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Northern Light - Northern Light - St Petersburg to Helsinki!



28th July - Having set off from St Petersburg , via Kronstadt Island for customs clearance, and having said goodbye to the immensely helpful Vladimir ('Vlad the Enabler’), we headed West for the first time towards Finland. We arrived at Haapasari, the nearest Finnish Island at just after midnight,after an interesting night passage through some narrow and shallow channels, with the aim of clearing customs there.
 Guyan and Ali from Widago came aboard for a nightcap of Benedictine liqueur, and it was only after the final drop has been consumed that we remembered the ‘zero tolerance’ exercised by the Fins to alcohol, and that they quite often breatherlized yachties. Indeed we soon discovered that two skippers had been done that evening, with only the Honk Kong flag showing a minor reading. 

Well all was well at 08.00 the next morning, when we were processed, and with a sense of relief at having been let out of Russia, we headed for the joys of the Finnish archipelago and Helsinki two days later.

29th/30th July - Found a delightful anchorage in the the archipelago to the South of Loviisa, and indulged in water sports including swimming and paddle boarding, courtesy of Widago, who had six of them. Pene took to it fairly easily, myself slightly less so, and Michael Fiddes won the prize for best trier (with the least improvement). It was during this leg that Julia discovered that she actually quite liked sailing, and that helming was really quite easy.

The background to this was that when I asked Michael to come on this trip, he replied that he would love to, but that Julia didn’t enjoy sailing and would not want to come. Julia duly rang me a few days later with the intention of graciously declining the kind offer, but when I explained that the Baltic was rather like a mill pond, that the sun always shone, and that the wind was always at your back, combined with the St Petersburg experience, she began to waver. Anyway after ten minutes she suddenly announced that they would love to come! We were very lucky that the 95 mile leg out of Russian waters was in flat calm conditions with a very light headwind, but I didn’t let on to Julia as to how different it could be!

On the second night at the anchorage I had a rather unfortunate experience, in that having been to a very jolly, and impromptu party on Widago, during which I had a couple of decent size rum mixes from the rapidly diminishing stocks aboard said vessel, I tripped over my shoelace and fell head first into our dingy, banging my head on the engine in the process. As I struggled to regain my balance I managed to catch my collar on the engine thus giving the impression of a beached whale.

 Whilst I can understand that those watching might have got the impression that this subsequent floundering around was as a result of over indulgence, I can assure the reader that it was not. I did feel however that my standing as the slightly aloof skipper had been temporarily dented by this perceived indignity!

31st July - Arrived in Helsinki at the delightful NJK marina, on the small island of Blekholmen.

1st Aug - Pene, Michael and Julia got the early fast ferry from Helsinki to Tallin, for a Ryan Air back to Stansted, crossing with Sally and Patrick Hearn coming the other way. Chris arrived just after midnight that evening and it was great to see him. Pene had decided that she wanted to head down to the Salcombe for not only Seve Reid’s 60th, but also the East Portsmouth annual garden Fete (The fete worse than death!).Chris, I think had decided that he just wanted to check up, not only on the new boat, but also on the 'old man' to make sure that he had not gone completely bonkers this summer!






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