Rafting to Finland

The pungent odour of ships’ diesel permeates the cool, salty sea air as the boat’s overstrained engine howls. It’s just after nine o’clock in the evening and only a thin, red strip on the horizon separates the grey sea from the gloomy sky. Two other boats accompany us at a distance as we are towed out of the small Swedish bay on the raft we built ourselves.

Our new Swedish friends, who assisted us in the building process numerous times, sail alongside us to say goodbye on the water. Rocks just below the surface of the water pass us by on the left and right as dim shadows. They would have made any attempt to sail out of the bay under our own power futile. Mats, who has fished in these waters for decades, knows them all by heart and skilfully manoeuvres us out of the shallows. We check the map to give him the signal to let us loose a kilometre away from the coast at the agreed co-ordinates. One look at the fishing boat, thumbs up – the depth of the water is perfect. Nicola, who is standing on the bow, waves at the boat and shouts: ‘You can drop us now!’ And so he did. The rattle of the engine pauses and the towlines slacken.

The fresh westerly wind causes the pennants on the riggings to flutter towards the east – exactly where we want to go. Looking out across the sea provokes an unusual feeling of uneasy anticipation. Everyone knows what needs to be done and commands are no longer necessary. With powerful movements, we pull up the heavy yard we use to attach an oversized sail and then lower the steering fins halfway into the water. Our course is set for 60° north and the first waypoint is a lighthouse 15 kilometres northeast. This ensures that we sail around the shallows of Holmön island and only then change course towards Finland. Our escort boats circle the raft one last time. The sail billows, the lines become taut and our raft barely noticeably picks up speed.

14 months of preparation

Spring 2021: the nights are still cold and the wind sweeps through the streets of Basel. I (Noe) and my father don’t notice any of this. We sit opposite one another in a restaurant feeling cosy and full. I just told him about my idea to build a sailing raft out of logs, and complained that these types of constructions are banned on the large lakes in Switzerland. That’s when my father leans over the table and asks: ‘Why don’t you do it properly? Why do it in Switzerland and not at sea?’

One week later I start looking for four companions crazy enough to make this project a reality. When we meet for the first time as a team, we are little more than acquaintances. We were simply the only ones in our circle of friends who were excited by the idea. However, everyone adds something to the group that the other four are missing. We had no idea that we were in for a long 14 months. We spend countless weekends together. We travel back and forth with our prototype on lakes in Switzerland, practise, practise, practise, and continuously improve and modify it. We build a wooden 1:2 model in an empty barn, we meet experienced sailors and research and discuss the expedition over and over again. Sometimes the discussions are heated, sometimes they take hours, but at the end we have a plan: we want to cross the Gulf of Bothnia from Sweden to Finland on a raft based on pre-Colombian designs and, if possible, further refine the steering technology.

Back on the water. The wind is blowing strongly and there’s no land in sight. All of a sudden: ‘Guys, the mast!’ Just a moment ago the pole was sitting tightly and fully in the base, but suddenly it is swaying furiously back and forth. The wind has grown stronger. We notice it as it beats against our hands and shoulders as we now have to pull on the lines to change the position of the sail. The waves are also higher and hit aggressively against the side of the raft and inexorably drive us further out – as though they were taking mocking joy in telling us five fools in unison ‘There’s no going back’, underlining this message with a loud slap against the side of the raft.

Suddenly, the mast wobbles

The wind whips the raft in strong volleys and the seven-metre mast starts swinging dangerously. The sail has got to come down! Now! Check the riggings! Can we maintain course or do we have to turn back early? We decide to tighten the riggings again. The five of us use all of our concentration to loosen the one knot holding the mast’s front riggings.

We are all aware that if we make a single wrong move, then that’s our mast and our raft gone. The first rigging is re-tightened; now it’s time for the second one – everything hangs in the balance. The front riggings are lashed – now time for the ones on the sides – and then to set the sail and, time and again, to test it to see whether it works. However, the mast is still swinging. Time to go to plan B: we have to sail more with the wind.

The lighthouse was already almost within reach. We are disappointed, yet glad that the waves are now coming from behind us and are no longer straining the mast, as it is fully back in the base. We pick up speed and sail further towards the southeast with a tailwind.

A trip to the toilet requires backup

It is one o’clock in the morning and the water and sky are now the same shade of grey; head-high waves tower behind the raft and the bow sinks deep down into the water each time before it lifts upwards again. Despite all of this, we are travelling at around three knots. It is miserably cold, everything is wet and the raft’s constant rocking and pitching give us all a growing feeling of nausea. We deliberately decided not to take any medicine to test our sea legs – we only realise how stupid that was when we are having to lean overboard every 30 minutes to be sick.

It hits some people harder than others. Lying face up on the deck and closing our eyes helps combat the feeling of sickness like a wonder drug. Every couple of hours, one of us can get into the sleeping bag in full gear. Two hours’ escape from coldness and nausea, but you’ve barely climbed back out of sleeping bag to make space for the next person before you are brought right back to reality with a screeching halt. The crashing of the waves and the icy air – the wee breaks are the coldest of all, though.

You struggle out of the layers of life jacket, waterproof jacket, waders and neoprene on deck to undertake the most risky procedure during the entire crossing. One of your companion’s help is required to hold onto your waistband with both hands while you concentrate on urinating with your neoprene rolled down, ensuring that you don’t fly off the deck into the cold ten-degree water. If it weren’t for the wind and the gloomy clouds, the romantic sight would make even Jack and Rose from ‘Titanic’ green with envy.

Land finally sighted

At around six o’clock in the morning, a black shadow suddenly appears from the rainy haze. A huge freight barge half a kilometre away moves past us eerily to the north and disappears abruptly back into the grey void, just as it appeared. Anyone who had been on the command bridge of the freighter would have rubbed their eyes in amazement having seen our craft so early in the morning in the middle of the gulf.

At three o’clock in the afternoon we see the first weak contours of the Finnish coast in the east. We are still 15 kilometres away. This moment is as magical as we had imagined it to be when back home on the sofa. When we recognise the bay we are going to land in, we still want to know the answer to a question. No one has yet sailed with a raft against the wind – is it possible? We should do it today. We place all the steering fins in the water as far as they will go. Tormented by nausea, we pull on the lines again, try to precisely determine the direction of the wind and check our course over ground on the GPS. No enviable task, as anyone who spends too long staring at the display quickly rushes to the edge of the deck to say hello to the fish. However, no matter how hard we lash and pull, we drift too much. We therefore set our final course for our landing zone.

It is 5 pm when the raft enters the deserted bay of the headland in Frösön. It took 20 hours to cross the almost 100-kilometre-wide Gulf of Bothnia, but the seaworthiness of this incredible pre-Columbian design has been proven once again. We can now all imagine what incredible journeys the indigenous people undertook back then.