Stunning autumn kayaking in Archipelago sea

If you ask me, now it’s the most calm and beautiful time in the archipelago. So we decided to go for a two days (16-17.10) kayak tour in the outern parts of archipelago sea south of Kasnäs(Kimitoön), mostly for three reasons cause its always nice to go for a kayak tour, cause I wanted to scout some places in the most outern parts of the Archipelago for next years tour guidings and autumn always brings so clear sea water.

.The plan was to start at noon on Friday, but few small struggles here and there we started to paddle at 2pm from Kasnäs in amazing autumn weather. We went south west direction Holma, from Holma we took course direction Rosala village, the wind was on our side and we had the wind in our back. Half way to Rosala we had a fast lunch in a calm bay at Långön, that island is nature reserv. On the way there we scouted nice bouldering cliffs, what I later checked out online that there is climbing route topos at 27crags.com.

When we passed Rosala viking village we realized that we will be almost one hour short to our planned destination east of Bengtskär lighthouse, before darkness arrives and it will be hard to find a good camping spot.

A small plan change and decission was made that max one hour more kayaking south of Rosala before we search for a nice island to camp on. Actually this area is full of nice islands but not too many have good spots close to the kayaks. We checked out a couple optional islands before we found a perfect place for our million star dollar hotel.

Well at the beach when emptying our kayaks I realized thay my Seabird Scott was leaking and I had got around 2 liter water in my back locker. The only place from where it could leak was from the sealing around the skeg so we let it “dry” to next morning and then do first aid fix with gorilla tejp.

Before the trip I told Jan that I plan to travel “fast and light” and just bring dryfood and some sandwiches for breakfast. Jan didn’t really agreed so he said he will take care of the dinner. And yes what a dinner we had, boiled potatos and hering for starter and 2 huge entrecote steaks for main dish with tetrapak redwine. I took care of the dessert 2 cans Pirkka amber ale..

The tent was really a million star hotel, it was a crazy bright night with the stars making bright stripes in the dark sea temperature was around +3 degrees celcius. But closer to morning it build up little bit of wind, even some rain and temperatures rise to almost 10 degrees.. For Saturday forecast said half cloudy and western winds up to 13m/s. When we waked up around 7.30 it was little wind and an amazing sunrise in the horizon over the open sea. We had a fast breakfast without morning coffee, cause Jan had use two half full gas bottles for our culinaric dinner, so we had to save the last half full bottle for our lunch.. Packed the gear, put on the paddle clothes(I paddled in wetsuit, cause don’t own a dry suit) so it took some time to put on and off the clothes and we was ready to go around 9.30.

There was almost no wind right now, it was the classic calm before storm time. So we decided to kayak one hour more direction south or until the wind rises. After about 45 mins the wind started to rise fast, we decided to head direction home. But first we did some fun rock hopping in the most outern parts of our Archipelago before we turned direction north east. As soon we started north we saw our first seal and the 2nd one we saw little later just befor lunch. Many locals say that the seals arent scared for humans anymore, but all seals I have seen in outern archipelago are quite shy. In the inner part of archipelago some have little more confidence:)

Lunch we planned somewhere on the east/south east side of Hitis. Now we had the wind in our back slightly from the side, so we cruised thru tight passages among the rocky island until we got closer to Hitis village. Where we found and unhibited island in protection from wind for a well deserved luncbreak.

And we truly needed all new energy what we could get, cause we knew that when we pass Hitis east, we will have the wind against us more or less the rest of the trip to Kasnäs. After passing Hitis coustguard station the fun slowly started, wind was growing and also the waves. We had to pass few open parts where the wind was really strong and waves was fun. But they was eating our energy even if we wasprepaired for it. Half way from Hitis to Kasnäs we took a short pee and leg strecher paus on a mini island what was in total protection from wind. Its always a project to do the pee when you kayak in wetsuit, off and on with all clothes.

From this point we thought we will be at around 5pm in Kasnäs but we misscalulated with around 45min and arrived 5.45pm just perfect before darkness. And my gorilla tejp quick fix had actually helped, cause on Saturday we kayaked 2,5 hours longer and now there was only around 1 liter.. Well at the beach we checked the gps and the whole tour was around 45 km with 10 km in strong wind against us, what sometimes got as to feel that we paddled on one spot and didn’t move forward at all. Overall we had an great mini adventure in stunning nature and got some good muscle training the final kilometers before Kasnäs.