I am depressed and excited at the same time! – All plans are wastepaper: First, in early summer, Norway closed the borders because of ‘Corona’, consequently a trip around the North Cape to the White Sea to St. Petersburg was not possible. Then, when I wanted to enter St. Petersburg directly from Tallinn (to start my circumnavigation of Europe with the second stage, i.e. to get from St. Petersburg to the Black Sea via the Volga), Russia closed its borders – all the efforts and costs for the visa and Lena’s great support were in vain.
And yet I want to go, I feel well prepared. And if I can’t go that way, I’ll go the other way, in the opposite direction, through the Baltic Sea into the North Sea, around the British Isles, to France, around the Iberian Peninsula… that’s the next ‘plan’. – How far will I get? We will see.
The conditions today are not ideal, outside the bay of Tallinn I am faced with around one metre high, short jagged waves and headwinds, but the air is clear and summer never seems to end this year (here in the north). The departure from Miiduranna harbour is routine, without melancholy, as if another training trip is imminent. But I won’t be arriving here again for at least one year, or maybe even three…
The original plan was for daily stages of around 100 to 150 km, which is equivalent to two to three hours of driving. But now it’s time to move forward; the long wait for the ‘planned’ entry into Russia has given me a wonderful summer, but even that will end at some point and I would like to avoid the late summer storms in the Atlantic (north of Scotland and in Biscaia). That’s why I’m now extending my daily stages – today my destination is Pärnu, the coastal town in western Estonia.
After five hours of sailing in rough seas, shifting winds and lots of spray, I reach Pärnu. Martina is waiting for me at the pier – she had announced that she would come and accompany me for a while, but the fact that she is actually here is somehow surprising. And of course I’m very pleased!
Together we discover Pärnu, a former spa and bathing resort, today a tourist destination with 60,000 inhabitants, an extensive sandy beach, known for its many events (beach volleyball and -soccer), peppered with countless cafés, restaurants and booming discos, and enriched with many guests from Finland and Sweden, who enjoy their holidays here at low cost.