Our position is 59:58.673N  23:25.860E

Saturday dawned sunnier than expected – rain and strong winds had been forecast – and we were able to motor sail some of the way to our next destination. We could tell that the Finnish holidays had started by the steady stream of boats going in the opposite direction, away from Helsinki.

Leaving Hanko

This little boat passed us obviously ferrying building materials for yet another island holiday home

We were slightly anxious that the harbour would be full but our fears were unfounded and we were able to find a space to tie up using the usual stern buoy without difficulty. The harbour is famous for having a restaurant built out over the water on stilts. Apparently this was a ruse to outwit the planners, who had vetoed further development of the town. We had some difficulty tracking down the harbour master as the maps showing where things were had erased his actual location, but eventually we tracked down the office (which was in the direction we first headed before being fooled by the erased maps).

Approaching Tammisaari and the restaurant on the water

Marina at Tammisaari

The next day was Sunday so most things were closed for the weekend, including tourist information, but a helpful lady at the nature reserve visitor centre told us what there was that we could see and provided what information she could and we went for a walk around the town admiring the old houses and visiting the small museum, which was made up of several different buildings set out as they would have been when lived in, and the church, where there was a wonderful exhibition of christening gowns, which had been lent by the families that owned them. Most of them had been used by several generations.

No escaping certain musicals

The deserted town square

Interior of the church with the inevitable ship model

A sample of the beautiful christening gowns; the one on its own was hand painted

The church and its water feature

Some of the old houses

The town was on a hill so quite a few houses had extra stories at the back

  This bench appeared to have been funded by Lions International but it was unclear why it was so decorated or accompanied!

Inside one of the museum buildings; this chap reminded me of Harry Enfield

Traditional stove – a measure of how cold it gets that it needs to be so big

The photographer who bequeathed his equipment to the museum used to make his own lights – out of buckets it appears

The museum attendants dressed appropriately; this was the outside of the photographers house

  It was a very still evening