It’s fun to do things a little bit differently than usual. Since we’re now travelling with Jukka, Riitta and Väinö the borderterrier, we put a little bit more effort into the touristy things.

If it wasn’t for the unnecessarily strong wind, we would have missed out on a lovely walk on the beach with the dogs, and a bike ride to the north end of the island. On the way we visited the small museum as well. After all this, a large helping of spaghetti bolognese made by Riitta, prepared us all for a really late afternoon nap.

The old school

Thatched houses

Thick and insulating

Traditional wear

Fishing net markers

Slippery as an eel

Barbie, eat your heart out

How to pile your firewood

X marks the spot

This is a road on the map

Designed by Gustave Eiffel

and the Eiffel tower is definitely visible

Built in Le Havre and shipped to Ruhnu

Old generator room

Sickness and salvation?

We even found the petrol station

We had misunderstood the harbour master when we came, unfortunately. So we missed out on the inauguration party that the village had for a new common building at the handicrafts center. What a bummer! The captains boss of a neighbouring boat came home a little bit tipsy and said it was a great party.

Maybe it was better this way, since we had been looking at the weather forecast and planning the next day. The wind would be lighter, but when?

The next morning, the first boats had left before six, followed closely by those leaving right after. At that time, the wind was as predicted, quite light. The forecast for later was a lot more. Since we had decided the previous evening to wait for the ten o’clock update, we weren’t in a hurry. The dogs had their morning walks, and we decided to leave without checking the latest forecast.

We hoisted our sails quickly and set course for Engure. The wind blew 7-9 m/s, but the gusts came in frequently, at 11-17 m/s. The waves were also beautiful around a metre on average. The you had the occasional two metre things, of which one actually broke over our aft a splashed the skipper up to his knees. The best thing was the cross-waves. You really didn’t know how to steer and it was a bumpy ride. The greatest thing was, that this bumpy ride of 40 NM only took us six hours. By the time we dropped our sails, the GPS told us that we had an average speed of six and a half knots. We had been doing almost eight knots for a long time, and both the log and GPS were steadily hitting figures way over eight for longer periods. We even have a new speed record, although a momentary one but long enough to be registered. 10,6 Kt !!!