See you at sea, or story about big repair and winter hibernation in Tallinn.

Hi there!
As promised - I continue the story of my love with the sea, but this chapter is quite prosaic - Repair!

It happened in the glorious city of Tallinn, to where we with some difficulty transported our newly acquired, but already quite worn boat from Sweden.

Why Tallinn? We haven't moved to Russia out of the trivial economy reasons - that is, to not have to pay crazy customs duty for the boat itself and all the materials for its repair.
And besides, the plan was to go on this sailboat far and long, swedish homeport gave us more freedom than Russian, which later proved to be true in practice.

On the advice of one friendly sailor we found a place in the Noblessner marina, where for a modest sum we were allowed to take a piece of the shore for the whole upcoming winter season.

Catching the moment when everyone began to pull their boats out of the water, we were quick to do the same, although seriously strained the crane -
due to the fact that the boat is custom-made and built in the 80s by then only gaining in popularity "sandwich" technology, the deck was very large and the weigh of a yacht is almost 30 tons!

Yet we were pulled out of the water, placed on a special legs, and then we had the opportunity to see our horse's belly for the very first time.

By that time it haven't seen sunlight for about 5 years, and therefore capitally soaked and grown quite mature beard.

The autopsy showed nothing good, giving us understanding that this is for a long time.
Plastic reveal the network of cracks here and there, and after stripping of frankly rotten pieces looked like a firing wall.

Then that the era of useful tips began in all its glory - there was no sailor in this marina, who would not give us at least couple advises, often contradicting each other)

But, as the mistakes of others teaches you nothing, we did our own, finding the happiness of the truth in the end!

As they say, in Russia - everybody is specialists in electrical and medicine, that apparently extends to the countries of the former Union,
Because we had plenty of those wishing to dive into the frenzied com of wires of our electrical system.

I can't say, that it gaves us so much advantage, because it is better if the whole scheme is built by one person, as we confirmed later, somewhere in Lisbon, when almost caught fire.

But how many wonderful discoveries, huh!

Soon, each of us was in the most intimate areas of the boat, such as the engine room, the colored interior of the dashboard, not as colored toilet system, scary ecosystem of water and diesel tanks - we are able to carry a ton of diesel and one and the half - of water, and, of course, the most exalted location - top of the mast.

All this has taught us something, and also we're quite voluntarily went to study for the yacht skippers, which card became our first european document.

It was the winter, and we continued to stand freezing and wrapped in plastic right by the water's edge, which wasn't that comfortable.

It was difficult to go down the frostscale stairs almost four-meter height, especially with a bucket of dishes, for example - we had to wash it and ourselfs in the trailer at the marina.

It was oddly curious to watch the cannibal seagulls, who eat up their comrades icebounded at night - frozen sea is doubly severe.

But our friends were coming to visit us.

Which was nice, and we made some friends with locals, who at that time were engaged in ennobling the former Soviet toy factory called "Polymer", aka breeding there a garden, building the hall of slot machines and just having parties and concerts of different kinds, and we were involved too.

So winter passed, spring came and it became easier to breathe and create.

Giving yourself some acceleration after winter hibernation, we endeavored to finish the work and quickly dip into the Baltic waters.

Such a process lasted for a long time, because the money and the people appears by portions, though it was not so far from Saint-P!

Spring stretched into summer, trere's no difference between them in the Estonian climate by the way,
and, driven by the proximity of the cool autumn, we have to think hard about the descent to the water.

Now everything has become more difficult as the money is actually left, and the rest of the boats has gone down already, so it was no one to pay the part of the price for a big crane.

Nobody wanted to put us down, but we emphasized the fact that we need to test our engine on the water, and finally found a crane operator, who took pity on us and came, and straining all the wires of his machine, moved our body to the water.

O, blessed moment! Those three meters that separated us from the water, were the longest and most expensive part of our entire journey, I suppose!
It's like waiting for the child or the end of separation with your loved, but the sea brings a certain fortitude to your character, without even touching you.

Well, at that time, we were prepared for the future, as far as we could, and in the day of Estonia's independence from Russia released this small cold country from our presence.

From there we went straight to the heart of Helsinki,
but I will try to tell about this piece later
stay on wave,
Bye!