With OLIVIA from Willemstad (NL) to Lappeenranta (FIN)

This trip report tells about the voyage that was made with the Dartkotter 38 OLIVIA when the new owners brought it from Willemstad in The Netherlands to it’s new home port in Finland.
All in all the voyage was a very nice experience and we did see lots of different places, experienced some harder winds, saw different mooring sites and setups, did not have too bad weather nor the real hot Summer.
And what is most important the boat worked well and we didn’t catch any illnesses except some cold flu. But we also got a bad luck as the remote control cable to the gear box got loose and we didn’t have any chance to avoid a collision. But no injuries!
The highlights were to see friendly people, to receive help from total unknown people and to experience the tide on North See as that helped a lot the speed we needed to sail the long day.
One disappointment was the idea to use the Marrekrite moorings in Friesland. They were very shallow to our boat and most of them located in total empty places. We should have had more information about those. Finally we saw some nice spots near to Lauwersoog.
Whilst sailing in Dutch canals we saw many boats all the time, but the view changed when we arrived to the Baltic. Very few boats and the reason we heard was that the weather has been really odd here. Cold, except few very hot days, and on top of that quite a heavy winds.
We had to look for better weather in four spots, Wilhelmshaven in Germany to get the good crossing to Kiel kanal, in Klintholm to get the easier crossing to Sweden, two ports in Estonia firstly to continue to an other Estonian port and then to cross the Finish Gulf. So we stayed one extra day and still got some “shower” from the sea.
We used only day times for sailing except one longer jump from the island of Gotland in Sweden to Estonian island Saaremaa. The total distance accordingly to the log was 1435 nm.
Here is the list of ports and moorings we visited and in the order we did:
1. Netherlands
– Willemstad
– Dordrecht
– Gouda
– Alphen a/d Rijn
– Leiden
– Haarlem
– Amsterdam
– Almere
– Workum
– Bolsward
– Sneek
– Sneeker Meer
– Heeg
– Grou
– Leeuwarden
– Dokkum
– Lauwersmeer
– Groningen
– Delfzijl
2. Germany
– Emden > Ems-Jade kanal
– Marcardsmoor
– Wilhelmshaven
– Kiel canal, Dückerswisch
– Rendsburg
3. Denmark
– Bakenkop
– Vejrö, island
– Klintholm, island of Mön
4. Sweden
– Ystad
– Utklippan, small rocky island outside of the Swedish coast
– Grönhögen, island of Öland
– Vändburg, island of Gotland
– Sysne, island of Gotland
5. Estonia
– Kuressaare, island of Saaremaa
– Kuivastu, island of Muhu
– Lohusalu
6. Finland
– Helsinki, Suomenlinna, old fort outside of the City
– Pellinki, group of islands east of Helsinki
– Kotka
– Santio, Finnish coast guard base for passport control to/from Russia
Travelling trough Saimaa canal (42 km and 8 locks with +76,3 m height
difference from the sea level) to the lake Saimaa in Russia with no mooring.
– Lappeenranta, our home town and mooring
I attach here two photos showing the view we have from our window to the
harbor/mooring of Lappeenranta at Lake Saimaa.
If readers have any special interest of the voyage and places we visited,
just give a notice to me. I’m happy to answer.
Additional information:
Lake Saimaa is quite a special lake area:
– it has the total area of 4400 square km
– some  14.000 islands, and lots of free moorings in the nature plus many
service harbors
– quite a clear sweet water that you can use and even to drink as it is, but not  near the factories
– the deepest spot is roughly 90 m but mostly it is not that deep, average of 17 meters
– you can sail from Lappeenranta to a small city called Iisalmi, the distance is 221 nautic miles and there are only two locks, the other one only less than 1 m and the bigger some 5 m level difference.
– then the other direction you can sail more than 230 nm from Lappeenranta trough one river with three locks
– Besides these one way directions you have tens of different routes mostly marked and safe to sail.
– and finally a connection via 45 km and 8 locks Saimaa canal to Baltic (Gulf of Finland) trough a Russian territory that Finland has rented, the surface level difference being at the moment 76,20 m. The so called coasters can use this canal, max length roughly 85m. This canal starts/ends in Lappeenranta and the other spot is Vyborg in Russia.
You can get more information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saimaa.
Timo Kivisto