SEA OF A THOUSAND ISLANDS
We consider ourselves fortunate to have been born on the shores of Lake Saimaa in eastern Finland. For a boating enthusiast, Lake Saimaa with its 5,500 islands offers a cruising environment unlike anywhere else in the world. With waters pure enough to drink and islands so plentiful you are guaranteed to find one for yourself, it truly deserves to be called a hidden gem.
My early years were spent exploring this amazing place in my parents’ boats. Later, when finances allowed, my brother and I bought our own boat, a 34ft locally built Tristan Harmony cruiser. She was followed by a Sealine F37, which my brother and I motored back from London. Four years later my brother decided to stop boating for family reasons, which left me, my wife, two kids (aged 4 and 3 at the time) searching for a boat of our own. We settled on a Fairline Phantom 43, which we bought in Lymington and shipped back to Finland in 2012, writing a story about it for this very magazine (‘Finnishing School’, MBY May 2013).
More years of cruising on the Lake Saimaa followed but as we could now spend longer onboard, the idea of cruising further afield started to appeal. We knew that the Archipelago Sea National Park in the south-west of Finland was another special cruising area but what little first-hand experience we had of it was from the top deck of a passenger ferry.
ISLAND LIFE
We had heard of this area’s unique island culture where close-knit fishing communities eke out a living in challenging circumstances but also of the beauty of the countless islands and myriad anchorages. We started researching the
