Heading for 38 inhabitants, 44 Highland cows, a sauna and a gale…

10.06 – 13.06

This is where we are now.








As we mentioned in our Mariehamn blog, the advancing bad weather arrived in Jurmo as predicted by the Metoffice weather charts and other good weather web-sites. Let’s start with the 3 predicted good sailing days.

The weather, although cold, was bright and crisp. It was perfect for our first sail through the Åland Islands ‘labyrinth’. When you first work out the route through the thousands of islands, you almost feel dizzy. How will you ever be able to find your way through them? But then you follow the recommended route as closely as possible on very detailed charts and identify marks, buoys, lighthouses and transits. Outside the recommended tracks, you cannot be sure that every rock has been charted, so for the first trip you are very careful not to get lost. 

Degerby (60º 02’ N 20º 23’ E) was our first stop. It is a small village on the island of Dagerö. Bärö MV (60º 18’ N 20º 45’ E), 24 Miles further north is an island with only a handful of houses and no roads and only reachable by boat. We moored at what seemed to be an abandoned coastguard station.

There were big signs to a restaurant, but the whole place was empty, looked spooky and spread a slightly threatening feeling through its fences and a high watch tower – that is… until a motorboat zoomed

in and you met the absolutely charming and friendly leaseholder Henrik, who has made it his summer occupation to build up a small, well sheltered marina, a restaurant and a boutique. He just returned from his shopping tour to Finland as he called it being an Ålander(and not a Finn) and was preparing for a small dinner party in his cosy Glada Laxen restaurant and provided us with potatoes and some typical slightly sweet bread for breakfast. Delicious with jam!

We approached Jurmo (60º 30’ N 21º 05’ E) from the West. It is a very rocky narrow passage off the beaten track, where the buoys and lighthouses are replaced with day marks, cairns and transits. It was a fascinating day’s sailing! It was sunny and absolutely as beautiful as you would ever have imagined the Sea of Åland/Archipelago Sea to be! Piloting was at times demanding requiring helming in narrow channels and coming very close to rocks just under the surface of the water.

  Jurmo is our last and furthest island to the North in the Åland Islands and was also intended also as our ‘gale refuge’. It turned out to be a great place with 38 inhabitants, 44 cows , a sauna and fairy tale woods to spend two days waiting for the good weather to return. A friendly harbour master welcomed us and gave a short history of the Highland cows which had been introduced to the island in 2002, and now had almost become the mascots of Jurmo. In the village café, which only has a couple of tables, we ate: Highland cow burgers, Highland cow spaghetti Bolognese and Highland cow meatballs and mash, all of them delicious! Fish was not on the menu...