Men are rewarded and punished not for what they do,
but rather for how their acts are defined.
This is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves
than in better behaving themselves.
-Thomas Szasz-


Map: ©Microsoft Encarta World Atlas
Map of Baltic Sea






HEIJSSAN SVERIGE!


The passage from Estonia to Gotland was 160 miles and took us 40 hours. The head winds and rain abated just in time and we tied up in the fishing harbour in Fårösund just after sunset - 2300 local time



The Madagascar of the Baltic

I once called Lake Saimaa the "Finnish Caribbean" and I still long for the relaxed and stress-free area of clear, clean water, friendly people, fantastic cruising and the laid-back natives. But back to the Baltic. Gotland is not really the Madagascar of anything but that thought came from somewhere. I thought that the stormy channel between Gotland and Sweden would be like Mozambique channel while the island of Gotland was a place forgotten in time, a place out of this world.

This feeling kept surfacing occasionally. For example, when after several attempts to spell my name (L-a-u-r-i), the boat club rep collecting money put me down as "Lorry" and then "Laie". Even the name of the boat was written on the receipt as "Alissa". She was standing in front of the boat and the name is written in letters 400 mm high!! Jesus! Nothing annoys me more than being called a fucking truck - my name is not Lorry and do not ever try that on me as a joke. Even more offending and unprofessional is writing the name of the yacht wrong. Every captain is proud of his/her vessel, and one should be able to copy the name correctly when looking at it. Phoaaa... I'm glad I got that off my chest.



Kent was happy in his 18-meter boat. (That's just under 60 feet, for you non-metric individuals) His little ship was wood, built in 1944 in Poland and sitting tightly the harbour. Kent enjoyed company and there was no shortage of it during the summer months next to the busy ferry-landing between Gotland and Fårö. "Oh, I remember the good old days, when the ferry captains used to drink as much as they pleased. One of them took the ferry and went driving in the Baltic. The others went chasing him with the spare ferry" -Kent remembers and pours himself another drink.


Where are we again? Oh yeah, Gotland. Gotlandia, Sweden. My stomach was still a big cauldron of pea soup, requiring regular, unexpected and frequent emptying. This was part of a continuing chemical warfare in my body. You see, I had a flu a month ago. That continued with a sinus infection which was killed by the first course of antibiotics. (Amoxicomp) The infection then took refuge further down and a few days prior to departure I got a second course of antibiotics (Dalacin) for bronchitis. This started a ...hmm... should I say... a situation in my stomach which my ass kept reminding me of. Lovely.

So, I tested the local health-care system. It was pretty damn good. Really. The closest real town and a doctor was 30 km away in the town of Slite. Jan from the local shop drove us to the local nurse and she made me an appointment. The doctor took some blood and checked that the infection was gone. Gone it was. She gave me some cough medicine and shrugged her shoulder about the diarrhea. The cough was gone in two days, the diarrhea continued. I took it like a man and the Baltic Sea, already so polluted, didn't blink an eye. We continued our travels, leaving behind a trail of...

The first few days were nice, being tied to a wall of tractor-tyres at the fishing harbour, but the weather didn't show any signs of turning better. Actually, the weather wasn't bad at all. It was the wind, blowind always, constantly and strongly from SW, our direction of travel. The Baltic Sea is not kind to the sailor heading SW. Given the old tradition of celebrating Midsummer, we had to make a choice and we decided to stay in Fårösund. We moved Aliisa to the quiet and idyllic Fårösund boat club. The old wooden jetty had a little sauna at the end of it. There was hardly any visiting yachts and the setting was beautiful.


Air +18, Baltic Sea +16, wood-heated sauna +90, Estonian beer +6. Midsummer was good. Life is good.


We got the keys to the sauna at the end of the breakwater. The sauna was a mobile shack, built on a trailer and with the cheapest plywood walls, but the kiuas* was a proper wood-burning one and the löyly* was surprisingly good. I put Aliisa's boat ladder in the water by the rocks, in front of the sauna, threw in a thermometer and loaded the kiuas with wood. We enjoyed the quited, almost warm, and sunny afternoon onboard. Strawberries and sparkling wine. Early season new potatoes and charcoal grilled pork chops. Later it was time to grab a few cold beers from the fridge, strip and hit the sauna. We didn't have the vihta*** to make it perfect, but it was pretty close the Absolute Swedish (and Finlandia) experience.

*the word stove is a poor translation to the finnish word kiuas, which means the heating unit of a sauna, so I use the native word and let you google for better translations. The modern kiuas is typically made of stainless steel and heated with burning logs or electricity. The "real" sauna must use wood, as it brings additional smells and makes a more pleasant heat. The top has pile of stones which heat up and retain a lot of heat for a long time. Throwing water on these rocks will cause the water to steam up and give a sharp, moist and instant rise to the heat.

**again, there is no translation to this word, describing the total heat/humidity/smell/feel-experience of a sauna, particularly when water is thrown on the heated stones, but also meaning the whole quality of the "heat". The heating resin pouring out from the timber walls inside the sauna, the temperature and humidity and the positioning of the kiuas and the bather will all play part in achieving a good löyly

***Vihta is a bunch of thin, young branches of a young Birch tree. It is used to whack oneself and - if asked to do so - whack the back of the person sitting next to you. The leaves release a pleasant smell and the slightly masocistic whacking increases the blood flow and the sweating of the pores of your skin. The end result - done in a properly heated (+85-105 C) sauna - is a totally relaxed feeling and cleanliness that is beyond skin deep.



The shy rep of Fårösund Boat club. He took money from us, but didn't dare to knock on the deck of the germans next door. They left without paying.



My dear wife Annina loves sailing when it's like this. I admit, I love it too when it's like this.



Gotland is very informative towards tourists. It even warns you of places not worth going to. Bugger all the houses with large "RUM" signs only wanted to let rooms.


Where is the summer?

The temperatures weren't really impressing us. On some days we were struggling to reach +13C and at night we were packed under the thickest covers, sometimes with clothes on. The head winds showed no sign of abating but we couldn't just stay here, however idyllic it may have been. We pushed on and headed for the island of Öland, hoping to get some shelter in the narrow Kalmar strait, separating Öland from mainland Sweden.

The forecasts in the Baltic Sea are well meaning but pathetic. Maybe I don't appreciate the difficulties in forecasting, maybe the Baltic is a difficult place for guessing the weather, but somehow I feel that the forecasts just suck, for boaters, that is. The VHF gives a forecast twice a day but only for 24 hours and with a wind bracket of 10knots or so. We were given 10-20kn SW and I thought I might be able to drive against 10kn of headwind. Not so, particularly when the wind eventually reaches 25kn and more. The day was a battle with the steep Baltic waves and ended on the west side of Gotland, in a small harbour, Lickershamn.

From there, two days later, an overnight battle to Borgholm, then following the Swedish coast down.

Stina and Sven are pulling out their nets, in preparation for painting the boat. There is over 1km of net and the job in the small fishing harbour of Sandhamn, Sweden, takes them to late in the evening. They laugh and chat happily. They've battled with Baltic fishing for long enough to have a good sense of humour. "In the last two years, the fishing has improved a little" -says Sven. There is hope for the Baltic Sea, the most polluted sea on the planet.



The windmills are an increasing feature in Europe. Unfortunately they were all facing SW, the desired direction of our travels. Massive wind parks are standing in waters deep enough for yachts, on the coast of Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland... In Finland the poor bureaucrats are still scratching their heads and the people debate. Why? It's clean electricity!


Something I have not seen elsewhere, the pirate flag on cruising yachts. In the Baltic, we've seen at least four yachts with the skull and bones. Elsewhere it would not even be a bad joke. Just bad taste. These were yachts full of adults, no kids. Am I being a tight-ass here, thinking that this is a taboo not to be broken? Yeah, it's just a flag, but what is the message these guys are trying to signal? Should I reply with a "rapist" flag? Or a symbol for necrophilia? A nazi symbol? How about a pedophilia-flag. Hey, it's just for fun!


Living without internet these days is difficult, if not impossible. We bought a HSDPA modem in Finland and with a local pre-paid sim card, had a mobile broadband on many parts of the Swedish coast. We'll save the paperbacks until later, yeah?


Denmark

When Aliisa arrived into the Baltic Sea for the first time in 2006, I was out of money and desparate to get to Finland and put the journey for a rest. It was a relatively easy one-week sail with only a battle agaist E wind at the end, straight from Kiel to Helsinki. This time, the SW wind was constantly giving us harm and there was no choice but to collect some extra country points. Having added Estonia and Sweden to the list, it became obvious that I should make use of our Danish courtesy flag too, even for just one day. There's a brilliant opportunity for that in the tiny pocket-size fortress island of Christiansø, the easternmost point of Denmark.

Christiansø was once real gem for sailors, with its tiny cobble-stone harbour and idyllic fortress setting, plus the authentic tavern serving good food and beer. Today, it is, with its tiny cobble-stone harbour and idyllic fortress setting (oh, and the tavern serving good food and beer) a totally tourist-packed little place where yachts raft up five deep and spend half their mornings shuffling the pack, as the inside-yachts leave, the outsiders move against the wall and the new-comers tie alongside the crowd. Tiring and frustrating.

Aliisa rarely sees a pair of welcoming hands on the decks of beautiful plastic yachts. Instead, people rush in with worry on their face, looking at the two large 35lb CQR anchors poking from on each side of the bow. The boat could almost be called "El Toro". There are always extra fenders appearing, as soon as we approach with the intent of tying alongside.

We managed a meal in the Tavern, some beer from the shop and a two-hour walk around the island. I met Christian, a Dane that had dinner on Aliisa two years earlier in the Azores. The world is small again. We left the following afternoon, after a frustrating shuffle of boats in the harbour.

With the wind!

Summer had arrived. Or so it seemed. For the first time since leaving Finland, on the 2 July, Annina went down to her bikinis and had a shower on deck. The wind was light and from the east. Add to that a smart Simrad autopilot, full main and a poled out genoa, and some cold beer. It was a perfect day. Annina became a sailor again, a down-wind sailor.

We had less than 170 miles to Kiel and two days of easterly wind on the forecast. We weren't in a hurry, as we had timed our trip to last two nights, arrival in the morning if we're fast and evening if we're slow. The wind had other plans, this time severely to our favour. The next day it was blowing 30knots up the ass and at the end we were riding down the waves at the speed of 7+ knots with only a reefed main. A two nighter became almost a one nighter as we reached the Heikendorf Yacht Club at three in the morning.

Kiel introduced us to

Germany

and for the first time we felt that we are in a different culture. Hard liquour and wine was on sale at the normal supermarkets, food was dirt cheap compared to Scandinavia but not everything was to my liking. Visa card, our only credit card, was not accepted anywhere. English language was not spoken well, if at all. In fact, already in Sweden I noticed the German's habit of just speaking german to me and having wonderful one-way conversations even after it was obvious that I haven't got a clue what they're saying. In the Kiel kanal, the lockmaster came out above us after we had tied on to the port side of the lock and started to yell at us in german. There was a good size Aussie flag at the back of Aliisa. The lockmaster made no hand signals and no friendly gestures, just kept yelling german at us - in one of the two locks of the worlds busiest artificial waterway, the INTERNATIONAL Kiel canal! Luckily Annina had studied some german and understood enough: "there is a ship coming there, move to the other side!"

We thought of buying some gold and diamonds, but apparently the service here was a bit schmuck, so we didn't go in...



The city of Kiel was tiring for us, wandering for hours without a map. By chance, I found some ferrites for the data cable between my Pactor modem and PC. We were trying to find a cheap digital SLR camera for making better images, but didn't have any success. After finding a petrol station, we returned to the marina in Heikendorf - opposite the locks to the Kiel Canal - to prepare to continue. The poor little Yanmar had worked 92 hours in getting us the 600-odd miles from Helsinki to Kiel. My modest wish is that after giving it fresh new oil, new filters and more diesel, it will continue to propel us through Germany, towards the North Sea. Yeah, we got rid of the bloody Baltic Sea! Never again.
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