Summer holiday '14

Oh sweet memories! It is the 4th week that I am back to the city and to work. The whole trip we made during the summer vacations seems to be a dream now. Only pictures and miles on the tools remind it was real :) In this post I would like to write about the summer holiday overall, while in the following ones I will tell more in detailes about the harbours we visited.

Once upon a time... :) On the 19th of June we left Helsinki and headed to Estonian northern coast. The crossing was done on a chilly rainy evening, with almost no wind...

 The weather during our stay there was not summery at all: 3 layers of clothes, hats, scarves and gloves were must have when sailing. At times it was sunny too, though it would rain every day and temperatures were not very high. We were laughing about having "autumn holiday" instead of summer holiday. During our visit to Estonia in about 1 week time we visited the following harbours: Prangli, Tallinn, Naissaar, Lohusalu and Dirham.

Upon our return to Finland the weather got warmer and better, the crossing of Finnish gulf was on a totally windless day, so 8 hour motor trip seemed endless! The first Finnish harbour we visited was Hanko. And no matter many people critisize it for being a noisy place, crowded and too expensive, I still love visiting it each time we go towards the west! This year we decided not to rush towards Sweden, as we normally do whenever we head to west, but to spend some time in the Archipelago of Turku instead.

So the route continued to Högsåra, Helsingholmen, Brännskär, Västerön, Nauvo and Iniö. In some of the places we spent more than 1 day for weather reasons or just for pleasure, since there was no rush anywhere and we had all the time to enjoy. Hot weather has established starting from Hanko and now we could really talk about the awesome Finnish summer.

And though we did not plan it originally, winds took us to Åland :) We chose the upper route on the way towards west and lower route to return, so the places we went to happened to be Lappo, Seglinge, Kastelholmen, Mariehamn, Sandvik and Verkan.

There my holiday was over :( while my other H continued with a different crew to home harbour via Helsingholmen, Rosala, Hanko, Modermagan and Lähteelä.

I was pleased to notice that out of the 18 harbours, which we visited during the 3 weeks of my holiday, 13 were new to me. Pleasant thing to remark is also the fact that we did not have any major issues with the boat. Small leakage of sweet hot water was fixed during the holiday. One more thing I am proud to mention is that my personal leaning and strong wind tolerance has increased :)

         Some statistics:          

Miles: 586

Days: 24 (30 for H)

Harbours: 18, out of which 13 were new
Parking days because of the weather: 2

Nights on anchor: 2

Boat issues: 1

Backs burnt: 1, mine

Lips burnt: 1. Yes, me again! Yes, I had the SPF 30 lip balm! I am just good at it! :)

Beer: 2 *24 boxes, one of which was Lidskoe (made in Belarus :) )

Cider: 1*24 box. Of course Somersby :)