rally boats view of Tallinn from Marina

The sunset as we sailed from the island at 2100 was awesome, and have to say it still feels strange to know your going on to sail right through the night with zero hours of total darkness.

The wind was supposed to veer to the W/NW this evening. It didn't, remaining from the SW and therefore directly behind us as we aimed for the Estonian shore 100 miles away. We were kept busy gybing our way downwind often seeing other rally boats as we travelled down a corridor maybe 20 miles wide using both sails and engine on tick over. The boat speed the engine created moved the wind forward, and in turn allowed the sails to work better for us. Probably averaged 6 knots SOG.

Hot sun with the dawn just before 0500 Thursday saw us closing the Estonian Islands and able to hoist the asymetric which we used, again also with the engine, to keep up our speed. Not much commercial traffic seen, nor sea life or birds, but loads of algae in the seas caused I guess by the high temperatures. Many of the larger boats using engines alone converged onto our course.

We kept the spinnaker up all day, only hauling it down late evening as we snugged the boat down for a second night at sea. By then we were well into the Gulf of Finland proper, with Estonia's shallow waters and it's chain of Islands to our south, and Finland's to our north.

Around 2000 we surprisingly sailed into a fog bank. Eerie, what with 9 knots of breeze now finally clocking round to the west, and no radar. But nothing showed up on the AIS other than the line of rally boats all going the same way. That fog lasted right through to early hours as we piloted ourselves towards the final lead into Tallinn's yacht marina at Pirita some 3 or 4 miles west of the city Itself. The marina was built for the 1980 USSR Olympics, and many of the facilities remain unchanged today! Lots of concrete, dodgy wiring and water, faded paintwork. But clearly yachting has gained in popularity over recent years, as a goodly number of new Estonian yachts were parked up.

On arrival at 0430 local time (2 hours ahead of UK) there were at least half a dozen boats standing by to help take lines. We did the same for the steady stream of rally boats that followed us in, and the combo of tiredness along with obvious group pleasure at finishing the sail, developed into a pre dawn drinks party on the concrete dock. Simply had to crash at 0600. Deep

Big big headache when we awoke 1200 midday, clambering off the boat to get in line to use the single machine self serve laundry. Luckily, we were almost first there, so by mid arvo Jumbuck looked like a Chinese laundry ship with it all drying on lines stung along the deck. A dryer in the laundry would be a great investment for someone!

Overall it was a tiring sail, mostly due to trimming so much to keep boatspeed up. With a 100 litre tank and 40 litres in reserve, I wasn't keen to run the engine to max revs. Plus wasn't too sure exactly what that algae might do to the engine cooling system..........

The dock wiring is all a bit agricultural, and this morning (Saturday) we went to check why the power went down, to find a junction box smoking! They dragged an electrician from his home, and it was all working again by 1200.

So we've got a total of three nights here, with lots of time to check out the lanes of Tallinn old town. Plus a team dinner Saturday night, plus a tour out to ge guided around Talinn old town on Sunday, before we all set off on (for me) the most exciting leg over to St Petersburg.

Seems sometimes that the time has simply flown by, to get to this point of actually sailing little old Jumbuck into St Peyersburg. But then I get reminded about some of those slower overnight passages, and think then it's often not gone quickly enough!