Turku, Finland to Haarlem, Netherlands

My Finnish pal, Lars Colliander met me in Turku, Finland on June 15th. We departed the morning of the 16th and had a pleasant sail/motor through the Turku archipelago, the Åland archipelago, across the Gulf of Bothnia and into Stockholm, arriving mid afternoon on Thursday the 19th. Lars lives in New York, but was born and raised in Finland and comes back to his island in the Åland archipelago every summer, so he doesn’t need charts. He knows the best places to stop for the night and the best leads to follow through the 1,000’s of rocks. He was a great companion and I was sorry to see him leave on Saturday. But, he was meeting some old friends who were getting too frail to sail by themselves and were counting on Lars to help them sail back to Åland.

Adam Smith (Nick Jr’s childhood friend) arrived shortly after Lars' departure and having come from California, spent most of the day sleeping. Nick & Dan arrived on Sunday AM and visited the Vasa museum while I went out to buy charts. Then we all went to the grocery store and while Nick stowed the groceries, Adam and I got us underway. We spent that night with an anchor off the stern and the bow tied to a tree in a beautiful natural harbor on Ägnö about 15 miles SE of Stockholm. I didn’t get the bow quite close enough to the rock before Adam jumped so he landed badly and sprained his ankle. He felt OK after a beer and some ibuprofen, but had a swollen ankle for most of the trip. Dan had a great time scampering about on the rocky shore and climbing the mast, which he did with surprising ease.

The next day, Monday the 23rd, we had a nice sail south through the Stockholm archipelago. We stopped in mid afternoon at the last anchorage before heading out into the Baltic. It was another nice natural harbor where we were all alone and Dan couldn’t get in much trouble rowing around in the dinghy.

On Tuesday the 24th we headed south across 75 mi of open water to Visby on Gotland Island, which is the largest island in the Baltic. The wind was from the SW and blowing 25 knots, so we had a rough passage, but some great sailing. Visby is one of those places that Baltic sailors put on their must visit list, so I was glad to see when we arrived about 6:15 PM. A very pretty place, though quiet because the strong winds had kept most boats closer to the mainland. We couldn’t enter the part of the marina designed for large boats (Wassail at 44’ is large by Baltic standards) because a 60’ Swan had gotten crosswise to the wind and blocked the entire large boat section of the marina. We entered another section where our neighbors both looked a little worried when we bore down on them, but by tying our stern off to a buoy that was intended for boats on the other side of the marina, we avoided being pushed into the boats on either side and once tied up felt safe and sound. If you want to find Gotland on a map, click on the following link. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=57.6384,18.2878&ie=UTF8&om=1&ll=57.803798,18.292236&spn=2.681384,9.580078&t=h&z=7

On Wednesday AM we walked up into town to get some provisions and try to find a shackle that would fit the lowest hank on our staysail. I bought the sail from UK Sails in NYC and they had it made in their loft on the west coast of Sweden and then delivered to us while we were in Stockholm. It was just right in every respect (and we were glad to have it in the strong winds), except that the bottom hank fell below the wire part of the inner forestay so it needed to be larger than all the others. We solved the problem temporarily by connecting the hank to a shackle, which then went around the bottom of the inner forestay. The theory is that when I arrive back in Haarlem, Netherlands on August 1st, I’ll find (courtesy of UK sails) a larger piston hank waiting for me, I’ll toss the old one, put on the new one and we should be ready to go. We left Visby at about noon on Wednesday for the overnight sail to Bornholm in the southern Baltic.

We were motoring into the wind all night long. At about 1 am, I was at the helm and everybody else was asleep. I looked behind us and saw a strobe light. I thought, Jesus, what’s that? Then I looked closer and saw that the strobe was on a life raft and thought, Wow, where did that come from? Then I looked closer still and saw that the life raft was following us, in fact it was our life raft! The boat had done so much pounding into square waves that the harness had apparently come loose and the whole thing had gone overboard.

I got all hands on deck (actually Dan slept through the whole thing) and then saw that there was a freighter about a mile away. He seemed to be slowing and I could imagine that he saw the life raft and assumed we were in trouble. I called him on the VHF radio and assured him that all was OK. He said he had already called Stockholm Radio, so I called them just as they were about to call the Swedish Coast Guard. I assured them all was OK and we went about retrieving the life raft. A half hour later we had it aboard with all the accouterments except ½ of the canister, which now lies at the bottom of the Baltic. The picture isn’t ours, but excepting the man inside, that’s what I saw bobbing along about 25’ behind us.

After our midnight excitement we resumed sailing toward Bornholm. The wind made it hard to make progress to the west, so in mid afternoon we decided to head for Christiansø rather than Bornholm, arriving at about 6 PM the evening of Thu 6/26. The island is tiny (less than 100 acres) and has a year round population of 96 people. It was the easternmost outpost for the Danish navy until 1855 so there are lots of historic naval installations around the island. The boys went off for a walk and Dan had fun climbing on the old guns. When they returned we all went out for dinner only to discover that the only restaurant on the island had closed about 5 min before we arrived. Fortunately, Nick Jr inherited his mother’s love of cooking, so we had a good dinner aboard.

Friday morning we left early for another overnight to Kiel, Germany arriving at the British Kiel Yacht Club about 7 PM on Saturday. The next day, I rented a car and Nick, Dan & I drove to Billund, Denmark, home of Legos, which are Dan’s favorite thing in the whole world. Legoland was a bit of a disappointment, but we had fun on the roller coaster and saw some pretty amazing model villages all built with Legos. When we arrived back in Kiel at about 10 PM, Kiel was a happening place. It was the end of Kiel Week, a big deal by itself, but also the night of the soccer match between Germany and Spain. There was a huge screen set up in the middle of town and thousands of drunken Germans cheering on their national team (which lost). Nick, Dan & I had a fine meal at McDonald’s and then went back to the boat to bed.

On Monday 6/30 I returned the rental car (Avis later charged me $1,200 for returning the car without the keys, I’ve disputed the charge, how does one return a car with no keys?) and we got underway at about noon. We arrived at the entrance lock for the Kiel Canal a few minutes later and milled around for about an hour while the lock tender got the big ships into the lock and then filled the interstices with Wassail and the other yachts. By the time we got through the lock it was after 1 pm and it was clear that we weren’t going to reach the other end (61 nm distant) before nightfall. Since canal rules don’t permit yachts to operate after dark, we decided to have a short day and stop in Rendsburg, 1st for diesel ($858 worth at $10/gallon) and then for the night at what is reputed to be the only nice place to stop along the canal. Even though we had stopped early, we managed to dither so much on the boat that by the time we walked into town, there was only one restaurant open. We had a dinner that we definitely not up to the standards of Nick’s cooking, and then returned to the boat to get a good night’s sleep before an early start in the morning.

We departed about 5AM on Tuesday 7/1. Nick followed the narrow winding channel from Rendsburg back out to the canal while Adam and I stowed lines and fenders and Dan slept. It was a beautiful early morning with the sun rising and mist hanging over the water. We had the canal pretty much to ourselves for the next few hours until we reached a bend where there were a whole bunch of ships stacked up in either direction. The Kiel Canal is the world’s busiest artificial waterway so canal traffic is controlled by what are essentially traffic lights. A column of 3 white means go, 3 reds mean stop, we gathered that a combination of red and white means proceed with caution, though the printed directions we were given at the entrance were mute on the subject. We had three reds in both directions so nothing was moving. After milling about for the better part of an hour, with no clue what was happening, we decided to follow the lead of a couple of yachts ahead of us and run up between the ships and the edge of the canal. Whatever the holdup, we assumed it applied to the big ships that needed plenty of room to navigate and not to us. The canal police didn’t come after us so I guess we made the right decision.

We reached the Brunsbüttel locks where the canal empties into the Elbe River at about 10:30 AM and were quickly locked through behind a coal burning steamer that was belching black smoke. The tide helped us most of the way to Cuxhaven, so we made it there by early afternoon. Cuxhaven was our last shelter before heading out into the North Sea, so we went ashore to get the latest weather forecast. The forecast looked benign so we kept on going. Our route took us inshore of the shipping lanes along the Frisian Islands. The waters are shallow well out from the islands, so we were heading south, just inside of the northbound shipping lane. It was much shorter than going outside of the southbound lane, but in meant we had to pay close attention to oncoming ships. At one point, we came upon a whole cluster of ships, with several of them heading right towards us and well inside of the shipping lane. I got out the chart to figure out how I had so badly miscalculated the inside boundary of the shipping lanes. After a few minutes of head scratching and rising anxiety, all was revealed. The ships were at anchor waiting to enter the Weser River. Sailing is punctuated by moments of sheer bliss and moments of panic with often not much happening in between.

We had a pleasant sail through the night and arrived at Vlieland in mid afternoon on Wednesday July 2nd. Vlieland is probably the most crowded and most efficiently managed harbor I ever visited. You enter through an extremely narrow entrance, where you are met by the harbormaster's assistant who will either immediately assign a spot for you or ask you to lie alongside a waiting dock while he finds a place. In our case, we waited at the dock for about an hour while he placed smaller boats. He than asked us to raft up beside a British boat that was already the 3rd one out from the dock. We did as instructed and ended up alongside with our bow pointing to a smaller boat ahead of us and our stern nestled up to a 90' iron barge. No sooner had we got all the lines arranged and power hooked-up when the crew of the barge asked us to move so that their pals in another giant iron barge could lie alongside. I said I'd be happy to move if the harbormaster assigned us another slot, but short of that I wasn't going anywhere. The barge crew got on the horn to the harbormaster and a few minutes later his assistant came alongside in his inflatable dinghy and showed us to a much quieter spot that was in about as far as our draft would allow. The only fly in the ointment was that the boat inside of us wanted to leave at 7 AM, so we had an early dinner on the boat and then the boys walked into town for ice cream and I went to bed.

On July 3rd we were up early to let the guy inside of us catch the tide. We retied next to the guy inside of him (we were originally #4 on the raft with one further boat outside of us). Adam and Dan slept while Nick & I went into town to get some groceries and a Dutch SIM card for my phone. We had to wait for everything to open, so our early start didn't do us any good. Finally, at about 10:30 AM we got underway headed back out into the North Sea. There is a protected inside route from Vlieland to Amsterdam through the IJsselmeer and the Markermeer, but it's a circuitous route through shallow water so we decided to take the faster, if less picturesque outside route.

We had the tidal current going with us for the first half of the trip so we were congratulating ourselves on the great time we were making. But all that changed when the tide turned, so the last 4-5 hours was slow going. Finally we arrived at Ijmuiden, which is the main entrance to Amsterdam from the North Sea, at about 8 PM. We were tired and hungry so we were gratified to see the bright lights of several restaurants near the marina, but once again (I think I'm the guilty party here) we managed to futz around long enough that they were all closed. A diligent search uncovered a well concealed restaurant in a nearby Holiday Inn that was still open. They served us reluctantly, but speedily because they wanted to go home.

The following day we walked into town to get some things at the marine store. It was to be a move day, but we didn't have far to go so we weren't in any hurry. I called the harbormaster at the Haarlemsche Jacht Club where we planned to leave to boat and reminded him of the arrangements I had made weeks before. He hadn't forgotten and told us he would be waiting when we arrived. I asked about the bridge opening schedule because I knew we had to go under a highway bridge that only opened 3 times a day. He told me it opened at 6 PM so we got off at about 2 PM to have a leisurely trip through the North Sea Canal to the bridge. We arrived at the lock that separates the canal from the North Sea and I got off the boat to clear customs. The British cruising guide I was using said that customs was on the north side of the canal, so we tied up at the only available spot and I went ashore. I poked my head into the nearest building and found a guy working at his desk. He assured me that I hadn't found the right building and furthermore he didn't have a clue where they were. I had just seen a sign that my limited Dutch lead me to believe said something like "Yachts must clear customs!" so I knew they were around somewhere. The guy I had interrupted at work turned out to be a nice guy and he got on the phone, found out where they were, and then printed a map on the Dutch equivalent of Mapquest. By this time I beginning to worry about how much time it might take to get through the lock, so I got myself all in a lather running across the bridge and down the street to the customs office. When I finally found them, the building was surrounded by and 8' fence with no apparent entrance except one for vehicles controlled by a card reader. The building occupied the whole block so I ran around to the other side only to find the one sign in English that said "Entrance on other side." Back to the first side, I found an obscure little post on which there was an even more obscure button, which I pushed. Somebody from deep in the bowels of the building answered, I told them what I wanted and they opened the gate by remote control. Not a very user friendly building. But, the customs woman was very nice and after a serious search on her computer she determined that none of us were terrorists, and she stamped our passports. As for clearing the boat, they weren't interested in anything less than 300 tons. So, I left at a trot to get back to the boat, only to discover it wasn't there. I looked around and saw it on the other side of the canal. Apparently we had tied up at the pilots dock and while I had been off at customs both pilot boats had returned. No sweat, Nick & Adam had moved the boat so we were in line for the next lock opening and I ran across the bridge and jumped aboard. The lock opened a few minutes later and we were locked through to the North Sea Canal.

We had a pleasant passage of about 9 miles to the point where we turned off into the canal that lead to Haarlem. The bridge opened right away and we thought "What was all the fuss about?" We proceeded for about 2 miles and then came upon a second bridge that turned out to be the one on the strict schedule. We were there in plenty of time for the 6 o'clock opening, but when we tied up at the waiting area we were told that the bridge wouldn't open until 7:30 PM. So much for the harbormaster's advice. We cooked dinner while we were waiting and Dan had fun rowing around in the dinghy.

The bridge operator finally opened the bridge at about 7:40 PM and we arrived at the Haarlemsche Jacht Club at about 8:15 PM. True to his word, Wouter Klassen, the harbormaster was waiting for us and had a secure berth set aside for us. Only trouble was that to get to that berth we had to cross a shallow spot. I motored slowly forward with my eye on the depthsounder. Our draft is 2.1 meters, so when the depthsounder read about 2.3 meters I took the engine out of gear and watched as the depthsounder went to 2.2, then 2.1, then 2.0 as we slid into the mud. I called to Wouter that we couldn't make it across the shallow spot and after much head scratching he shouted back "how wide is your ship?" I said about 4 meters and he shouted back "Exactly 4 meters?" Well no, 4.03 meters to be exact. Turns out he had a slip that was on the deep water side, but the pilings were exactly 4 meters apart. We followed him around and nudged Wassail in through the 4 meter opening. Safe at last!