An adventure into the unknown (with vid)

[scubaman]

Yep, Utö was full when we arrived in the afternoon. As we entered the bay, several boats were giving up the search for a berth and decided to anchor instead. I decided to drive to the the main jetty, mainly reserved for the pilot boats, to have a look anyway. As I approached, a lady rushed to the pier indicating that it was ok to to berth in front of one of the pilot boats...

Which was nice...

Couldn't believe my luck. In the end I actually pushed the boat as far as I dared as it got pretty shallow, to make room for others arriving later. I pushed it back too when we were leaving before starting the engines to avoid sucking mud into the strainers.

The radars serve both military and civilian purposes. Utö is on the mouth of one of the few safe passages leading to Turku and has a major strategic importance. VTS use the radars to monitor the traffic within archipelago.

 

[scubaman]

Hi,

Just to wrap up this post on our summer cruise, here are some miscellaneous photos from the rest of our journey.

Before going to Utö (from where my previous post was) we were in Turku. There is a nice medieval castle in Turku which was hosting the Finnish Championships in Medieval Combat Sports. Not a huge sport in Finland as far as I know but never the less very entertaining to watch.

Anchoring for the night in a bay along the way to Archipelago. I like the darkening evenings towards the end of July although I thought I already spotted some autumn colors.

I posted the vid earlier from Utö but here are a few photos as well. A very pretty place.

Traditional wooden fishing boats.

We also visited the neighboring Jurmo -> https://www.google.fi/maps/place/Ju...e8efacc2869eee1!8m2!3d59.8259458!4d21.6020326

Another pretty place ‘out there’ in the outer archipelago.

We then decided to take the route south of the archipelago back to Hanko. At one point there was a military vessel heading the other way a few miles from us in the international waters. Not one of ours. Soon after we spotted a Finnish patrol vessel heading north towards the shore, soon altering it’s course towards us. As we were nearing each other, it dropped it’s speed which I took as a sign to do the same. I transpired that there was a military exercise going on which involved target shooting with live ammo. We were politely instructed to make a deviation to south to round the practicing area. We were happy to oblige.

The weather was fantastic so I took a few pics along the way.

15 minutes after arriving at port, the bilge pump started pumping water due to the broken fitting on which I made another post earlier. Again glad it didn’t happen earlier.

From Hanko we cruised back to Helsinki to finish off our holiday. We spent exactly six weeks on the boat, did close to 400 miles and saw many interesting new places. We could have gone on boating for a bit longer...

Thanks for reading.

 

[MapisM]

Thanks to you K for sharing your beautiful shots with us.
The mirror-like sea surfaces in your pics never cease to amaze me...! :encouragement:

 

[baylabayla3288]

Really nice post. Beatiful pictures, thank you for sharing and lets meet up next summer somewhere...