan until 4.30 am. It was nice to be back in familiar waters here, for we were back now on the coast I had sailed up with Jamie and Carrie the previous month.
Again we slept for a few hours and briefly explored ashore. I was loathe to waste a favourable wind however, so we didn’t stay long, but continued down to the little port of Kaskinen, an easy short passage with a good wind at our backs.
Kaskinens main tourist attraction is the ‘Cneif stone’, to which we walked in the evening, a couple of miles along the road and down a forest track. It turned out to be an erratic boulder, with some barely legible latin chipped into it. The interpretation board nearby was only in Finnish, and neither our Latin or Finnish was up to the task of working out what on earth the thing was about, so we left it to the clouds of mosquitoes that were jealously guarding it.
Kaskinen also boasted a lifeboat, decked out in a familiar orange and blue livery. On the transom was the one word ‘Torbay’, though it now flew the Finnish SAR flag. I wonder if Torbay has noticed it’s missing yet?
I inadvertently set my alarm for 8pm rather than 8am the following morning, so we had an unintentional lie-in. The wind had sadly swung round to the south, so we were kept busy tacking down the long narrow inlet that forms the southern entrance to Kaskinen. Beyond the lighthouse at the end we had the wind free for a short period, but in the even narrower channels inside the next islands a little further on we again had to beat.
The strong sun continued to beat down, and we were getting burnt to a crisp. The water was beautifully clear, and in the shallowest part of the channel we could look down and see the enormous boulders that formed the bottom drift silently under our keel. One of them stuck up a little more than the others and we grated gently across it.
It turned into another long sail, and it wasn’t until 3am that we found a place to stop on the island of Ouraluoto. We were noticably further south now, and navigation at night was beginning to get harder again, for although it was still never entirely dark there was barely enough light to see some of the navigation markers. The last hour or so were through particularly rocky waters, and the navigation was trying; especially the last few hundred yards of channel to the quay, which was barely a boat length wide. Luckily, it lay downwind, so we took down all sail and drifted in under bare poles.
Ouraluoto was yet another idyllc Bothnian island with a little ferry quay, a couple of composting toilets and a sauna. A profusion of wild flowers blew gaily in the wind, and if you searched carefully there were tiny wild strawberries amongst them, sweet red nuggets filled with the taste of summer.
For breakfast we cooked omelettes - but woe, we found that Finnish eggs have been decimalised, and we had only10 in our box that we had assumed held a dozen. Getting away from the island was extremely tricky. The wind that had blown us in so gently in the night had increased, so we were faced with a couple of hundred yards of channel far too narrow to tack through, that lay dead to windward with a little chop coming in for good measure. Rowing into it proved to be almost beyond our capabilities. It took two of us straining with all our might at the blades to inch forward at all, and if we let the bows blow off the wind even a touch it was well-nigh impossible to get her back on course. At one point we drifted to within spitting distance of an evil sharp rock to leeward, but somehow we scraped by without touching and made it out to the wider channel, where we could hoist sail. Even here there was some scary sailing. We had to beat out against a stiff wind, and there were several reefs to avoid that were unmarked, close together and lying only just below the seething water. Beyond lay a long stretch of open water, a a big sea had built up and came crashing in amongst the rocks.
Once we were out in the open water life became much easier. The breeze slowly swung round to become more favourable, and although the seas were short and lumpy we were going well. I didn’t like the look of the sky though, for there were dark angry clouds about. The suddenness of the squall that did finally hit us was astonishing. Within the space of a few seconds the wind swung 45 degrees and increased to gale force. We let the main sheet go, and I ran forward and dropped it quickly. We had more than enough sail left with just the small jib up.
With the gradually veering wind the final shift brought the wind dead astern, so at least it was now easy to steer our course. Further on we took another passage inside some islands where the seas were flat, and the islands took the edge off the wind. We were careful to find a well-sheltered spot to tuck into to anchor however, for in that wind we would have been likely to drag.
The islands we were in continued all the way to Rauma, which was a convenient place for the boys to catch a bus to the airport at Tampere, and for my next crew, Tricia and Stephane, to make for when they arrived. We only had another 15 or so miles to go, so our last day was pleasant and relaxed, particularly as the wind was in our favour again. Around lunchtime we found our route took us through a little pool, landlocked apart from two narrow gaps which we entered and exited by. We anchored for a while, had lunch and went for a swim. The water here was astonishingly warm.
The marina at Rauma was a mile or so from the town, which was listed as a United Nations World Heritage site. We thought we ought to go and wander round. It did have some nice wooden buildings, but nothing wildly exciting. We ate in a local restaurant, for once finding somewhere that sold real food rather than plastic pizza. Mind you, I was a bit disappointed by the ‘Hunters Escalope’ I had, that turned out to be simply a bit of beef. I had rather hoped for a big hunk of moose, still twitching, but slightly charred on the outside over an open fire. Hunters in Finland clearly aren’t that adventurous.