Things are looking good! Charlotte is back from her first sailing experience not only alive, but maybe even a bit hungry for more. And in a few months a (probably nice and smiling) guy from our Swedish dealer will hand over the keys to our lovely boat, and then we’ll sail it from Germany to Finland. A small problem, though: we don’t have anywhere to park it once we get here!
It will be fine.
(This is what I keep telling myself and everyone else as well regarding everything. It will be fine. Trust me, it will!)
But Where?
We live a few hours away (by boat) from the Archipelago Sea, and many say that is one of the most beautiful places to sail in Finland.
“You should get it into some marina over there”, they say, “so that you can immediately start sailing and not spend hours getting there!”.
And it is tempting! If we’d find a nice marina within the Archipelago Sea (preferably accessible by car and without any ferries), we would be in a beautiful environment before even leaving the marina!
But it doesn’t feel quite right.
“It should be close to home!”, all the children shout together when I tell them the alternatives.
Yes, I know the feeling. We want it close to home. No matter what the scenery is.
Not Very Many Options
Getting a slip for a sailboat “close to home” isn’t that easy, though.
The city offers a lot of slips but unfortunately just a bunch of them are suitable for boats with masts and a keels.
There are some beautiful spots in the river right next to us, but they put bridges in between! The kinds that don’t open but are gently crashed into when trying.
In any case, the few suitable ones (on the better side of any bridges and not too shallow) are all booked.
There are some cool private marinas as well, but the ones we’ve looked at are either too expensive (some by a big margin!), too far from us, or not in a tempting location for some other reason.
So what’s left …
A Yacht Club!
Yes, sirs and madams! In Finland it’s really popular for sailors and sailboats to belong to yacht clubs, and they offer slips too. And, as it happens, and very luckily so, there is a yacht club quite close to us and they have a wonderfully cozy small marina that could be just perfect for us!
I’ve sent them an email and now we’re waiting for their answer.
I did talk to them earlier, a few months ago, and then they said they might have space for us. I don’t know what the situation is now, though. And even if they do have space, they would actually have to accept me (or us) as club members as well, and that’s not a given.
Anyway. They are called Airisto Segelsällskap (it’s Swedish and it roughly translates to “the sailing community of Airisto“) and down below is a few pictures of it in its wintry condition.
Disregarding all the ice and snow, it does look like it could be a nice and comfortable home for our new sailboat addition, as well as her excited crew.
But let’s see what happens.
And oh, I almost forgot! Eventually it will all turn out fine.