Il Dolce Far Niente: Two days sea kayaking trip to Espoo/Kirkkonummi archipelago, Finland

August 2011

After being a month off from sea kayaking, decided to make a two day paddling trip to archipelago near Helsinki, Finland. Weather was gorgeous, above +20C with sunshine and low wind.

After last weekend's wild water kayaking experience, sitting and paddling with a sea kayak felt strange. How quickly you adopt new scheme!

Wanted to stay overnight on some remote island (and there's plenty were to choose from). What's more, wanted to see how early autumn had arrived at archipelago, if at all.

Had forgotten smell of the sea, sound of willows, sound of sea gulls. After two hours paddling, all these things came back to head.

There were glimpses of autumn you could see. Trees were still green, but willows started to be mixed by green and brown. Most visual change was lack of birds, certain species, although some other species were more visible than before. Most of birds moved around in large groups. Amazingly some bird families had very small baby birds wheres some others, e.g. sea gulls had big ones.

Paddled outmost islands as wind stayed low. Islands looked more rural, barely had any trees and nature looked raw.

There were lots of boats on move, especially sailboats , was surprised about the amount of them. However, only half of summer cottages were occupied (not boats on their docks on islands).

Stayed overnight on Skorvö island, located quite near the coast line of Kirkkonummi municipal. This was the end of August and evening temperature stayed near +20C. Sea water had the same temperature. At night, Celsius level stayed the same. That's not common in Finland!

One negative thing when living in the city is that one doesn't see stars on the sky at nights, there's too much 'pollution from background lights'. Here on the island, sky was full of stars, all visible. Magnificent!

Evening 'dinner' was simple, some bread, mini tomatoes, blue cheese and bresaola slices. Followed by apple, banana and blueberries. Ending by dark chocolate. Instead of TV, watched stars and listened nature, not a bad thing to do so sometimes.

Birds did not wake me up next morning, as they would probably have done so in July. For breakfast prepared dark French roasted presso coffee, some rye bread and scrambled eggs. Energy and taste to carry me back to yesterday's starting position.

Paddling was great fun with tail wind. Paddled altogether about 57 km in two days. It's great to see how nature in archipelago had evolved since spring and summer to these autumn days. Looking forward cold and late autumn days to do a similar trip again.

Paddled route stored by GPS (View Larger Map and the same in Bing Maps with Bird's Eye View):