Dear Co Romilly/Roxane owners,
Phil asked me to elaborate a little on my recent Trip from Tallinn To Naissar.
I sail Romilly 31 “Tarka” (2003, Bridgend) which I acquired in 2020 in Ireland.I had her trailered to Berlin, Germany, where I lived at that time and sailed her on the lakes and rivers between Berlin and Potsdam.
In 2022 I moved to Tallinn, Estonia. In the process of moving, I had her trailered to Stockholm, Sweden and sailed her from there via Aland Islands and Finland to Tallinn. A fantastic 3 week adventure that is documented on the facebook page: Sailing Tarka – a Romilly 23.
One of the possible overnight destinations from Tallinn is Naissar, an island 10NM northwest of Tallinn. Prevailing winds are westerlies throughout summer. The baltic sea has near to no tides. However, the bottleneck between Naissar and mainland that opens up into the bottleneck of Tallinn Bay makes funnels the seas through with up to 3 knots.
This usually makes it a sportive upwind course to Naissar and a benevolent broad reach on the way back to Tallinn.
Forecast for the first day was a westerly F3-4 with up to 0,5m waves. We sailed under full main and mizzen and reached Naissair after 2h47m. Even though the log showed up to 6.4 kts , we ended up with meager 3.2 kts over ground average. As discussed plenty of times before, Romilly doesn´t point as high as her bermudan rigged cousins which can make beating to windward a bit tedious.
The Island of Naissar is full of history. For those interested, please feel free to read up on it here.
Forecast for the way back the next day was a solid F5, F6 with gusts of F7 later with waves up to 1,7m waves so we made a relatively early start.
Being generally on the cautious side, we decided to start with the 2nd reef and no mizzen, which proved to be the right decision – always easier to shake a reef out than taking one in at sea, even though Romilly´s reefing system is pretty straight forward. In calm conditions, I sometimes belay the main halyard on the foot of the mast. In anything above F3, I use the lead to the cockpit for the main halyard, so reefing can be done from the cockpit.
High winds always arrive quicker than you’d expect, so once we left the lee of the island we experienced sustained 25kts with some breaking waves from behind. Tarka behaved beautifully and even though I was at times in the outer regions of my comfort zone, we made the trip back to Tallinn in 1H47M with an average speed of 5.1 kts and a new speed record of 10.9 kts sending us surfing down a long wave.
People on the passing Tallinn-Helsinki ferry waved encouragingly even though they disappeared in the troughs of the waves and so we returned safe and sound to Tallinn earlier than expected but just in time for an early yet well deserved drink. Please find a short video of it here: Tallinn-Helsinki ferry Video
It has been discussed before that Romilly´s rudder is actually too small. Especially sailing downwind with higher waves you have to work (too) hard on the rudder and I always fear broaching.
Also – and I noticed that for the first time – with a wave going underneath, the outboard has a tendency to buck up and so that the propeller seems to hit the rudder. Has anybody else experienced this?
Please feel free to contact or follow me via facebook Sailing Tarka – a Romilly 23 or instagram @sailing_tarka • Instagram-Fotos und -Videos
