What I have Done Every Summer Since 2002

Me steering our first boat with my dad

Ever since I can remember, every summer of mine was spent on a boat. It was the year 2002 when my parents decided to ditch our motor boat for a sailing boat that could fit the whole family for a longer period of time. This was a decision that really changed my entire childhood. Instead of going to a summer cottage or flying off to some other country, I’d now be doing something that was more or less the combination of those two.

The most exciting thing in the beginning of the summer was to pack up my things and move to our boat. I would always be so thrilled to set up my room and start the summer holiday, which was never planned, so I was always surprised at what I came across.

Having a boat opened up an abundance of places for us to visit that we hadn’t thought about before. It started small as we got used to this new lifestyle, we joined a boating club in Haukilahti which allowed us to visit an island that was owned by the club. This island became almost like our summer cottage, since we would visit it even on regular weekends. I made many memories and friends with other children who would come there regularly with their families, some of whom I still keep in touch with today.

This was only the beginning of our relationship with sailing, as it would grow to be an even bigger hobby later. We soon made family friends with people from our boating club, which is one of the reasons why we started exploring more places. We would put together a group of families and set off to sail together for the whole summer. This was really fun for me as a kid, since we would be away for over a month, and all that time I could spend with my friends. We always started in our home harbour in Haukilahti, went to the club island Tallklippan for a pit stop, and then started off to the Baltic sea. 

Each summer was different, when I was small we often went to Hanko for a week, and then continued to the islands bordering Southern Finland, which led us to Åland and then Sweden. There were so many beautiful places to see, and young me was happy to swim and fish with my friends all day, and explore new places every few days. Each new harbour brought a new set of friends, and it was especially easy for me to make friends because I was in an English kindergarten, which helped me communicate with other children even when they didn't speak Finnish. Spending all that time in the Åland islands and Sweden also helped me learn Swedish, as when i was under 7 I could still speak Swedish fairly well, but unfortunately for me I didn't continue speaking Swedish enough to be able to speak it to this date.

Me in Sandhamn Harbour in Sweden

Sweden was always my favorite place to go, because it was so beautiful and interesting compared to many places in the Finnish archipelago that I had already grown familiar with. When going to Sweden we would always land in Sandhamn, a beautiful harbour which was always busy, and then continue inland to Stockholm. One of the longest trips we took was to Visby, which is a city in Gotland, the large island next to Sweden. I could handle these long sails as a child because I would remind myself of all the fun locations that were waiting on the other end of the trip.

Sometimes I wondered if it was worth it, because a big storm and huge waves could be very dangerous, and the sea sickness didn’t help either. I remember being scared as a child when our boat’s keel hit a rock in the middle of a trip, or when big lightning storm came to harbour we were staying at. These may have been scary moments, but I’m also glad that I have these experiences. All of these slightly bad moments are easily overruled by the good ones, and I remember my summers spent on a boat very fondly, since I can’t imagine there’s anything else I could’ve done all those summers that would’ve been quite as exciting.

Me and my little brother on our boat

Nowadays we don’t have nearly as much time to sail in the summer as we used to, and we only go out for a couple weeks a year. But so far there isn’t a single summer that we haven’t gone out with our boat, even if the distance travelled varied. Today we stick to the nearby places, and go only as far as Hanko or Tallinn, and we never have time to sail to Sweden anymore. It’s understandable that that part of our lives is over, and we’ve changed as a family since then. I think that some things are better left in the past as good memories, and I’m happy to take on the new experiences that each upcoming summer throws at me.