Well it was a grey start to the day, as I helped the Simkins manoeuvre their boat out of the very tight situation they were berthed in. Basically, we moved the boat forward so that she was barely a foot away from her neighbour, Peter had many fenders on the bow area between the bow and the pontoon and then, with only a single line from the bow going backwards to the pontoon, he gently inched forward against the restraint with the tiller over and this caused the stern to slowly swing out and away from the pontoon and when she was almost at right angles, he engaged reverse and the warp was released and he was free – this is called springing and it works a treat.

By 09:45, when we started the engine for our getaway, the breeze had filled in to a F3 from the south and there were occasional hints of sun . Our destination was the recommended harbour of Näsby on the island of Houtskär or Houtskari, depending upon whether you're Swedish or a Finn. It was just outside the Ålands and therefore part of Finland proper, necessitating a change of courtesy flag to Finland, which I did en route.

This was probably one of the best day’s sailing we’ve had hereabouts and it would have been absolute heaven in a normal summer, with its’ wall to wall sunshine. Instead, we had rather gloomy conditions, especially initially, so the landscape wasn’t delineated as well as it might be but it was still gorgeous. The reason why the sailing was so good was that it was quite challenging in that the wind picked up to 20 knots or so, we had to pilot ourselves down some pretty narrow channels, channels that meandered around, so that we were altering the sail configuration constantly to allow for the changes in direction. We only cheated once, when we were in the lee of an island, the channel was 20 yards wide and the wind was non-existent to on the nose and whilst we only had 40 yards or so to go before we could free off and sail in amore downwind direction, our leeway (downwind drift) was such that we would most definitely hit a rock, just by the cardinal mark . That was when I started the engine just to nudge us through. I also used the engine once again, to get us past a chain ferry which didn’t want to take prisoners, but that was it in 25 miles of sailing. A great time was had by all.

Näsby is in a lovely spot situated in a deep bay and very sheltered. Presumably, because of this it is very popular and we only just managed to find a space, sharing a buoy with our very charming Finnish neighbour. There is a restaurant, a small shop and the usual facilities on site and just up the hill is a small supermarket. As I said, it was popular and we even had a British flagged boat as a near neighbour. She was a Bowman 45, a classic blue water cruising yacht from the early 90’s and its’ owner, who’s name I’ve sadly forgotten, is a Dutchman who has married a Scottish lady (same problem with names) and as a consequence, has lived in Scotland (Glasgow) for 35 years and now has an intriguing accent. They were cruising with 4 Dutch relatives and they kindly showed us around. A good, solid, roomy yacht but with only two cabins, one aft and one in the bow, so a yacht really designed for what she does best, take a small number of people safely around the world and indeed, our Dutch/Scottish friend has done that, albeit not in this boat . It was a nice interlude.

Another interesting time was spent chatting with our neighbour, He recommended a harbour for the next day, namely Sandvik on the island of Kökar, back in the Ålands, so more flag-changing. What I was wanting to learn from a local as it were, was how far can one safely stray away from the route lines that denote the safe passages through the islands and his answer, netted down was, this is a popular cruising area, most rocks are now charted so if you keep to the white areas on the charts you’re safe, blue areas be more cautious but you should be OK. Time will tell….