Houtskär - 22 July 2018

Houtskär is one of the most popular spot in the Archipelago sea. It is one of the "coup de coeur" de Cybèle 17 and it is why we ended-up there. And we really liked it!

The first visit was fort he Santa Maria church, built in 1703.

The two things that fascinated us in the church were the hourglasses and the votive ship.

The four hourglasses are in a rack held by a hand popping-up from the wall towards the assembly. After a bit of reading, I learnt that hourglass were common in Lutheran churches, to ensure that the priest was not going beyond one hour for the celebration. People obviously had other things to do... The rack includes four hourglasses, the first one running in 15 minutes, the second one in 30 minutes, the third one in 45 minutes, and the last one in one hour. Therefore, the assembly could monitor precisely whether the priest was not abusing their patience. I do think that we should reintroduce this in our scientific conferences to ensure that presenters do stick to their allocated time.

The votive ship is very impressive. It is one of the model done by Åke Sandvall, and represents a Swedish warship from 1770 called P.E.S. At this time, Finland was still Swedish...

The ship is a real beauty sailing around the church. Fascinating.

The ship and the hourglass are connected. Hourglasses were used on ships to record time since departure in an attempt to estimate the longitude. One sailor was in charge of monitoring the hourglasses on board. Every day, when the sun was reaching the zenith, the captain would compare the time at the starting point of the journey on the hourglass log with the noon time at the place of sailing using the sun at the zenith. Therefore, hourglasses were one of the most important device on board as it was the only way to estimate the longitude until Harrington developed his ship clock.

Hourglasses were displayed on pirate ship flags as well, to indicate that time was running for the target ship. It was one of the attribute of the pirate flag, the Jolly Roger. Below is the flag used by Jean Thomas Dulaien. If the target ship would resist after raising the Jolly Roger, then a red flag would be issued. Should the target ship fire three more shots after the red flag was raised, then no mercy would be given to the crew.

The flag from Jean Thomas Dulaien, Wikipedia.

Close to the church is the Maritime house, another great surprise of the place, one of the best local maritime museum that I saw in 13 years sailing around the Baltic.

The marina is most plaisant but very busy at this time of the year. We were inspired to arrive around noon so that there would be spots available for our big boat.

The waterfront at the sun set is very nice, reminding us of Poorvo.

Our corner of the jetty, where all the late comers are mooring!

A short video of our anchoring in Korsholm before arriving in Houtskär.