Strangers in the Night
Chapter 24

Copyright© 2015 by Old Man with a Pen

Ah Spring...

Considering that winter lasts forever and spring is about a week, Helsinki does spring with a vengeance. The temp might be in the mid fifties but it's shorts and picnic weather this far north. While folks in midwestern US are still bundled to the ears, Finland is celebrating the rebirth of their world.

I passed my class on larger boats. I could now legally captain any of the family and company Swans and ... much to my disgust ... any power ship up to nine hundred ninety nine tons ... noisy fuckers. Most of the class work and labs was tugs, ocean going vessels and their ilk.

I took the train from Helsinki to Lahti and Lahti to the Kouvola junction were I hitched a ride on one of the many timber trains headed for the mills of Syväsatama and the fisheries where Wendy and my boat, the Baltic 45 ... actually 47 ... was ready to get wet. Or so Wendy said.

I have to admit ... she did a wonderful job. The bow compartment was a vee birth and raising the main cabin overhead to 6 feet 9 inches gave enough clearance to allow a larger stern master suite. The bigger diesel daddy provided shortened the salon to 20 feet but everything fit.

Nice boat.

After one last look-see the crew said, let'er rip.

The donkey engine started sliding the cradle down the slip and down down down.

Someone forgot to close the seacock.

Oops! Then the donkey engine suffered one of its regularly scheduled failures and the boat gained two feet of water in the main cabin before the donkey was restarted. The important parts of the engine never got wet so ... a quick fresh water rinse of the cabin sole and the seacock was closed. Supposedly ... we were good to go ... and we were. Provisioning took the rest of two days. Re-rigging the mast and standing rigging and fine tuning the rig fleshed out the week.

The Baltic cabinetmaker was a great deal of help with the rig tuning.

I paid.

The dockyard apologized for the miscue ... they were used to the donkey failing at the worst possible times.

None of the new cabin wood was veneer over ply so there wasn't any delamination. The smell did hang around for a couple of days ... we slept in the cockpit. Sailing out in the gulf of Finland we headed west; Helsinki the goal. The canal we had heard about from the government would lead us to The Lakes and from there to Jyväskylä in time for the Thousand Lakes Rally ... Finland's biggest WRC race. We sailed to the dock at Hagnäskajen 17, 00530 Helsingfors, Finland, asked permission and tied up. Then I started asking about the entrance to the canal to Jyväskylä.

"You're not from here," said the fella in the police uniform. He had wandered down to look at our boat.

"No, but Wendy is." I pointed at the beauty of the world. "She's actually from around Kuopio. Wendy, come meet officer," I looked at his name tag, "Makela."

"Officer Makela, Wendy Valmaat. Wendy, officer MÄKELÄ," making sure I got the umlaut correctly.

"Where did you get the information about the canal?" the cop asked.

"From the Administrator of Lappeenranta. He directed us to the Canal to the Gulf."

"He was having you on. There is no canal from Helsinki to Jyväskylä," he said.

"Well, shit fuzzy ... that bastard," I said. "Wendy?"

"What are you going to do?" asked the cop.

"I guess we'll call Dal, my dad, and ask him," she said.

"Dal Valmaat? Valmaat industries? Your dad?"

"Mine too, we're twins," I said.

"Well, come with me to the Department. We'll call from there."

Dal finally stopped laughing.

"You can bring it here," he said, meaning the factory, "Or you can sail it back." And that brought another round of laughter. "Or you can ship it."

"Ship it?" I said, "That sounds expensive."

"Nonsense," he said. "We'll use the factory transporter."

"How about we ship it to Kuopio and we'll drive to Jyväskylä?"

"What will you drive?" then he said, "Never mind ... you'll just buy a car."

"Yes Daddy."

 
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