Background: plans and speculations
There were three reasons to choose Estonia as our main sailing target for the season: Paula’s – the godmother of Ofelia – recommendations to see some of the new Estonian marinas, my lifelongtime dream to sail around the Gulf of Finland (and, finally, around the Baltic sea), and Angela, Aino’s colleague from Estonia.
The first tangible thing to make the plans real was to purchase an Estonian courtesy flag in March while occasionally visiting a chandlery store. Later I purchased also the first volume of the Estonian Charts “Eesti merekaardid”, and started studying the coast and the charts to be able to read them fluently in due time. Somehow it started to become a kind of pleasant duty to fly the Estonian flag one day…
Gradually, during the spring, it became obvious that also Angela would be involved. We would, according to Aino, get a local guide and presumably a low maintenance, high fun crew member. Who wouldn’t want something like that?
Late June I created a theoretical route mostly to familiarise myself with the distances in the Estonian waters, and introduced it to the potential crew, i.e. Aino, Saga, Jaakko and Angela. The turning point ⑦ is the island of Kihnu where Angela has some connections. I also hoped that Angela would sail with us to Finland, as the Finnish coast is so much different compared to the Estonian.
The sailing challenge in Estonia is the marina dependence. The coastline is shallow and rocky. There are not many accessible bays or islands giving shelter when in anchorage. Although there has been significant activity to build new marinas it is still a skipper’s nightmare to find out that the marina is out of berths when arriving in the evening, the crew is tired and has no night sailing experience. There can still be a long distance to the next, sufficiently deep marina. Estonia has, however done a good job also in marketing, and there is a lot of information available about the opportunities.
At one point there was an idea to sail around Hiiumaa, but there are – according to my knowledge – no sailboat accessible marinas on the west side between Sõru and Kärdla. It is roughly a 50 NM route in the open Baltic sea. No problem in good weather, but if something happens or the weather changes against all forecasts, the conditions can be nasty for a crew with limited experience.
The second, this time homemade challenge, was the time. We had several calendar marks to navigate, starting from Aino’s vacation, our godson’s graduation, my brother’s 60th and probably last major birthday reception, Saga’s friends’ parties, Jaakko’s weekend plans and, finally Angela’s puppy, Pipar, which she should receive early August.
After a lot of speculation and planning we finally decided that Angela would board – weather permitting – Ofelia on Saturday, 26th of July somewhere in Tallinn. We would leave Porvoo a day or two earlier, depending on this and that. Saga and Jaakko would jump off somewhere in Estonia, and Saga might rejoin again maybe in the Finnish side. We would need to drive from Porvoo, starting 4 o’clock in the morning to Turku to catch the ferry to Maarianhamina on the 10th of August. Therefore, we – not necessarily Ofelia – should be back at Porvoo on the 9th of August at the very latest.
Time to get some action?
Ofelia II ja muita juttuja 