Schooner Helena is quite a pretty lady indeed: as a Flying Finn she easily speeded up to 9 knots per hour even if the winds of that puddle of a Baltic Sea were not strong at all. I would like to see Helena in action on breezy open seas. To join the crew. 38,7 meters long and 6,6 metres wide - more than a double compered to the boat I sailed Caribbean with. Made for sail training and able to host up to 28 person. Masts reaching the blurry skies - one 30,3 metres tall and the other 25,8.
I had a quick 45 minutes walk from the Turku Main Railway Station to the wharf in which Helena was parked. 45 mins. AAaaaaaa. In my map (printed from the net, naturally) it looked like a relaxing 10 minutes stroll along the quays of Aurajoki river but little did I know. Neither about the sailing do I know a lot, should get a book called Sailing for Dummies. Real dummies, in my case. In my basket case.
We spent the first night at Airisto Island and the second one at island of Jussarö. Some decades ago there was a relatively big iron ore mine in Jussarö but later it was shut down - in the dark autumn-ish evening you can find a ghosty teen-horror atmosphere consisting of abandoned houses and mineshafts. I think the Finnish archipelago is highly overrated. Okay, it is pretty. Sometimes even charming with thousands of tiny whiny islands and islets, unbeliavable silence and harmony, seagulls, eagles, swans, seals... But not even close to for example the stunning landscapes of the West Indies. Apart from being a bit lame with faint colours and flat islands in Finland you have to always add the unpleasant facts of the bloody Finnish climate. This time we were kinda lucky - it was +16 degrees Celsius. Very nice for the end of August. In the Finnish scale.
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