We woke up, had a decent breakfast and used the harbour’s facilities after getting a key. The sun was shining and the whole day looked quite nice. I asked the crew to inflate our tender, a 2,3 metre inflatable Talamex boat which was on board the second year in a row but never used. I had once inflated it by myself it in our living room just to see how it is done.
The crew busy with the tender.
While the crew was busy to inflate the tender, I was busy in the saloon installing the new B&G VHF with an AIS receiver. Athough I was fully aware of the fact that the the VHF would be in a temporary position, I still needed to connect it with the NMEA 2000 circuit which meant a large enough hole trough the bulkheads. Of course the conditions to drill a hole were extremely unpleasant as always, but I made it, finally.
To my pleasant surprise, the radio stoically started working without any unwanted side effects after being connected! It took me some time to install all the needed parameters but that is normal nowadays. The more pleasant surprise was to find out that our old Garmin chart plotter was happy to show the AIS information through the NMEA 2000 circuit. We were ready to sail towards Tallinn!
We moved the boat to fill our water tank and left the Katajanokka marina at 11.30 o’clock, motored south of Suomenlinna and hoisted the sails.
Jaakko helming, Suomenlinna fortress in the background.
The weather was wonderful. During the day the temperature rose to 25 °C, at sea it was a few degrees lower. The wind blew 6-7 m/s from the east, no clouds. Just a perfect weather for sailing!
Saga enjoying the pleasant, easy sailing. No tacks !
We didn’t need more clothes than T-shirts and shorts. That is very rare at open sea around latitude 60 °N, even in July. We were heading south, the wind came from east. In practice we could sail all day without tacking. A moderate 6-7 m/s side-wind is maybe best for the boat. Good speed, easy for the crew.
The skipper and the chart
After Harmaja lighthouse we set our course to 190 towards Tallinnamadal. I marked our position every hour, more for fun than of real need. The passenger ship traffic is so heavy that one would actually not need a map nor a compass at all: just follow the ships. As soon as one disappears, another one is behind you!
The Nordstream 2 gas pipe under construction.
There was a strange thing out at sea, not moving anywhere, visible for a long time. Then we realized: it was the Nordstream 2 gas pipe from Russia to Germany under construction. The pipeline caused a lot of political discussions and many countries did not want it to be built. Finally all the countries accepted it and the construction should have been finalized by the end of 2019. That was probably the case, too. There hasn’t been much news about the pipeline lately.
Tallinn ahead!
It took us quite exactly eight hours to sail 48 nautical miles to Tallinn, which meant 6 kn average speed. When approaching Tallinn and taking the Estonian charts in use we were quite confused with the numerous rocks, which were marked: “+”. In the Finnish charts it means that the rock is awash, but in Estonia it wasn’t the case. It took a long time to learn sailing over those rocks which were safely deep under water!
The charts were also full of sounding marks making them very difficult to read at times. Here is a Navionics screenshot over the Lennusadam where we got a berth. I’d prefer a chart with a minimum amount of information to make the reading easy and quick. Just the essentials… The same applies for the GPS devices in cars. No fancy graphics, please.
I think that the simplicity of the Google front page was the key to success. In the late 90’s there was a competitor, Altavista, but their front page was just crowded with texts and boxes. A simple Google page was far more appealing, and the rest is history.
After mooring at Lennusadam I checked the boat which was in a good shape except the house batteries. They were empty… The night before we did not have any shore power at Helsinki Katajanokka marina, and the next day we used the engine only for a short while. In Tallinn we had electricity available but our charger could barely take care of the refrigerator. A potential problem for the next days?
Anyway, we walked to the Tallinn old town and had a nice dinner at the restaurant Oliver. I finally found out that the A. le Coq beer was Estonian, not French…
Lennusadam. Boring, but the evenings are sometimes just so beautiful when you sit in the cockpit and enjoy the summer and life in general…
Ofelia II ja muita juttuja 