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\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sat. June 23rd:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019d always looked on the prospect of crossing the Baltic as daunting. The images that came to mind were of spume-flecked rolling seas, driving rain and howling winds, with nothing but dark and frigid depths awaiting the unwary. To attempt this passage surely it was not enough to sport a salty beard and a woolly sweater, you also needed to be true water man, horny of hand and unshakeable of temperament, in a well-found ship and ideally, aided by an experienced and imperturbable crew.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But of course the reality is nothing like that. The sail from Marina del Rey to the Isthmus of Catalina, a run I’ve done dozens of time at home, is longer and more challenging, and within four hours of leaving Blid\u00f6’s cozy harbor and heading north east, the last outlying islands at the eastern end of the Swedish seaboard were receding in our wake, leaving us with nothing more formidable to contemplate than a glassy sea and countless two-story high channel markers demarking the busy shipping and passenger ferry lanes. Arcturus’s 16hp Beta Marine engine hummed along happily as we made an uneventful traverse of what Australians would call a strait but which locals usually call a sea. It was sunny and in the low 70s and was quite a dull passage, until we reached the first outcroppings of the \u00c5land Islands, which are technically Finnish but mainly Swedish speaking. This archipelago is autonomous, demilitarized and was the subject of numerous disputes between the two countries until the matter was settled by the League of Nations in the 1920s. \u00c5land consists of 6,5000 skerries and islands to the east which stretch almost to the Finnish mainland. For a sailor,\u00a0 this place is paradise \u2013 provided you like nature harbors and quiet anchorages, have a tolerance for tight passages and shallow water, and have provisioned and watered carefully ahead of time.<\/p>\n We were greeted by something of a lunar landscape, otherworldly and stark with little vegetation on the grey granite outcroppings, and it made for quite a maze was we were led east then north through the main shipping channel \u2013 where we dodged perhaps a dozen large ferries in less than an hour, to the main town of Mariehamn. We had left Blid\u00f6 about noon but it still came as a surprise that it wasn\u2019t until shortly after midnight that we pulled in to Mariehamn West harbor, just past the main ferry terminal, and tied up in a bright twilight, in the shadow of the Pommern, the only four-masted merchant sailing ship in the world still in its original state. Built 1903 in Scotland and bought by the \u00c5land shipowner Gustaf Erikson in 1923. Pommern has carried timber from Scandinavia, saltpeter from Chile and grain from Australia. Her last commercial voyage was done in 1939 and since 1952 she has been a museum ship, owned by the Town of Mariehamn, but managed by the \u00c5land Maritime Museum Trust. She certainly makes for an impressive site as she stands sentinel over the buoys and pontoons of the ASS (\u00c5land Sailing Society) Marina.<\/p>\n After securing the boat we grabbed a quick bite and then set off for a 1am walk around the town, which is quiet and residential on its western side, with 19th century architecture reminiscent of a provincial French town, but on its eastern side were surprised to be greeted by the sounds of a disco, a casino, and dozens of young locals looking to mingle, bingle and schmingle with the opposite sex.<\/p>\n Mariehamn has a long and proud tradition of Cape Horners (sailors traversing the southern tip of South America in the days before the Panama Canal) and the town boasts a fascinating maritime museum. The marina is very well equipped with a shop and harbor office, sauna and showers and several restaurants. They also keep the local kids engaged in sailing with a large sabot fleet and a working wooden sailboat from 1900 which they use for sail training. For crew planning to arrive in Stockholm, it’s an easy and picturesque five-hour ferry ride from the Swedish capital, (tickets cost $16-$20 at time of writing) with several daily departures. All this makes Mariehamn an ideal spot to stop for repairs, provisioning or picking up crew, and makes a great gateway for a deeper dive into the \u00c5land archipelago.\u00a0<\/p>\n Which was just what we planned to do.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sailingarcturus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/ferry-en-route-mariehamn.jpeg?resize=850%2C638\")
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