...Easy Rider, that is! The day following our big southward ‘push’ from Kristiinankaupunki to Uusikaupunki (Nystad in Swedish) of 114 miles, our engine just stopped on our approach to the fuel pontoon. Fortunately we just reached the pontoon without incurring any damage to surrounding boats.
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| sweets for my sweet... |
Fortunately too, as we were blocking the fuel pump, the yard staff had to see to our engine promptly. Without knowing it, we had reached a boat repair centre, with all the mechanics and spare parts you could wish for... Their shop looked like a ‘sweetie shop’ (for boats).
Easy Rider was suffering from a leaking sea water pump and air in the system all of which doesn’t sound too good and now that it has all been repaired, we still have to watch the engine carefully and keep our fingers crossed.
Coming back to our sailing the previous day:
There is a string of low pressure areas marching in from the British Isles over the North Sea and over Scandinavia right now. The weather is quite unsettled, with windows of glorious sunshine in between. It was just such a ‘window’ which we seized to come down all the way from the northern Gulf of Bothnia to the Archipelago sea. Uusikaupunki lies just on the northern edge of this wonderful cruising ground.
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| looking east at midnight |
It took us eighteen hours to make the journey, leaving at six in the morning and arriving at midnight.
When you have a long day before you like we did, you settle down into a lovely routine of monitoring your progress, watching out for boats, having coffees and teas, eating lunch and watching the sky for signs of the approaching low. We only encountered two boats, one of which (in all that immensity of the sea) was on a ‘collision’ course to ours!
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| fertilizer plant on Hanko |
The most incredible sky started to develop as we were on our approach to Uusikaupunki. I don’t want to bore you with my evening skies, but this one was the most spectacular one that we have come across in years (so far...). Even the fertilizer plant, the ‘Bhopal of Finland’ as one woman commented this morning in the café, looked beautiful in the setting sun around midnight!
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| looking west |