SPS Ladies' sailing

Some active ladies from our yacht club have thought of a great sailing experience: ladies'sailing. For most of us "Sailing" normally means being on the own boat, with the own partner/family, having own ways of doing things and own rules on board. The whole idea of ladies' sailing was to sail someone else's boat, to be part of a totally new crew... to cut it short, to go beyond own comfort zones and to learn from each other. This event was not official one this year, it was just a trial, having some volunteers, willing to exchange their skills and have fun together :) This event was not a competition, everyone sailed with their own pace and we are all winners, as we have our learnings. 

So we ended up having nine ladies participating and sailing three boats. The three skippers got their crews and we were ready to go :

 In the first boat we had Rina (skipper), Merja and Hanna. I had the honor to sail with this super-experienced ladies :)

 The second crew had Kaisa (skipper), Tiina and Anita.  

The third team consisted of Inkku (skipper), Mervi and Kaisu. Unfortunately, there is no crew picture of the three ladies together. 

The weather was not really perfect for sailing, in the morning it was rather windy and rainy, but by the time we left the harbour and lifted up the sails, the rain was over, but so was also the wind. 

Hoping to get some wind later on, we decided to leave the main sail up. The black triangle mark (meaning that we are using motor, no mater that the sail is up) was attached in a visible place and we continued the trip.

 Instead of having sails trimming shifts, we had steering shifts... and of course a lot of fun! :)

At the end, we never got wind strong enough to sail. But despite of this fact we had a great time! 

 Like our skipper said, the trip could have been much longer, time was flying in a nice company... and suddenly we arrived to the destination :)

I did not feel bad at all that we reached the destination before those clouds reached us! 

Once all the participant were safe and sound in the harbour, both rain and celebration started :) 

  And this was not just sparkling wine, but champagne... :)

with some peanuts :)

 

 For the main course we had some Vietnamese summer rolls. This was a totally new and fun experience not only for me :)

 Kaisu making the dessert :) 

For quite long time dessert remained a mystery, but at the end it turned out to be great idea: watermelon with mashed mint leaves, lime zest&juice and a little sugar. 

Overall the event was a big success! And no matter we did not sail much, still I have a learning: boom preventer can be used very easily and quickly (currently in our boat it takes time to install it and requires many moves to have it in place...). By next summer we plan to copy and adopt this awesome idea! 

Not to mention the fun we had all together. I hope events like this will become a tradition in our yacht club. And like someone proposed, we don't have to make any gender differences, we can just have mixed crews and sail different boats.

 Big thanks to all the ladies for the great company and awesome experience! :)

PS: pictures in this post are not all mine.

Night of arts in Helsinki - food for body and soul

Team event with my colleagues happened to be on the same day as the Night of the Arts. The topic of our event could not be more suitable: it started with the food for the soul by visiting the Taidekoti Kirpilä and was crowned with the superb food for the body at Chef&Sommelier.

Taidekoti Kirpilä is actually a little museum in an apartment. In 1988 the owner of the exposed collection died and in his testament left all his art items to the Finnish Cultural Foundation with the only condition: he wanted the collection to be available for public. Now his home is transformed into museum and is open for visiting twice a week. 

Mostly collection represents paintings of Finnish artists, for their admirers this place is a must-see. I did not dare taking pictures of those pieces of art, they should be seen with your own eyes.Overall the collection counts about 350 paintings. But apart from the paintings, there were some sculptures and interesting interior objects, like the ones below. 

We had a guided tour, so had the pleasure to hear the stories of some pieces. Like the one about the monkey statue: whenever guests would ask the collector where his portrait or sculpture was, he would point to this guy :) 

Next stop in our Night of the Arts was little restaurant, that got a Michelin star, Chef&Sommelier. The dining room is really small, tables need to be booked weeeeeeeeeeell in advance, but this was a real experience! For that night I forgot about the diet and just ENJOYED every single bite. 

The menu contains only a few items and from the names you would never know what is the food that you get, you only get to choose the ingredients you want. The ingredients change all the time, as the fruits or vegetable get ripe. Menu is updated every couple of weeks.  The concept is to choose from 3 to 9 courses. The Chef has some land close by Helsinki, where he grows lot of the vegetables and herbs himself. Other ingredients have all their stories, that Chef tells when the food is served.  It feels like you just came to see your good friends, who are happy to make best food for you from the best available ingredients and accompany it by the best drink they got in their cellar. There are no waiters, Chef and Sommelier do all by themselves. 

Sommelier has a great collection of wines, that he orders from all aver the world, so no chance to find them in Alko :( He can help you pick fantastic combination of drinks to your food. 

Of course the bread is also "homemade", as well as butter. 

 The Chef likes to treat his guests with some little surprises :) 

This "bonus" was called "parsley and beetroot". 

 Pike perch and herbs.

 Mushrooms and roots.

 Lamb and tomatoes.

 One more surprise from the Chef: orange sorbet. 

 Cheese plate

 Fennel and apple. 

 And one more surprise: cauliflower and licorice ice-cream.

This meal was all about Art. Both food and service were exceeding any expectations. I am sure this place will be revisited many many many times. The prices are not really cheap, but the whole experience was worth every cent of it! 

Prangli - Juhannus with friends

We started the summer holiday on the Midsummer eve and the destination was Estonian island Prangli, where we headed on a rainy evening with a couple of friends. The arrival was quite late at night, so we did not see much of the place. Luckily two more boats from our yacht club were there before us. Big thanks to their crews for helping out with mooring! :) Approaching the harbour in the darkness was a bit exciting, there were only two illuminated leading lines. Also the depth was to keep an eye on: rather close to the coast it is still about 100m, but then suddenly it becomes quite shallow, with lots of underwater and water level rocks. Good advice was to stay away from the coast line as long as you get the leading lines aligned and only then get closer to the island and enter the harbour.  

The day after we went exploring the place and it turned out to be great:  

All the yards in this summer village were particularly accurate and well taken care of. At the same time, many have preserved old traditions and original state of the houses. I was surprised to see that most of the houses have names :) 

The mooring is free of charge, so were not surprised there were not so many services there, for example there is no showers or WC, only outhouse. Though to our surprise, shore power was free as well as WLAN.   

One fisherman was selling fresh fish right in the harbour. We got a nice fresh cod purchased. Luckily one of our friends knew how to clean the fish and helped me out with this :) 

We opted for grilling it, but it was not a big success, as you can see below :) Cod is very moist fish and falls into pieces whenever you try to turn it or otherwise touch it. Maybe (not to say absolutely! :) ) grilling was not the best way to cook it. Obviously for 4 adults that was not enough, but it was fun to buy and prepare it anyway :) 

There is awesome sauna in the island. It is located not really close to the harbour, so the owner offers great service by providing transportation at agreed time with the truck below. That was a fun ride! :)

Sauna price includes grill, woods for it, and transportation. 

No, they did not kill the seal to decorate the wall. It died in the fisherman's nets :( 

Right next to sauna there is a summer cottage for rent, that is fully preserved from the old times :)

Sauna should be booked separately. It was absolutely great! We enjoyed it for 2 hours, grilled some sausages, had transportation included, and price was ridiculously small for the service, it turned out to be only 5€ / person, as there were 9 of us (3 boats crews). Highly recommend this place! 

Apart from the unusual sauna, Prangli was known for the Must Luuk restaurant. Now the owner has closed it and has opened a new one on the sea shore named  RootS. Very nice cozy modern place. No one of us tried food there, we only had some desserts and drinks, so cannot say anything about the menu, but location is very nice. 

Restaurant windows overlook the harbour. Also they are facing west, it was a great place to admire sunsets in a nice company with a good drink :) And the place was rather popular with the locals, there were surprisingly many people late in the evening. 

We were lucky enough to have rather clear sky to enjoy the sunsets :) 

In good company and new great location time was flying, but we had the whole holiday ahead, that seemed to be plenty of time :)