The Storm
Stephane and Tricia arrived almost immediately after the boys had left, and we walked straight back to the boat.
Our entry into Rauma had been easy – downwind all the way through the narrow twisty channel. No such luck on the way out. We must have put in a hundred tacks before we were clear of the narrowest part of the channel. Steph had told me that Tricia had spent a couple of years sailing the world in a yacht, so I got her to steer much of it. But I think it was a new experience for her - ‘We’d just put a tack in every other week or so’ she said later of ocean sailing. ‘It’s not quite the same!
Beyond the entrance we were able to relax a bit, although there were other sections later in narrow bits of channel that needed some more short-tacking. Steph produced a couple of mackerel-fishing lines and dangled them over the side. 'Ah, ze leetle mackerels weel zoon be in ze pan' he said. I didn't like to point out that there weren't any mackerel in the Baltic, what with them being a saltwater species and the Baltic being brackish at best. Perhaps something else would like the gaudy feathers and the chance to liven up our supper? There were no takers that evening. As we pottered along the wind slowly died, so we didn’t get the anchor down until around 11 that evening, tucking into a sheltered cove behind some little wooded islands.
The weather was vile in the morning – pouring rain but little wind. It wasn’t enticing, but after an hour of sitting around reading the downpour slackened a touch, and we decided we should head off. So we tacked out of our little anchorage and started heading south, hoping to get into the outskirts of the great archipelago that stretches from Finland to Aland by the end of the day.
The slackening of the intense rain was only temporary, and we were soon sodden. One black towering thunderstorm passed close by and not long after we were caught by the end of another, the lightning spitting closer and closer and the thunder cracking the heavens. The wind had died almost completely, but the rain was now torrential. The air turned electric as a strike came close, making my skin tingle. That cloud passed, but another was on a collision course for us. It became dark as it slowly blotted out the skies above us, and the rain increased in density until we were curtained into a world only yards across, drenched under the streaming skies of the heaviest downpour I have ever experienced. Then, only a few yards away, and approaching at walking pace we saw a dark line on the water. I’ve experienced squalls at sea before, and had wondered whether these clouds might have some wind under them, so I had made sure we only had the small jib up, despite the wind staying very light up to this point. But I was totally unprepared for the sudden ferocity of the wind that hit us then. In less than 30 seconds the wind swung 90 degrees, catching us aback, and rose from a near calm to strong gale force. With the jib on the wrong side and the sheets hard in we were pushed over until the water on the lee side was within inches of coming over the cockpit coaming and swamping us. I thrust the tiller at Stephane, shouting at him to keep it pushed away from him to keep us pointing into wind as much as possible, while I wrestled with the jib and staysail sheets to let them fly. With those loosed I climbed along the sidedeck and hauled the main down as fast as I could, then the staysail, which with the jib was flogging violently and shaking the whole boat. The gear on Teal is very easy to handle, so I probably had them down in less than a minute, but the jib was whipping itself to pieces while this was happening. I let fly the outhaul and stood on the very bow of the boat to grab the flogging mass, as a loose sheet tore my spectacles from my face. Another lurch pulled me off my feet and for a moment I swung out over the black water and white foam, until I found my footing again and managed to wrestle the damaged sail to the deck and stuff it into the canoe with the staysail.
We now had to watch our course, for we could see nothing in this rain. Even with just the mizzen up we were scooting along fast, and we couldn’t hope to sail to windward like this. Luckily we were in a fairly open stretch here, and I set a course that should keep up clear of most dangers – at least for a while. I put the staysail back up so we had some control of where we were going. But the violent squall didn’t last long, and within ten minutes the veils of rain had lifted just enough to reveal a couple of landmarks.I decided it was crazy carrying on if there was a risk of another such squall hitting us, especially now we had only the big jib. We turned back towards the anchorage we had come from.
Luckily no other squalls hit us on the way back. But the fireworks continued to the accompaniment of cracking whip and rolling timpani. Suddenly, there was a flash that seared our retinas with a gunshot to make the eardrum ring and a yelp from Stephane..... ‘Ahhh, sheet! Eet heet my arm!’ I don’t think the main force of the strike did actually hit the boat, but certainly enough electricity leaked through the rigging to give him a very painful jolt.
There was a little basin half a mile from the anchorage we had used the previous night, so we limped our way in and tied up next to a couple of other yachts.We had more success the next day, ghosting down the coast in a light easterly, and picking up speed as the sea breeze filled in. Steph soon had the lines out, but ze leetle feeshes weren't in biting mood today either. We found a gorgeous island to stop at, and had it all to ourselves. Steph had appointed himself cook for the week, and tonights Cordon Bleu menu was aubergines with a dash of pesto mashed into them, roasted over an open fire on the seashore, followed by bananas given a similar treatment with mint chocolate. I can recommend both courses.
We were now back in the great Aland-Finland archipelago and the scenery was beautiful. Here we passed a long hump-backed island with reeds growing in a sheltered inlet and thick mixed forest clinging to the thin soil, there a bare rock rising from the sea like a blowing whale, striated greys and pinks topped by the white guano of the seabirds. Through the maze the red and white markerboards lined up to show the safe passages, and the occasional green, red, or black and yellow sparbuoys marked isolated rocks. In some places older marks still remained – whitewashed cairns that have piloted the fishermen of these parts home for centuries.
The navigation marks are now standardised, and we could tell from the colour whether a channel lay to the left or right of a particular buoy, or whether the buoy lay to the north, south, east or west of a danger. The same marks are in use throughout the world - except, bizarrely, in America, where you pass to the left of a red buoy when heading upriver, rather than to the right as you would anywhere else in the world. It's an important distinction, as you might imagine.
We were in Aland waters by the end of the following day, where the rock is pinker and the islands even more tightly packed. A kind wind had given us a good days run, but died as we approached a little island harbour, so we rowed then punted the last couple of hundred yards, for the water was very shallow. Steph forced some sauted potatoes down our throats, to lie atop the cous-cous salad he had knocked up for lunch. The fish course sadly was still swimming merrily around beneath us, as yet untempted by the mackerel darrows. We walked to the little ferry quay at one end of the island to watch the moon rise bright over the islands. Darkness at night had crept stealthily upon us as we had sailed south. This was the first night I remember being truly dark.
There was little to hurry us now, for I aimed to change crews in Mariehamn and that was not so far away. We explored the island further in the morning, for it was one of the bigger islands in the archipelago, and had once been home to a sizeable farming and fishing community. Few people live permanently on the outer islands any more, though holiday houses are everywhere. One of the old farmsteads was left virtually unchanged from the early days of last century until the owners death in 1973, and had been turned into a museum, so we did our tourists duty and looked round. It was fascinating to see how these remarkably self-sufficient people had lived. They were crofters, they were fishermen, they were sailors and traders. They made their own clothes, their own farming implements, they built their own boats and houses. They even made their own cutlery. A film had been taken in the 1970's of Sven Carlsson, the last owner of this farm, sitting old and gumless in his ancient self-built house, propped up on his one remaining leg and his (home-made) crutch, carving spoons to keep his hands busy while he talked to the interviewer.
We left and had another pleasant afternoon of meandering through the islands. Steph was fishing all the time, but we had not a single bite, and we lost a fishing line that fouled on a buoy that we passed rather too close. A reedy bay off a narrow channel was our anchorage that night, and in the morning we continued towards Marieham. We were now retracing the route I had taken when I left Marieham with Hamish, across the little inland sea of Lumparn and through the narrow Lemstrom canal.
Since our last visit I had read that the old maritime quarter of Marieham offered berthing to traditional boats, somewhere in the eastern harbour. I thought it was worth trying to see if we could stay there, so as we approached we kept our eyes skinned. We passed the swimming beach, the busy yachting marina, and the moorings we had anchored by the previous year, but there didn’t seem to be any other traditional boats around. Where was it? Aha, ahead were a couple of little wooden masts waving above a low stone harbour wall, beyond a deserted quay. Could that be it? It seemed awfully quiet, but we were charging along downwind and had to stop somewhere, so we dropped all the sails and brought up on the quay.
I went ashore to find someone, and in a little office by a museum entrance was told that yes, this was the maritime quarter, we were very welcome, and there wouldn't even be any charge. However, we couldn’t stay on the quay for there would be some other boats arriving shortly. I couldn’t see that there wouldn’t be room for several other boats alongside us on the quay, for it was fairly big, but we did as told and got sail up again to move round to the little stone-walled harbour instead, empty apart from the couple of small traditional open boats whose masts we had seen on the way in. We had barely tied up again when a hefty gaff cutter with a German ensign came scudding downwind towards us, every sail and spar straining, rounded into wind off the jetty end and dropped all sail. It hadn’t tied up when a large schooner with spoon bow and counter stern arrived, followed by a pretty pale blue Danish ketch with canoe stern and immaculate paintwork. A steady stream of boats began to arrive – a modern looking gaffer with high topsides (I was pleased to see it was easily beaten by some of the more traditional boats), a squat steel schuyt with heavy leeboards, an enormous three-master, and bringing up the rear, a straggle of the wide-planked clinker-built beamy craft of the islands, some with a little cuddy at the back for shelter, most entirely open to the elements.
It turned out that we had arrived 10 minutes before the Marihamn Maritime festival started. The magnificent sight we had just witnessed was the end of a race the boats had started that morning. The quay was crowded with two or three boats abreast after all, and the little harbour was also filled to overflowing.
We couldn’t have picked a better time to arrive. The atmosphere was fantastic, especially in the little harbour where the crews of the open boats rigged canvas covers to sleep under, drank beer and played fiddle and guitar into the small hours. We had got here rather earlier than we needed, but I for one was happy to spend more than one night in one location for a change and chill out a bit.
One task I had set myself in Marieham was to find a sailmaker. We had been lucky in having mainly light winds the last few days since the smaller jib had blown, but we couldn’t risk doing the longer passages down the Swedish coast that were coming up without a decent heavy weather foresail. I didn’t hold out much hope that it could be repaired, as the stitching had gone completely right across the sail on at least three seams, and in addition the cloth had torn in a ragged mess so that the clew was almost completely detached from the rest of the sail. But it might be easier to get a new one made here than sent out from Britain, although I had taken measurements to send off home if necessary. Several of the other sails were showing signs of wear too. Periodically we had hand sewn the worst sections of seams that were coming undone, but there were lengths on the staysail and big jib that were in need of reinforcement.
I asked in the office if they knew of a sailmaker. Yes, there was a man who made sails, especially traditional sails in fact, and here was his number. I tried it but it was disconnected. However, back in the office the boy at the desk said he had just seen the sailmaker. It turned out he was helping crew one of the boats in the race, and I soon caught up with him.
He wasn’t promising anything, but reckoned it might be possible to resurrect the small jib. He took it away, along with the other two headsails, and next morning brought them back. He’d done an amazing job. The burst seams were neatly restitched, and the tear across the clew was carefully patched on both sides. All the loose seams on the other two sails were reinforced as well. And for this he was reluctant to take any payment at all, for the materials he had used were only a reel of thread and patches cut from old redundant sails, and as for labour, well, it was really only a hobby of his anyway. In the end we settled on 30 euros and a bottle of strong Estonian beer. It would have cost me many times that at any sensible estimate of the jobs worth.
We took it easy in Marieham. Steph and Tricia visited Pommern, and we ate cardamon-flavoured pancakes in the cafes and paella from the stalls in the maritime quarter while listening to the bands that had been laid on for us. It was pleasant to simply sit and do very little for a change, soaking up the atmosphere.