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. read more...

Northern Light - Northern Light - Tallin - St Petersburg

Friday 17th July - Pene arrived late morning, along with Nigel and Victoria Steele, in a torrential rain shower. This was quite a refreshing change from all the hot weather that we had experienced during he trip to date., although I’m not sure that new arrivals agreed wholeheartedly with this sentiment. Dinner at the Tallin Yacht Club was very good. The Soviet style rather gaunt and crumbling premises were built for the  Russian Olympics on 1980, and had been pretty well neglected since. Tallinn however was delightful with the Old city especially, being a joy to wander around.Friday night was also the famous ‘ drink my rum before the Ruski’s get it’ party, thrown most generously by Guyon and Ali onboard Widago, an impressive Leopard 48 catamaran, on which the family has. read more...

Northern Light - Re: Northe

Mon 13th JulyJames, Will and Olivia departed by taxi at 10.15 for Visby airport, Stockholm and then home. I hope that the week on Northern Light was fun for them. They were certainly very different people when they left, with rosy cheeks and lots of laughter. Evening bridge was a great success, with a very open and often rather eccentric bidding process, which was great fun for all. Will was very useful on the last morning, and is rapidly becoming a good deckhand, whilst Olivia managed to organise her father pretty well, most of the time. James had been on board since Amsterdam and I think was rather sad to leave, having made a major contribution to the understanding of how things work. I think also that with his racing background and my more laid back approach to sailing were quite. read more...

Northern Light - Northern Light - Bornholm

Well, what a coincidence!Wednesday 8th JulyThe neighbouring yacht in the Rally to us at Ronne, is called Tenace (Tenacious in English), which happens to be the name of James and my grandfathers Hoegar Dutch barge yacht, that he sailed on the East Coast between 1956 and 1962.The owner, Dirk Rens told us that he thought that his father had in fact sold Tenace to our grandfather, which we confirmed by getting some old photos sent over from the UK - see attachment. In my early youth (very early) I used to spend summer holidays sailing with them around Suffolk, but based at Ramsholt , on the River Deben. My grandfather sold her in 1962, and she was then run down by a freighter in the English Channel whilst on her way to Southern climes.After being gale bound for a day in Bornholm, we set off. read more...

Northern Light - Kiel - Bornholm

6th July - nautical miles to date 380We dropped James off at Dusternbrook marina, Kiel, where we had moved to from the British Kiel YC (don’t go there, no bar and no breakfast). The only positive I saw was the very handsome meter yacht which is I believe the last remaining one that the Brits commandeered from Field Marshall Goering in 1945!Rick and I then motor-sailed in light winds to Warnemunde, at the entrance of the Rostock estuary, a distance of 70 nm to the East. On the way we passed under the bridge connecting Fehman Island passing a forested coastline with lots of sandy beaches. We then stayed for three nights at the Hohe Duene Marina, an impressive development built originally for the unsuccessful German Olympic bid a decade or so ago. The most impressive thing for me was the. read more...