Il Dolce Far Niente: Sea kayaking on Sipoo archipelago Finland

July 2011

A bit too much blogging recently, but wanted to record this one as probably not coming this area soon.

Paddled some 30km today in Sipoo's archipelago, which is located about 30km east from Helsinki, Finland.

Picked up a kayak from club house and drove there by car. Weather was a bit cloudy in the beginning but soon clouds vanished and sun shine poured downwards hitting surface of the sea reflecting from there everywhere. Wind stayed around 4m/s so pretty smooth.

A note: Seems like every year I plan to go paddling off the capital area but hit the reality year after year, I'm too lazy to pack a kayak on the car and drive somewhere to paddle. It's so bloody easy to go to the club house, jump into the kayak and go off almost anywhere near by (and what's more, Helsinki and Espoo archipelagos are so beautiful that they satisfy me mostly every time). Glad it wasn't the case today!

Sipoo (Sibbo på svenska) archipelago still has a few beautiful old summer houses on rocky islands (I don't call them summer cottages, you know). Witnessed many of them but didn't want to try to store them into pictures. Kayak is not a perfect place to take photos while there's some waves swaying you.

There are a few islands for public outdoors. The pearl of them is Kaunissaari island (owned and maintained by the city of Helsinki). At his time didn't have plans to visit there.

Saw the new harbor for water based transportation in Vuosaari. Looked modern and massive.

Basically I liked this archipelago, but most of the islands were too full of summer cottages, although summer houses were very nice. I also liked houses on islands where families seemed to live (around year?). Clearly there were some fishermen houses as piers and boat shelters hinted so. To me these type of houses reminded (good?) old days when traffic was unknown on waters and many islands presented their naked beauty.

Here's GPS stored route (View Larger Map):

Some photos I took along the route: