18 - 20 June: New crew arrive - and we're off to Latvia

Our friend, Alexander, has joined the crew and we set off about lunchtime for a calm trip north along the coast of Gotland – warm, sunny, but with almost no wind, so motoring most of the way. Here we are leaving Visby …

… and arriving at Fårösund Marina, which was a seaplane base in the Second World War – the marina building is in the old hangar …

Alexander treated us to a delicious meal in a local restaurant, and we had a lovely peaceful evening at Fårösund …

… and watched a spectacular, fiery sunset …

Before we left the following day, Charles went up the mast to attempt a repair on the steaming light.  For those of you who have never done this, it involves Charles sitting in a canvas seat – the ‘bosun’s chair’ – and being hoisted up the mast by me, using one of the sail halyards.  Luckily on this boat we have got an electric winch to do the hoisting!  The bosun’s chair has pockets to stow the tools and spares you need to do the repair.

He looks quite a long way up, but it’s actually only about half way – about 10 metres from the deck …

We then set off on the longish sail across the eastern Baltic to Latvia.  It started off grey, but quite pleasant with a favourable moderate wind, so we could get the sails up and enjoy the peace and quiet without the engine running …

However, the wind continued to increase in strength, we had to reef the sails, and the sea began to have a lumpy and quite unpleasant motion – it was like the English Channel can be with wind against tide, except there’s virtually no tide in the Baltic. This picture doesn’t convey at all how big the waves became or how rough it was – by that time, I’d stopped taking pictures!!

We arrived at Ventspils in Latvia in the middle of the night, about 12.30am, managed to pick up the stern buoy with some difficulty (it was very low down and hard to reach), then I prepared to throw the bow ropes.  As I moved across the wet deck to throw the second rope, I slipped over, but got up again thinking I would just have a bit of a bruise, and we tied up safely.  However, later I realised I actually had quite a deep cut on the back of my leg, which the ship’s doctor (Charles) patched up for the night.

However, I spent the next morning in ‘Traumpunkts’ (A & E) at the local hospital in Ventspils, which was a convenient ten-minute walk away! I was lucky to find another patient who could speak some English as no-one at the hospital did and my Latvian was sadly lacking!  The doctor was perplexed at what could have caused such a deep hole in my leg – apparently about half a cubic inch of flesh was missing! Charles said it looked like a bullet hole! The doctor cleaned it out and put in two stitches and it is now healing nicely.  Back at the boat, I identified the probable culprit – the pin which holds the anchor in place at sea.  The strange thing is that there’s no hole in my jeans!

Anyway, it didn’t stop me spending the rest of the day with Alexander getting a brief taste of Latvia and the capital, Riga. Unfortunately, Charles had work to do so didn’t join us. Alexander hired a car and we drove past miles and miles of trees and a few farms.  Latvia seems very sparsely populated apart from the few main towns.  The country is still emerging from the Soviet era, but renovation is going on everywhere, so you can see quite dilapidated houses next to smart, modern ones with tidy gardens.  Generally there seems to be quite a positive feeling in the country, but there is still a way to go to modernise.

Riga has also developed greatly and renovated many of its buildings, but there are still grotty bits in between.  However, again there is loads of improvement work going on.

We were in Riga on the official Midsummer’s Day – the Friday before the actual date – so although the weather was not very summery there was a market in the Dome Square and a temporary stage with performances of traditional Latvian dancing and music …

Here is Alexander negotiating the purchase of some traditional ‘black bread’, baked in huge round shapes, but sold in chunks by weight ..

I bought a lucky Midsummer decorated ginger cookie …

Here is the House of Blackheads, a 14^th century Guild of Unmarried Merchants, which was damaged and pillaged during World War II but has been rebuilt as an exact copy of the original building …

This shows the contrast between the Soviet architecture in front – now a museum – blocking the view of the older buildings beyond.  The banner ‘Ligo’ means Happy Midsummer or something like that!

Here’s a novel way to get around – the ‘partybike’ – with everybody pedalling at the same time …

This is the headquarters of the Small Guild, which promoted the interests of Riga’s German artisans …

The yellow Art Nouveau Cat’s House was built opposite the Great Guild headquarters by a Latvian merchant who was not allowed to join the German-dominated Guilds …

He put two statues of black cats (with arched backs and tails up) onto the turrets of his building with their backsides facing the Guildhall. Later he won the right to enter the Guild, so turned the cats around to face the building …

The pavement cafés could be anywhere in Europe …

Three Brothers – this is a group of residential houses of three distinct architectural styles, each from a different century. The oldest, dating back to the 15^th century, is the white building with a stepped gable and gothic niches. The yellow house in the centre is from the 17^th century and the green building on the left was built in the 18^th century …

One third of Riga’s city centre is built in the Art Nouveau style – again we were a little disappointed that some of the buildings looked a bit dilapidated, but many of them had renovation work in progress.  There were certainly some very beautiful examples of various Art Nouveau styles …

Back at Ventspils, the next day the sun came out and the rather ‘Soviet era’ architecture of Ventspils Harbour actually looked OK in the sunshine …

We had a quick look at some of the sights of Ventspils such as this floral cow!

… then got ready to sail on the next leg of our voyage towards Estonia.