This is a pleasant, sandy island with a twee village, nice walks and a proper guest harbour with reasonable berthing fees, showers, leccy etc. It was quite full when I arrived in thick, thick fog and an onshore force 5 blowing. In these conditions the approach was pretty hairy. I could only see the cardinal buoys when I was 50 yards away. I had to find them by GPS and if you don’t spot the buoys, you will run onto the rocks. The lee shore is not exactly beset by rolling ocean breakers, but the island is fairly exposed to the open Baltic to the south, at least by archipelago standards, so it can be choppy on the approach.
The guest harbour is well sheltered from the sea, but open to wind from most directions
Don’t follow my line on the photo, by the way. Follow the buoys. In a choppy sea it was also tight to get rid of the mainsail inside the harbour. I continued on into the old village harbour to do so, then came back to the guest harbour. The latter is a rock pier built out into the shallow sea, more reminiscent of the constructed harbours further south and west than of the Baltic archies. The way out to the east would be equally fraught in a fog, but easy enough to follow the port and starboard buoys through the reef.
There’s a lot of holiday homes on the unusually sandy island
The inner village harbour and jetties are reserved for residents
Try spotting these bloody cardinals in a thick fog.
The buoys out east through the reef.
Locate Kaunissaari (not to be mixed with Kaunissaari outside Sipoo, close to Helsinki) on the map and find more adjacent harbours and marinas here.
More information on Kaunissaari can be found from: www.guestharbours.fi
Disclaimer: While Martin Edge and Sail in Finland have taken every precaution to ensure that the information in this post is correct, it is not a replacement for proper charts. Safe navigation is the responsibility of the skipper and Sail in Finland assumes no responsibility for accidents occurring while entering or leaving the harbour.