For our first sailing trip we headed to Vaasa, it’s about 100km north of our home port Kaskinen.

We made two overnight stops on the way there. The first was at Gåshällan where we decided to drop the hook rather than tie onto the visitor’s birth. It was our first time anchoring overnight so it was a sleepless night although the wind and waves were so calm the boat probably would have held its position alone. The rain greeted us for a short time and we had an early night in preparation for the next day.

The next day we set off for Molpe Island. The weather was calm, too calm. Determined to sail rather than motor sail we patiently sat around waiting for the wind to pick up whilst adjusting the sails in the hope that it might make a difference.

Once we arrived at Molpe we realised that not every island on the Finnish coast has a visitor’s birth. We dropped anchor again and Uyen cooked up some meatballs and pasta which we ate on the bow whilst watching the sunset. After dinner we climbed into bed and tried to get some sleep. At around 2:00 I heard a faint humming sound, when I looked out the hatch I could see two small motorboats about 80-100m off our starboard side. I then spent the remainder of the night wondering if a boat would hit us. The next day I found the anchor light switch.

We woke up early the next morning, put our waterproofs on and I topped up my caffeine and nicotine levels. The last thing to do before we set off was raise the anchor, unfortunately during the night the line had become caught on the propeller. After about an hour of gently pulling the line at various different angles and removing the shackle, the line came free. No early morning swim for me! The weather was on our side and we had our first good sail!