In Racundra's Wake
Jodie had booked her tickets well in advance – in fact long before I had had a clear idea of where I would be at that stage in my travels. But she wanted to see Stockholm in any case, so she flew there and spent a couple of days looking round before catching the ferry to Helsinki. It already seemed an aeon ago that Kat and I had cast off from the Vasahamnen in Stockholm; the ferry sails the same route in less than 24 hours.
After some thought I had given up on my idea of sailing up the Saimaa canal into the inland lake system of Finland. The pictures of the lakes did look beautiful, but tackling the canal without an engine might not have proved easy. If we crossed the Gulf of Finland we could explore the Estonian islands instead. Depending on how much we liked them, we could spend all the remaining time there, or cross back to Finland to do some more archipelago hopping, for the Gulf of Finland is never more than a days sail across. Besides, I had a copy of Arthur Ransome's excellent little book 'Racundra's first cruise' with me, which describes his voyage amongst the Estonian islands between the wars. From the very first line - 'Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them..... I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans' - it's long been a favourite read of mine, so my mind was soon made up. We would go south and see how the islands had changed in the 80 years since he had visited.
We set sail shortly after Jodie arrived off the overnight ferry. Throughout the voyage to this point we hadn’t had to clear customs - the countries we had visited are all party to the Schengen agreement, and don’t bother with formalities for yachts any more. But Estonia hasn’t signed up yet (though it is due to soon), so we had to clear through a customs post before crossing. There is a post in Helsinki, but the shortest crossing to Tallinn is from the Porkalla peninsula, a few miles west of Helsinki. It made sense to spend the rest of the day heading down there through the islands, and make the passage across the Gulf the following day. It would be a bit of a gentler introduction for Jodie too.
We sailed back the way I had just come therefore, threading west along the channels to an anchorage off Kunoholmen, a mile or so short of the customs post. I was beginning to discover that customs posts in Finland are maliciously situated in the least accessible places possible. This one was on the mainland, but only approachable through a narrow sound with entrances a few yards wide, and plenty of rocks to catch the unwary navigator. However, the wind was favourable enough to sail both in and out again without any mishaps. Filling in the forms was the matter of a few moments; the rather bored customs officer wanted to know why we didn’t have our ensign up. Apparently it's a legal requirement. The truth was I'd forgotten to bring it. I knew vaguely I had one somewhere among my possessions back in England, but I hadn’t been able to find it in the rush of leaving. I had been quite happy to remain anonymous.
We had a strongish wind for the crossing. It was just after 10 when we left the passport control; by noon the last of the Finnish islands lay behind and we were streaming the log as we sped past the final red buoy marking the offshore end of the navigation channel. Gradually the pink rocks and green trees faded away behind, and an hour or so later a faint low smudge began to appear on our starboard bow. It had to be the island of Naisaare, marking the western side of Tallinn bay. It was pretty lumpy by the time it was abeam, and poor Jodie was rather green about the gills.
The Estonian coast is rather low-lying, and there are frequent shoals that lie in some cases quite a few miles offshore. We had to dodge round one of these shoal patches, thankfully picking up the spar buoys that marked its edge as the chart I was using was of a fairly small scale and didn’t show the positions of the small, unlit markers. Just an hour or so more dodging the busy ferry traffic across Tallinn bay, until we could make out the harbour walls of Pirata and the forest of masts in the marina behind. We handed the log just before 7pm – a very quick crossing by our standards – and had a fun time tacking up the narrow harbour to the customs pontoon. We were cleared in no time, and cast off again to move a couple of hundred yards further on into the marina.
Pirata harbour was built as the sailing venue for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. It looks a bit tired and crumbling now. To the north a superb sandy beach borders the bay, to the south-west the busy road into Tallinn lines the seafront, while in the shallow waters offshore dozens of boulders stick up above the waves.
Bearing in mind the Helsinki chart-agents suggestion, in the morning I enquired about leaving Teal at the harbour over the winter. A very surly man barked at me in his plush office looking out from a high level into an enormous covered, heated hanger, where several very shiny motorboats were being attended by men in white boilersuits. ‘What do you want?’ Could I leave Teal here for the winter, I asked. ‘Yes’. He scowled. ‘OK, how much would it cost?'. He savagely stabbed some numbers into a calculator. ‘How long is your boat? How wide?’ 383 appeared on the screen. 383 Estonian Kroons a month – about 20 quid. That was if she lay outside - it would be considerably more in the posh hanger. Well, it was certainly cheap.
‘And will you be able to crane her out if I arrive back here in a couple of weeks?’ Another scowl, but apparently that was no problem. ‘Thanks very much – see you then.’’You are welcome’ he said vicously, in a voice that suggested strongly that I wasn’t.
We spent the rest of the day exploring Tallinn - or Reval, for Ransome used the old Swedish names in his account. The old town remains much as it was when Racundra warped up to the yacht club mole all those years ago, and indeed outwardly has remained little changed since the middle ages. The gold-domed Russian church on the hill, the sturdy fortifications and Hanseatic merchants houses are just as described in the book, and we climbed to the same viewpoint that Ransome described, overlooking the old town and the harbour, with much the same white sails and bustling ferry traffic from Helsinki as have enlivened it for generations. Venturing outside the old town he would though soon be lost in the busy modern city that now surrounds it, and would undoubtably have some choice words to describe the monstrous, crumbling soviet-era apartment blocks that squat on the high ground to the east.
The coast around Tallinn was settled over 3000 years ago by finnic-speading tribes, and pottered along minding its own business until about a thousand years ago, when the Danes noticed it was in a useful position, being on a handy trade route to St Petersburg and all stations east. Tallinn became a powerful member of the Hanseatic trading league not long after, and the Danes sold it to Germany in 1345. A couple of centuries later Sweden bagged it for a while, until Russia decided it was her turn.
The ping-pong game hotted up in the early part of last century: Estonia declared independence, was promptly occupied by Germany, and then fought Russia for a while, ultimately, and rather remarkably persuading them to accept her independence. But only for 20 years: Russia promptly walked in again when the second war broke out, got kicked out briefly by the Germans, but came back to stay in 1944. It was 1991 when Estonia finally became independent again. Everyone is playing happy families in the EU these days, so maybe they have some chance of staying that way.
Tallinn old town, solidly built by the Teutonic Order in those days of yore, is in astoundingly good condition considering the number of invading armies that have passed through. Or perhaps it's just been astonishingly well rebuilt. It's just a shame that there isn't any room for any Estonians there now, for the latest invasion is of an entirely different type - the hordes of tourists that get driven by coach from the cruise ships that dock in the harbour (all of half a mile away), and walk along the narrow streets in crocodiles behind a harassed guide. There are so many of these crocodiles that when they pass, the guides have a little numbered board that they hold up to identify themselves. It wouldn't do to end up back at the wrong ship at the end of the day.
Arguably, the tourists have done more to destroy the city than any howitzers, for although the buildings might look authentic, nothing inside them is any more. They are only a shell housing a machine that sucks money from the invaders. There are no genuine businesses these days with an address in Tallinn old town, just rows of souvenir shops selling identical tat.
Of course, I have absolutely no right to be snobbish about tourists, for we had just arrived on our very own cruise ship, albeit a very small one. And we drank coffee and bought postcards just like the hordes we were sneering at.
Late in the afternoon we returned to Pirata, and stocked up on food at the local supermarket, pleased to find that prices were about half that of Helsinki, just 30 miles away. Then, to while away the remainder of the day, we put the canoe together and spent a couple of hours canoeing up the pretty little river that flows out through Pirata harbour. To begin with it was relatively wide, slow-flowing and bounded by wooded banks. Further up the gradient gradually steepened and we had to paddle hard to get up little rapids; at one point we had to portage. Eventually it got too steep to go any further, so we paddled back.
Booze is vastly cheaper in Estonia than in Finland, and we were lulled to sleep in wee small hours by the sound of carousing Finns making the most of the low prices, occasionally breaking from their singing to vomit into the harbour.
We set off again on the 13th, past Naisaare again, but passing to the south of the island this time. The Estonian coast is utterly different to the Finnish. No steep-sided islands that you can sail within a few yards of – on this side of the Gulf the sandy beaches shoal into the sea so gently that in places you have to sail 5 miles offshore to be sure of avoiding all the shallows. Ports are very few and far between.
We aimed for Paldiski, 20 miles west of Tallinn, and to begin with made good progress in a light northerly wind. Soon, though, it died; we were struck by the same curse that Racundra sailed under, for she too made a very slow passage along this coast, creeping along 'in scarcely rippled water, across broad patches smooth as oil'. Dissent was recorded among Racundra's crew as 'the Cook' (who fulfilled another role in his life, as his mistress, and also happened to be Trotsky's secretary) demanded that the engine be fired up, while Ransome and 'the Ancient Mariner' (an old Latvian sea-captain who had begged to be taken along before the mast; for he 'should like once more to go to sea before it is too late'), distrusted the new-fangled beast and when they were finally persuaded to give it a go were heartily relieved to find that it would not start. On Teal we had no engine, so harmony reigned between Jodie and I.
Ransome knew Paldiski simply as 'Baltic Port'. He lamented the changes that were going on even as he visited, as it turned from a quiet little backwater to a busy naval port.
We eventually arrived well after dark, and tied up to a crumbling rotten concrete wharf; empty but for a small, tired customs launch. Baltic Port has undergone two further massive changes since Ransome's time, the first when the Russians moved in to build a huge submarine base, and the second when they left. Their coming replaced the picturesque wooden houses with rows of ugly concrete shoeboxes - only the beautiful old train station remains - and their going left the buildings crumbling, and full of the children of Russian immigrants who were now jobless, but for whom the passing of a generation meant that the decaying town was all they knew as home. It's one of the most deprived towns in the country now, although a new commercial port is under construction and gradually prospects are improving.
Even in the gloom the port looked like an extremely unappealling place to stay. A small ship was wrecked and rusting on the beach, and the quay in the little basin we tied up in was a mess of twisted metal and rotten concrete, filthy and unloved. We didn't try to get ashore.
We didn’t hang about in the morning, but left immediately after breakfast, into the teeth of a north-easterly force six. We needed the sheets hard in to clear the headland to the west of Paldiski, Teal at her best as ever in these conditions as we leapt through the waves, although I was a bit nervous as we pushed her rather hard. I wasn’t sure how Jodie would like the rough conditions too after having been seasick on the crossing from Finland – but she had grown her sea legs, and was enjoying the ride. Life got easier when we had cleared the headland anyway, although we had to stay a long way offshore for a while to avoid shoals.
Again following in Racundra's wake, we were bound through the sinuous channel that separates the little island of Vormsi from the mainland. Unlike Racundra, who beat through the narrow, shallow passage - a feat for which I take my hat off to her skipper and crew - the north-easter was well behind Teal's beam as we approached. That gave us quite a different problem though, as picking up the first buoy was going to be tricky, and there were plenty of rocks to pound ourselves to pieces on should we miss it. We were approaching fast, the sun was dancing on the waves ahead, and we just HAD to pick up a spindly little stick poking up somewhere in these miles of water. Several times I nervously took bearings of the end of the island and the headland on the mainland – the only identifiable features - and plotted our positions getting nearer and nearer to the shoals. Still no sign of the little channel that should lead us safely through. Then suddenly, there it was, a little black and yellow stick waving merrily in the foamy whitecaps. Beyond it we soon picked up the next marker, and then the next, only half a mile or so apart and easy to follow now as they led us through the twisty channel. Beyond Vormsi ('Worms' to Ransome, a far more delightful name) we turned east, down another little channel that looped and swung through to Haapsalu on the mainland.
Haapsalu is the Estonian answer to Blackpool; a bathing resort where the burghers of Tallinn would deposit their families during long summer breaks. Thankfully, it is far too shallow to have significance as a military or commercial port, so it escaped the carnage wrought on little Baltic Port by the Soviet occupation. Like our own seaside resorts it has changed little in the last hundred years, and has just the same reassuring faint tinge of complacent decay as holidays are increasingly taken in the south of Spain instead. The same wooden buildings greeted us that Ransome found, although on a Sunday we had less success in buying provisions than Ransome and the Cook did when they wandered into town to buy bread, milk, meat, matches and a cabbage. We had to make do with a hamburger each.
Nowadays Haapsalu is as famous for its blues festival as for its curative mud. The festival is held in the grounds of a rather superb castle dating from the 13th Century, and quite unwittingly we had turned up just as it was about to start. It was a marvellous setting - a great, crumbling structure, with the inner castle partially restored and swallows flitting in and out of their nests in the ruined sections. A stage was set up in the courtyard, but the best views to be had were from a couple of wooden balconies high above. We endured some truly dreadful local talent before the better acts were brought on, the tone rising through the evening. I have to say – without any patriotic prejudice – that by far the best band were an imported group from Britain.