Windsurfing From Helsinki to Tallinn

My friend, world-cup pro alpine skier Sami Uotila and I decided to cross the Gulf of Finland by windsurfing from Helsinki, Finland to Tallinn, Estonia. The distance is about 85km as the crow flies. It's been done (and tried couple of times) before. At least Gustaf Salmelin, ex pro windsurfer, and some Estonians made it quite a while ago. Both times, as far as I know, it took 11 or more hours to complete.

We waited a couple weeks for the wind to be from the right direction and of a suitable strength and during that time we consulted constantly with our exclusive meteorologist, and windsurfing friend, Petri Takala, the weatherman from the TV channel MTV3. We had a safety boat with Jussi Honka, the bass player from the band Osmos Cosmos as captain, his girlfriend Mape as crew, and "Lake" Laine as photographer and video recorder.

For such a long trip you must have 100% confidence in the equipment you choose. We all had Suunto M9 wristop GPSs to take care of navigation and Mr Eljas from Suunto had loaded our planned route on them ready for us.

The boards to be used were Formula windsurfing boards. Mine, a Starboard 147 and Sami's a Mistral Devil. The sails were chosen depending on the wind, both of us using the Gaastra nitro range with Fibersar R6000 masts made by Exel. Fin options were 70cm Deboichet R15s and R13s with different flexes.

On the day, Mr Takala predicted the wind to be EEN and from 6-12kts, being lightest in the middle of the Gulf of Finland and strongest near both coasts. In the worst-case scenario, the wind might die out altogether in the middle of the gulf. As we were about to start from Helsinki I was a bit hesitant.

The wind seemed to be really light. We had to take our biggest sails. In my case it was a 12,5m2 Gaastra Nitro IV in with Sami's a 12,5m2 Gaastra Nitro III. I was nervous because if the wind dropped just a bit, we wouldn't be able to carry out our plan and I knew that if the wind picked up to +12 knots those sails would really be a handful. I wished for a bit stronger wind, to have more margin for the wind to either drop or rise and still be able to finish the trip, because my 11.0m2 has a relatively wider range (8-20kts) of use than the huge 12.5m2(5-14kts). Sami (as always) was full on and raring to go, so we started.

At first we could barely plane, and we had to go upwind. At that point I didn't believe we could make the trip. But as we got a bit further out from the pier, the wind picked up nicely and we could point effectively upwind. When we headed downwind to the open sea I started to think that we could make the trip and I also clicked on the GPS of my Suunto M9. Now our cruise was really a treat, blue skies, a nice breeze and cruising fast past the sailing boats coming and going. The huge passenger ferries were also there, with decks full of people waving to us.

Afterwards my fellow windsurfer and competitor Juha Blinnikka, who was on one of the ferries told me that we looked like couple of fighter planes flying in tight formation through the sailboats. After a while we started hearing a low and loud engine noise, at first I tried to look at the sky to see if it was a coastguard or charter helicopter, but I soon discovered it to be a car ferry, a fast catamaran. We had to point really hard downwind to get out of the way of it, and as it passed us it made quite a wind shadow and its wake was more like a swell. From then on, from time to time, it felt like we were driving near a bus-lane, as the ferry traffic is quite something between Helsinki and Tallinn.

Luckily, however, there was also something I was looking forward to; those nice calm moments of cruising on the silent open sea, when there was nobody but us and the empty horizon. I cruised with Sami, playing catch and passing each other as closely as possible. It was also really funny to see the surprised faces of the sailors that we met in the middle of nowhere. They probably thought that we were there on our own, our safety boat being a bit further back.

Navigating was really easy all the way, with my Suunto M9 pointing the way and showing our speed and headings. Then the wind started to go down, as our forecaster had predicted. After a while we started to really struggle to stay on plane and that meant things got heavy for us. We had to take a couple of breaks as our muscles felt the pain of forcing the board to go as deep downwind as possible, and to stay on plane at the same time. That's a really hard combination to do in light winds! As we got closer to the Estonian coast the wind picked up quite a bit, getting stronger the closer we got. It didn't really help us anymore. We were so exhausted that it wasn't possible just to relax and go, we had to use all our strength to control the boards and sails. Because the light wind had earlier made it impossible to go deep enough downwind, we ended up quite a bit east of our desired route.

The planned route was to go west from the island of Aegna to Pirita harbor and passport-control. Sami suggested that we pass Aegna from the east, which would have been a nice shortcut for us. I had previously been racing at the Aegna windsurfing marathon Baltic cup finals in Tallinn, and recalled that it was too shallow between Aegna and the Estonian coast on the east side. Our fins were 70cm deep, so I really didn't want to take the risk. So we decided to take a look at the sea chart at Aegna's beach. We got to the nice sandy beach of Aegna, took a breath, checked the chart and confirmed that we had to go by the western route. As we were about to get going again two men from the Estonian "Piirivalve" (the border guard) arrived. They asked very nicely what we were doing and where we came from. After they heard our story, they made it very clear that we shouldn't have come ashore before Pirita harbor and passport-control.

Anyway, they told us to pack our windsurfing-gear on our safety boat and go straight to the passport-control. We then went by boat to the passport control and they asked about our crossing. As everything else was really ok, they just gave us an official written "don't do that again!" note. So, to our great relief, we didn't go to jail or have to pay any fine. The route my Suunto M9 recorded was 84km, starting some 10 km off the coast. My average speed, including all breaks, was 19,4km/h with a top speed of 35,4km/h. So this is a new windsurfing record for crossing the Gulf of Finland.