Sauna Therapy, Ep. 192

For a fleeting moment, we thought we could keep pace with them. Heli and Kalle, our newfound friends from Finland, were creeping up behind us as we both sailed away from Sweden on our way to the Aland Islands in Finland. But Sea Rose, loaded up with cruising gear, was no match for their fancy X-Yachts racing boat, especially when they popped open their colorful spinnaker in the appropriate royal blue and white colors of the Finnish flag. Our plans to keep in touch as we both sailed towards Helsinki seemed to now be, like I would tell some of my team members during performance reviews, an overly aggressive stretch goal. We settled in for a full day crossing of the 26 nm gap at turtle speed, while Heli and Kalle played the part of the hare. It’s the journey, not the destination, I had to remind myself!

Heli and Kalle, onboard Xperium, gaining on us outside Fejan
And, just like that, they blew by us!

The Aland (“Oh-land”) Islands, an archipelago off the west coast of Finland, has been called the largest archipelago of its kind in the world. I don’t doubt the statisticians. Looking at the area from a zoomed out map, a handful of islands dot the expanse of sea between these two stalwarts of Scandinavia. But you only have to zoom in a bit to be mesmerized by its footprint. Just coming up with names for all of the islands would seem to ensure job-security for the Finnish Interior Ministry. 

The Aland Islands are a peculiar political and geographic anomaly, and Finland in general is one of the least understood countries in Europe. Both Aland and Finland were part of the Kingdom of Sweden until 1809 when the Swedes were forced to turn over the region to the Russian Empire. Finland was permitted to operate largely as an autonomous region of Russia, but finally gained its full independence in 1917. World War II complicated matters, both with the vulnerability of Finland’s 800 mile border with its adversary Russia, and the Western world’s adversary of Nazi Germany. Oddly, Russian coastal defense positions along Finland’s Baltic coast persisted after the close of World War II, leading one to appreciate just how newly minted Finland’s true independence has become.

During Finland’s early years of independence, the Aland islands, with a long cultural connection to its western neighbor, pushed hard to reunite with Sweden. To avoid escalating conflict between Finland and Sweden, the League of Nations, newly formed at the conclusion of World War I and the precursor to the UN, gave sovereignty of the Aland islands to Finland, with the caveat that Finland would need to guarantee Alander’s traditional Swedish culture, language, customs and form of self-government. In modern form, Aland is a demilitarized region with their own flag and Swedish as the main language. Their independent ways were more than skin deep.

Entrance to Mariehamn

When we approached the main island of Mariehamn, where 40% of the population lives, and tied up at the guest harbor, none of our mobile phone plans worked even though everyone on the customer support line assured us they would. With some persistence, we found out that the local Aland mobile phone operator doesn’t like to partner with foreign carriers. We eventually located a local SIM card that would cover us in Aland and throughout the rest of Finland (but not Sweden!). There were a few hours of nervous contemplation on how we would manage cruising in Finland with no data plan and therefore no intelligence on where to go, what was open, and what wind to expect. After solving the data plan dilemma, I started strolling the one main commercial street of downtown Mariehamn and did a double-take past a bookstore window. Here, they were selling a rack full of different sailing guides to the Aland islands, with a few even in English. Score… we were in information heaven! A final swing by the local Tourist office produced an armful of free maps and travel guides – the kind with actual helpful content not just ads – by a jovial young agent speaking perfectly clear English. Together with the advice of kind sailors like Heli and Kalle, we were ready to take on the Aland islands; there was no reason to linger in a city any longer than absolutely necessary.

Being an island nation, Aland has to rely on a fleet of large passenger ferries as its virtual superhighway connection to the outside world. We had been warned that ferries run fast and frequent in these waters and they have the right of way over us little people due to narrow and limited navigation routes. Sailing down the middle of a channel expecting a ferry to get out of your way based on traditional navigational rules of sail over power would lead to angry captains blowing their ship’s horn long enough to shame you into retiring from boating. Three large ferries left the harbor just behind us with an off-the-block acceleration that would rival Usain Bolt. We left nothing to chance and took evasive action early.

Large ferries departing from Mariehamn
…and lurking behind islands

Our goal was a little guest harbor on the island of Rodhamn. When the cruising guides differentiate these spots, they group them into ‘destination’ and ‘natural’ harbors. When you have thousands of places you could visit by boat, you need to make a decision whether you want to visit a harbor with some amount of human activity like a dock with a restaurant and perhaps a sauna (i.e. a ‘destination’), or an anchorage in nature where you are on your own to go hiking, paddle boarding, wildlife watching, and if you dare, a swim. Rodhamn was in the former category, and came highly recommended as an ideal first destination from Mariehamn. Literally translated as Red Harbor, this out of the way gem was a short two hour gentle downwind sail, which was a perfect introduction to the proper mind space for Aland sailing. We nosed past a few anchored boats, apparently not interested in the modest fee to tie up at the dock. As we grabbed a stern buoy, a few sailors from a neighboring boat sauntered over to help with our bow lines and fend us off as we got settled. It was an immediate reflection of the island vibe. Despite there being nearly 40 boats tied to the wooden pier running along the rocky slab of shoreline, it was quiet and peaceful. People talked in hushed voices. No one shouted across foredecks. No jet skis buzzed through the anchorage. Makeshift picnic tables had been built into the rock, and crews from other boats were enjoying glasses of wine and starting charcoal barbecues. All were displaying that incredible Scandinavian balance of enjoying the great outdoors with friends but respecting the privacy of those around you. All told, there were enough people here to crowd a night club’s dance floor, and the youthful age to energize it, but they had left that desire back in the dark alleys of Stockholm and Helsinki. This was less a destination to blow off steam and more to breathe in a heady cocktail of sea spray, pine woods and tall grasses. We found a rustic cafe with a college-aged woman behind a counter laid out with fresh made rolls and pastries, where for a small fee we could also reserve a private hour at the equally rustic sauna, tastefully located over a crest of local red rock out of view. Not that this privacy-respecting crowd would ever be a bother. 

The chill scene at the Rodhamn guest harbor
Well trodden path to the private sauna, Rodhamn

When it was our chosen moment, Karen and I ventured over to the sauna just as the previous group was toweling off and leaving. The sun was low in the sky and the long slabs of red rock ran unimpeded to the water’s edge. Embolden from our training in Fejan, we started feeding the wood stove right away, but this one had an add-on – a metal water tank on the top that heated water for you to wash off with afterwards. Splendid! 

Steaming up the sauna, Rodhamn

With the heat that these wood fires put out, an hour is too long to spend continuously inside. You would certainly shrivel to a raisin. The preferred cool-down method is to jump in the cold Baltic seawater, staying in as long as you can but before your limbs turn so numb you can’t climb out. Then, it is back in the blistering hot sauna until you are sweating so hard that you can’t imagine what possessed you to get out of the water earlier. We repeated this cycle at least three times. I can only say that there must be something – medical, spiritual, ethereal, I’m not sure which – that creeps into your soul during these extreme hot and cold spells and replenishes your body with a sense of calm and renewal. If we could, I would have packaged up this sauna and brought it home; instead, we made a sketch in our mind of how and where we would build one when we returned. We had agreed in the recent past to focus on more experiences, less things. But here was a thing that was all about the experience. I think the powers that be would make an exception!

At dusk, meaning 10:30pm, we toasted the end of a fine day with the last drops of a wine whose origins I recall not, but even if from Napa Valley, could never compete with the appellation that was Rodhamn. I wanted to imprint every moment of our experience here into a deep cognitive logbook that was immune to the passage of time and its corruption of the mind.

The other half of the sauna experience… a cold dunk in the Baltic!

The Aland archipelago is but half of the overall island group in this area. To the east is an equally large region named the Turku archipelago, for its proximity to that city’s location on the Finnish mainland.

The Turku Archipelago region

To make our way there, we took a break from the close encounters with rocks and instead chose a well-marked channel to the northeast. But looks can be deceiving. With our Code 0 rolled out, we made way under a light breeze from behind, and soon the channel narrowed. A 150 meter passenger ferry, looking just like a cruise ship, came into view behind the trees directly ahead. It turned 90 degrees in an instant on a heading directly for us and immediately started blasting its horn five times. We, along with the other boats sailing behind us, turned out of its path. A few minutes later, it turned another sharp 90 degrees and began blowing the ship’s horn again for sailboats nearby. We needed no more reminders of what the navigational pecking order was here in Aland. 

The Silvia Line’s ferries slow down for no one!

Everything seemed to happen suddenly here. The wind shifted to a beam reach and increased to 15 knots, putting us on our ear as the big sail area of the Code 0 found every bit of the breeze. When a race boat ahead of you, with a bigger, younger crew, gets worried you are gaining on them, you know it’s worth the risk of books and fruit being hurled to the low side down below.

Turbo charging through the water with our Code 0

When we weren’t racing other boats, we were dodging oncoming traffic including this Finnish navy patrol boat. I guess when your neighbor invades Ukraine, it’s reason enough to modify the demilitarized status of the Aland islands.

Military craft in the demilitarized Aland Islands

Our goal for the day was the harbor of Seglinge. Although they had the makings of a destination harbor, with a nice family-oriented dock area and an assortment of baked goods for sale, we turned the experience into a nature harbor. The helpful tourist office back in Mariehamn had recommended a wilderness hike through the island, and we wasted no time lacing up the hiking shoes. In these islands, you are hard-pressed to find the kind of hiking elevation we were accustomed to in the White Mountains back home. But the rocky terrain still makes for a workout, the chance to get lost if you don’t pay attention, discover freshly hatched ticks lurking in the grasses (two found me), and a chance to learn some unusual geology. The Ice Age was particularly brutal here, being so far North. When it ended 10,000 years ago, and the ice receded, a surprising change took place. The land actually started to rise, without the oppressive weight of a 2km thick sheet of ice. At first, early inhabitants in this region thought the water level of the Baltic was dropping, as their preferred fishing grounds started drying up. It was not until the early 19th century that scientists started to theorize what is now accepted as ‘post glacial rebound’. Scattered rocky islets started to form the outline of Seglinge 1900 years ago. Over time, as the land rose, the interior of the island started to take shape, and now it stands nearly 15 meters above the water at its highest point. Scientists estimate the rise here to be about 5mm per year. Where the ice was the thickest north of here in the Gulf of Bothnia, the rise is 10mm per year. In one’s lifetime, it would rise nearly a meter. With so much recent news of rising ocean levels and threats to shorelines around the world, it was an interesting twist to learn about this land rising and the shorelines expanding.

Hungry mosquitos, with the same aggressiveness as back home, encouraged us to speed read the remaining well designed interpretative signs and find civilization again.

Renovated flour mill, Seglinge
Micro blueberry hunting along the trail in Seglinge
1900 year progression of post glacial rebound on Seglinge

We pushed onward the next day on an 8 mile hop to a true nature harbor at Enklinge, where nature was so strong, it rained all day, stopping only briefly in the late afternoon when a group of college age kids came out of a nearby summer cottage to swim and start a campfire.  It made us reflect on how long it had been since we were in the presence of a smoker. Here, people of all ages were active in the outdoors and seemed to lead a very healthy lifestyle. They didn’t have the overly thin, svelte type of physique that many French have, but then again, they didn’t appear to fall back on cigarettes as a means to lose weight. They were just lovers of the outdoors and their spirit reflected this primal form of living. 

High winds were in the near term forecast, so we continued on to a more protected harbor the next day at Houtskar. We found excellent protection from nearly all quadrants, and a host of additional benefits onshore to boot. We couldn’t turn down the tasty fresh seafood at the dockside restaurant, while sitting at simple, no frills, family-style long wooden benches with the expectation that you bus your own table. I’ll take simple and delicious over luxurious and bland any day. 

The convivial vibe at Houtskar

To top off the evening, the guest harbor offered two teaser activities that were particularly appealing on a gray sky day with a pending storm – free laundry and a roomy sauna. This time, we didn’t need to juggle armfuls of split wood to keep the heat coming, as the sauna had a bigger electric stove, but it was a more traditional Finnish setup with separate mens and women’s sections, meaning everyone goes naked – except for a few newbies off the American boat. Men – and one little boy – merrily went about their business of communal showering right at the entrance to the men’s side. Soon, my side of the sauna filled to capacity and men were waiting outside, with the rest of us pressed close together, sweating, naked, eyes down. Separating the men’s and women’s sides of each sauna were a row of irregularly spaced wooden slats, thin enough for husbands to call across to wives, and at the right angle, to hold back wandering eyes. But then again, we were no longer in prudish America, the supposed symbol of freedom, but instead the land of practical freedom – if you are going into a room to sweat out the day’s demons, why bother with clothing? Alas, clothed in swim trunks, at least I could easily skip out and dive into the chilly marina waters with all of the young kids, while the grownups huddled on the deck with their bath towels strategically wrapped around themselves waiting for the air to have its gradual cooling effect.

We were in the eastern half of the archipelago now, where the Finnish not the Aland flag is flown, and where Finnish is predominantly spoken instead of Swedish, not that I could understand either. However, swimming in the cold marina water, eavesdropping on the conversation around us like every traveler does, I kept hearing them pronounce sauna as ‘saw-OOON-ahh‘, or if spoken quickly ‘SOW-na’. I was surprised to learn later that sauna is actually a Finnish word (my first one!) and that we had been mispronouncing it all of this time.

In the morning it would be time to push further east to the mainland city of Turku, where we would mark our crossing of this immense and varied archipelago. Over the previous winter, I had stared at the map of this region, wondering how we could possibly find our way through the maze of twists and turns and not hit land. But sometimes, when you get up close to the big, ugly, hairy beast, you find out it is not as bad as you thought. You might make mistakes along the way, angry captains may blow their horns, the wind may overpower you, and mosquitos may demand a blood debt be paid, but at the end of the day you may find a sauna to gather your thoughts and recharge for the next day’s adventure.

Be sure to also checkout the video content on our LifeFourPointZero YouTube channel. We regularly post updates on our sailing adventures, as well as how to videos on boat repair, sailing techniques, and more!

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