Welcome also to visit my homepages: www.birgittasilfverhielm.se (art) and www.vindovatten.se (sailing) (mostly in swedish)

Monday 17.th of August, Dalarö/Stockholm, Sweden. We are back home, the Esmeralda II and me. The boat was sailed back with the help of a paying crew, and two of them were russian speaking, from Kaliningrad and Latvia. This sailing the boat home-trip was not thought of as a part of the project, but the boat continues to act as a platform for discussions about democracy, occupation of land, who fled to Sweden and why. I learned from Marina, that in Russia the history books has been re-written many times – history and truth changes depending on who is ruling. So her wiew of the history of the Baltic countries is different from ours. There is maybe not any real truth around when it comes to history – only the subjective wiew of the memories in people´s minds. We decided to forgive each others for former occupation several hundred years ago as well.

Monday 10.th of August, Riga, Latvia. Some pictures collected from the waters of the approach to Riga.

Sunday the 9.th of August, Riga, Latvia. Soon it is time to leave and to start the journey back home. But first I would like to give you some of my wiew of Riga, a town I see for the first time, and that I did not know much about. Anyhow, time passes very fast here, we have as usual been busy making contacts, and I am sitting this late night as usual at the yacht club´s bar, to access the internet, and the battery is running out and I need to go to bed and to have a shower and I will get back with my pictures tomorrow. I promise all the time to get back…  What this project will need in the future is more time!! and more internet connections…. trying againg tomorrow morning, promise….

Tuesday the 4.th of August, Ruhnu, Estonia. Now we are going to leave Ruhnu to go to Riga, and then leave the net for some time. The crew is preparing the boat and I have to be there too… I will write more when we come to Riga!

Monday the 3 of August, Ruhnu, Estonia. From this little island in the middle of the Riga bay, which have only 65 inhabitors, here are some pictures from today. Ruhnu, or Runö in swedish, was until 1944 inhabited by swedes, who all fled. One old woman might still be there, who remember the old times. The little village is in the middle of the island, almost an hour to walk to on the mainroad. The first two pictures are local jokes, not art. The next two are found in the forest. Then Anne, swedish speaking, renovating her former soviet house, and discussing living in a very small society on an island at Anne´s house.

Saturday the 1 of August, Ventspils, Latvia. We have had a tough day at sea coming here, and I was thinking a lot about the seashore as a border. We are passing along this coast where people travelled over the waters to Gotland and Sweden, fleeing from the Soviet army. The beaches were raked every evening to be able to see any attempt to flee. The border between land and sea was for a long time a place where the air was no more free to breathe. To me the sea always has meant freedom to go wherever I want. Total freedom. In Ventspils we met people who were engaged in saving the water and the dunes. They wanted very much to cooperate with us, because they still feel that nobody are listening to them.

Thursday 30 of July, Liepaja, Latvia. Days go by very quickly here. Now we have in few days sailed from Poland outside the Russian borders of the Kaliningrad region, been to Klaipeda in Lithuania for two nights and now we are already in Latvia. I am full of impressions from the people we have met and talked to. These countries are individuals that have gone through so much during the centruries, and there is so much change going on. I was attracted by music here, although I don´t understand the languages. In Gdansk we found on the last night a sailor´s and adventurer´s club. The place was crowded with things collected by Polish people who had been travelling at sea or around the world, and a group of three were playing and singing sailor´s songs, a couple of people dancing. Next by chance music experience was in Klaipeda, from a group of singers practising in a park. Albert who knows the language a little told me this beautiful melody was sung with a text about war and victory.

Friday 24.th of July, Gdansk. Yesterday we visited Wyspa Art Institute and our partners there. A walk on the old Lenin shipyard, where it all happened in the eightees, was impressive. Guards are still checking on people who walks in there, they asked us to write our names in a book. I found this strange boat, an old wooden one, re-made into some kind of scupture. And the next picture, I think, is from part of a never finished very big ship. But what part? Or could it be a piece of art? What is what here, where there have been artists all over for some years now. But it seems to be changning towards offices and new exclusive buildings in the near future.

Wednesday 22.nd of July, Gdansk. Please see also the Gdansk page, under Places. We followed the birds from Stora Karlsö down here. I am now alone on the boat for a couple of days, waiting for the project crew to arrive. Sharing time between mending things on the boat, like the autopilot, and making phonecalls and preparing the route and meetings. Sun is shining heavily and the river is nothing you jump into to take a bath. In the morning guys are driving around in ribboats picking up rubbish from the water´s surface and a campaign is going on here to tell the consequenses of throwing for exampel a sock or a beercan in the water in terms of time for breakdown. On the other hand the river brings with it all the things you don´t want to know about, right out into the Baltic. Much worse than old socks, believe me.

I also found a beautiful thing today, an anonymous sculpture in a park, made from thin plastic, wires, stones and steel pins, floating over the green grass between the trees.

It made me happy for quite a while.

This city makes me wonder about reality. It is very very old, in many parts it has been totally destroyed, but parts has been renovated in a way that is almost too good to be true. I can see a lot of poverty behind the surfaces, I am definitely on the rich side.

Friday 17.th of July, Burgsvik, Gotland. We finally got the AIS to work, this is a machine that shows other ships on the digital chart, very useful when sailing in bad visibility. We have visited Visby, Stora Karlsö, a nature reserve island with a lot of culture history and a lot of birds that just jumped from the cliffes and who are also moving towards Poland at the moment. And we have visited Byxelkrok on the northern tip of Öland. Now we are back to Gotland, southern part, and tomorrow we will start the big jump down to Poland, to Gdansk. We hope to arrive during Sunday.

Memory picture from Visby: A huge motorboat close to us, are filling their own swimmingpool on deck, the boat is about 30 steps long, maybe 100 feet. On the quay, beside the boat, a family cleaning bearcans with the same water hose as the motorboat people just filled their pool with, pressing the beer cans to make them take less space on board. Those two are our closest neighbours.

At the moment in Burgsvik at the end of the pier, where we have moored. Some young boys were fishing erlier, and we got some fish from them to put on the grill. Now has the guys who are a bit older taken their place on the pier, with a big loudspeaker on the back of a bicycle, and they are playing music and jumping from the pier into the warm water in the sunset. Typical swedish summer I guess.

Sunday 12.th of July ,Visby, Gotland. We have left from home with the boat, one day later than planned. We left saturday, because the wind was too hard on the original day of departure which was friday. You should anyway never leave on a friday when sailing, they say. So now we are luckily on our way, although the wind is still from south, from Poland.

Wednesday 8.th of July We are having a working day on the boat. Drilling and mounting equipment. This is also teambuilding. To days ´til takeoff from Stockholm, and there is a big lowpressure system coming up from Poland to meet us. This means some resistance. The boat will be sailed down to Poland by me and my boyfriend, where we will meet the others in Gdansk. A new member will join the crew – Albert Caspari from Germany, an ecologist with a lot of experience from the Baltic coast. He is also a photographer and graphic designer.

Monday 22 of June. We are having a meeting on board the boat tonight, planning for this summer´s sailings. I am still busy getting contacts with Lithuanian art scene. I heard during this weekend from another sailor, who whas recently in Lihuania, that collected waist from toilets on land are poured out from big cars directly into the harbour of Klaipeda. And in Finland it is not permitted to empty the boat´s toilet into the open sea. Where should we put our shit?