Advertisement
Published: October 29th 2014
Our "Home" while in St. Petersburg
We enjoyed our stay but it was time to leave - fortunately the weather cooperated nicely!After 14 days our visa was expiring and it was time to leave St. Petersburg. Our last stop after leaving the marina was to fill up our diesel tanks. We filled up both tanks with diesel for $3.65/gal, an extremely good deal (in Europe you pay almost 8 dollars a gallon) plus the diesel in Russia has no added ethanol. With 200 gallons of diesel onboard we are set for quite some time! The weather while we were in St. Petersburg cooperated very nicely and even better the winds came out of the east so they were perfect for our westward trip back to the border and on to Finland.
We forgot to mention in our St. Petersburg blog entry that it was quite a process for checking into the country. It wasn’t the process itself, it was that there were 47 Finnish boats there at the border checkpoint trying to leave the country at the same time that we were trying to check in. Needless to say it was a little overwhelming! Our OCC rally group had worked it out that we would be arriving at the check-in at staggered times (2 boats each hour) to help with the
process. It was a great plan, but didn’t help when there were so many boats at the same place trying to do the same thing. We had been told that typically you should allow 2 hours for the check in process, but it wound up that we were there for 6 hours! We arrived at our scheduled time of 10AM, but didn’t manage to leave until 4PM. The process takes some time as there are numerous forms that must be completed and both immigration and customs officers come on board the boat to check that everything is in order. We also were there through the lunch hour during which they completely close no matter how many boats are waiting. The good thing was that it was a pleasant, sunny day so we didn’t have weather against us. The biggest frustration was not knowing how long it would be before they got to visiting our boat and starting the process so you just had to sit around and “be ready”. In retrospect it was all still well worth it.
As boats from the rally left on various days at the end of their time in St. Petersburg we were hoping
These Airfoils Sure Are Fast!!
You definitely want to stay out of their way that the departure process would be quicker. We were delighted that it turned out to be true. As always our fabulous contact in Russia, Vladimir, followed up right to the end. He made sure we let him know when we were leaving the dock in St. Petersburg so he could contact customs/immigration to give them an approximate time of our arrival. We left the diesel dock at 11:20AM and arrived at Fort Constantine at 2:30PM. We arrived with 2 other of the OCC rally boats we have been traveling with and got through the process of being checked out of Russia quite quickly. Within 35 minutes we were gone and headed to the border control of Finland back in Haapassarri.
We got to the passport control for Finland the next morning before they opened so being very tired we pulled up to a nearby dock and fell asleep. Guess we were so tired that we didn’t even hear the other boats leaving the passport control – we got up just in time to see the 2
nd boat leaving! We moved over to passport control, they quickly processed us and told us to be on our way as they knew
they had quite a few boats coming in to be processed. So where were we going to head? Anyone that knows us knows that we are not ones to typically go back to the same place twice, but we decided to head back to Kotka. There were a few reasons for this – first, it was a good stopping point distance and time wise, secondly we knew there was a store handy for provisioning and thirdly we didn’t take much time to see the area the first time around.
Kotka worked out to be a good stop for us on all three counts. We were thoroughly impressed with the amount of green space here and the love of nature of the Finns was very evident. Another bonus was we got to meet Maria and Arto who were on their boat here and we had a very pleasant visit with them. One thing we notice here is that the Finns are very friendly people and always willing to help. All you have to do is stop on a corner and look like you are wondering where you are and someone will come up to you and ask if you need
help. Very welcoming people indeed!
One of the reasons we wanted to provision here was that we were now going to travel through the Finnish archipelago anchoring among the islands. We had almost forgotten how much we enjoyed doing that after marina hopping for so much of the season. What a wonderful change it was! It was so peaceful traveling through the islands and then in the late afternoon finding a place to tuck into for the night at anchor. There is definitely no lack of places to anchor – even though there are still plenty of boats traveling through this area, there are plenty of places that you can go and be by yourself if you want to. We did notice that with it now being late July the sun is now setting about 10:30PM so our time of constant daylight is now over.
We did make an overnight stop in Helsinki, it was again a good stopping point. We went to a different marina which took us to another part of the city. The last time we were in the downtown historic area, this time we walked through the more “modern” section with some innovative architecture
A Few of the Ships Near Ft. Constantine
as we heading back to the border of Russia which we heard from some locals that were still “controversial”. When we were here before we had heard of the Church of the Rock so decided this time to check it out. The Temppeliaukio Church was opened in 1969 and is quite spectacular to see. The interior was excavated out of solid rock with natural light coming in through the skylight which is surrounded by a copper dome. The side walls are exposed rock and this venue is used for concerts due to its excellent acoustics. If you are in the area you should definitely take the time to visit this very unique place of worship. Helsinki was a nice stop but we were still anxious to get in some more nights of anchoring out.
One thing we kept saying to ourselves while traveling through the Finnish archipelago was how much it reminded us of the I000 Islands, although with what appeared to be much less development here. There were so many islands that were uninhabited or only had one small cabin on that there was plenty of space to find an anchorage. The “rules” here in Finland are that you are to be conscious of people’s private property,
not anchor within sight of a home if at all possible and not come ashore and cross their property. It was an easy rule to comply with so many islands to anchor near. It was such a luxury to travel for a few hours and then put down your “hook”, sit in the cockpit and enjoy the scenery with sunsets not occurring until after 10PM. We did have to be conscious of our timetable as we still have a long distance to travel to get back to the Kiel Canal and out of the Baltic this season. With that in mind after a few nights of anchoring out we headed to Tammisaari as our last town in Finland before heading to the Aland Islands.
Tammisaari is a very pleasant town that is a popular holiday area due to having a beautiful beach area. When we first came into the marina it looked as if it was full, but as this was again one where you put your “nose” toward the dock and tie to post at the stern you can “squeeze” in. This definitely gets you in close to your neighbors! This was a pleasant town to walk through
with a historic area complete with lovely clapboard homes with a beautiful stone church in the center. We had a treat that night as our neighbors told us that there was going to be a fireworks display which was part of a wedding celebration. We have found since traveling through the Baltic that fireworks are very popular and seem to be used to celebrate birthdays and weddings in many countries. This particular display was amazingly long and spectacular –when we mentioned this to our neighbors they stated that the father of the bride is the wealthiest person in Finland which just may explain it!
One thing we did learn about the Finns – is they definitely love their sauna! As you travel through this area no matter where you saw a cabin you invariably saw a sauna nearby. When checking into a marina one of the important questions we ask about is the access to wi-fi. Here in Finland one of the first things you are told about is the hours for the sauna and how to sign up for time in it! Yes, every marina we were in had a sauna.
Here is another something we discovered
that we found to be very interesting. You may not be aware but Finland was part of Sweden for a very long time – more than 500 years! Now, as we are moving through the islands we notice that a large number of the homes we see have large banners that are light blue and yellow. Once in a while we see a banner that is white and dark blue. We asked our Finnish friends what these mean and they explained that the people with the yellow and light blue banners (the colors of the Swedish flag) are proclaiming their strong Swedish leanings. Those with the dark blue and white are stating their Finnish tendencies. Our friends explained it this way – those with the Swedish colors are proclaiming that Swedish is spoken here and those with the Finnish colors speak Finnish here. As we traveled west from Helsinki it appeared that the yellow and light blue banners were in the majority. By way of a little more information on this we had met a very nice Finnish couple and Bob had mentioned the fact that he did not realize that the Swedes had fought so many wars against the
various Baltic countries. Our new found friends quickly pointed out that it was in fact the Finns that fought the war, i.e. – soldiers on the ground carrying the weapons and the Swedish officers and government who started the wars and sat back and had their Finnish conscripts do the dirty work. Another interesting fact is that in Finland all students learn Swedish, however, were told that the opposite is not true in Sweden.
Another interesting historical piece – in 1809 the Swedes gave up control of Finland to Russia. Finland was under the control of the Tsars until 1917 when they gained their independence. During WWII the Nazis show up, the Finns joined up with the Nazis to fight the Russians. The explanation we received were that the Finns had no great love of the Nazis but as they say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Some very interesting relationships between these countries!
We enjoyed our time in Finland and we could have stayed much longer with so many islands and towns to explore along this coast, but we still have a long distance to go and everyone tells us we should be out of
A Little Help with the Moon
as we traveled back to Finland the Baltic early in September.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.545s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 31; qc: 128; dbt: 0.1999s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb
