Sailing through Russia

Dogged by light airs and fog we crept slowly along the coasts of Litland and Latland, revisiting picturesque south Baltic ports – Liepaja, Pavilosta, Ventspils – before entering Estonian waters. 

Much has changed since Tainui was here in 2012, then usually the only yacht in these decrepit fishing harbours. As elsewhere along the south Baltic coast yachting facilities have burgeoned and now significant marinas have been established.

As we turned into the Gulf of Riga, Wolfgang’s magnificent Dutch yacht Mulligan appeared wraithlike out of the fog for a moment, then vanished.

Blue Dove’s Volvo is far from silent but it has performed flawlessly as we weave our way between Estonia’s offshore islands, ticking off tiny overnight harbours.

Reading back through the tainui.org website I finally see what it is that Little Miss Perfect has been complaining about all these years: my frank and jocular acounts of her minor indiscretions – the spilt wines, her psychotic addiction to her phone, those truly disgusting Russian breakfast grits, her backflip into the sea and so forth.

Ignoring my egregious adventure with a rogue cardinal mark at Newlyn Harbour last year, it is time I owned up to some of my own less than perfect behaviours in Blue Dove. It is calm and foggy here in Pavilosta and I have time to roll up my sleeves and confess.

In Klaipeda I had lost the battery charger for my vaping machine. A serious crisis. Maxine and I turned the boat upside down looking for the bloody thing without success. Blue Dove being a rigorously non-smoking vessel, I was facing the prospect of nicotine cold turkey at sea. In a state of near panic I walked miles through Klaipeda to the location of vape store I had found on line. It had closed down. Back aboard, after another search, I eventually located the charger in a nook at the nav table, precisely where I had stashed it the day before.

Then, on the morning of our departure for Latvia I couldn’t find my iPhone. Fortunately we discovered the loss just before our departure. My search of the boat and the environs of the port having been fruitless, its recovery was attributed entirely to the good graces of the crew of a German yacht (India 3). They had found it outside the shower block where I had put it down while I dried my feet. They called the most recent number in the phone, Maxine’s of course, and I was able to recover it from them.

What a bloody idiot I am. Age does weary and, as my memory and my knees keep reminding me, the years condemn.

Finally, some fine sailing. They say that cruising in small yachts is great 1% of the time, tolerable in 30% while the rest is miserable. Our 2 day passage from Bornholm to Klaipeda in Lithuania gave us that long-awaited 1% – beam winds steady in strength and direction, dry decks and clear skies. We and the Aries were delighted.

Klaipeda is the ramshackle post-Soviet port I remember from Tainui’s last visit. Maxine, Pasha and Tatiana, taken on a Soviet walk down memory lane, were amazed and horrified.

Sadly, our fine Russian friends leave us here. We have done quite a number of cheerful sea miles with them and we shall miss them. For me their departure brings 2 benefits – firstly, I am no longer excluded from endless and incomprehensible cockpit chatter in Russian; secondly, the cockpit is no longer taken up with their lengthy morning ritual of insufferable Russian breakfasts. But as always those were prices I have always been more than willing to pay.

From here, we have a 200 mile bash north against northerlies to Estonia. From Tallinn, I expect the malicious, all-knowing weather god will turn his breeze into an easterly in the Gulf of Finland. There you go.