Helsinki Tallinna Race 2026

written by Bernard and Arpi

Boat: s/y ElecTrip (Finn Express 83)
Role: Co-Skipper
Sailed Distance: 56.23 nmi
Sailed Time: 13:00:24
Calculated Time: 10:50:47
Placement: 21/28 [manage2sail]

Helsinki Tallinna Race, commonly known as HTR, is Finland's largest offshore regatta, annually attracting 100+ sailboats ranging in type and size. As the name suggests, the regatta starts in Helsinki and takes you some 45 nautical miles across the Gulf of Finland all the way to Tallinn, Estonia. An interesting addition is that it is an overnight regatta, so the boats usually set off during the late afternoon hours on Friday and arrive sometime on Saturday depending on the weather conditions.

Track and Weather Overview

Race Recap

We were a crew of five, with two of us co-skippering. The rest of the crew was fairly experienced: another TRIP skipper, plus two members with extensive dinghy-racing and cruising experience respectively.

Having previously decided we would head to the start line directly from our home harbor in Ruoholahti (rather than the race harbor in Katajanokka), we met up at the boat around 15:00. Following a quick crew introduction, we rigged everything and made some coffee in anticipation of a long and relatively sleepless night. The winds were quite light, so we decided to go with full sails. Finally, we departed towards the start line around 16:00.

Shortly after arriving to the start area and figuring out the placement of the start line it was already 16:30, which was our starting time (the start times were staggered with the larger boats starting later). Overall the start went quite smoothly with only one boat being recalled and no protests, and with that we were off to Tallinn!

The route would take us around a couple of buoys close to Helsinki followed by Helsingin Matala (Helsinki Lighthouse) after which it was just the open sea all the way to the Tallinna Madal (Tallinn Lighthouse). Throughout the passage we were expecting a fairly light south-southwest wind with possible rain in the middle of the night.

If you are familiar with navigating Helsinki's coastal waters, you might have noticed that the starting time of the race conveniently happens to coincide with the departure times of the overnight ferries towards Stockholm. :-) And to nobody's surprise, right as the route took us past the southern shores of Suomenlinna and just in front of Kustaanmiekka we encountered a Viking Line ferry dashing through the narrow strait and honking at the fleet to get out of its way. Luckily at that point we just had enough distance and no maneuvers were needed! (NB the video does not do full justice to the size and proximity of the ferry, but the people on the top deck serve as a pretty good size reference; Gabriella is 171.2 m long.)

We continued onwards tacking our way out into the open sea. As we approached Helsingin Matala the night started to set in and dozens of sails on the horizon slowly morphed into a seemingly endless dotted line of lights. At this point the only thing left to do was to fixate on the instruments and readjust only if the wind changed direction. Throughout the crossing we found that sailing at roughly 60° TWA provided optimal performance for the boat in terms of speed and the desired direction of travel.

At some point during the night we got hit by quite heavy rain and some lightning a few kilometers out at the closest point (the rain also seeped into my phone's cracked screen and killed it :-)). The lightning was especially bright as it was pitch black outside. As usual with turbulent weather, this resulted in a complete wind shift and zero wind for a brief moment where we lost steerage and had to just drift along — if you look closely there is a clear squiggle in the track right after entering international waters. (Later we found out that for the boats ahead of us the wind had shifted so much that they were able to get their gennakers out.)

Eventually the front passed and the wind picked up again from the same, south-southwest, direction as before and we pushed onwards. This segment involved crossing the shipping lanes which was at points quite nerve-wracking as the container ships are often hundreds of meters long and move quite fast. We helped ourselves by checking AIS on our phones as judging their distance based purely on their navigation lights can be quite difficult.

Once past Aegna (one of the islands just outside of Tallinn) we were able to head almost directly towards the finish line. As we approached it, we noticed the rest of the fleet was headed significantly off the direct-line and had to tack to make it. Once closer ourselves, we realized that the wind was shifting (presumably due to the headlands just to the east) which resulted in us having to tack our way through as well. Finally, we made it to the — quite hard to find — finish line at 5:30 in the morning, and we only avoided a tack-of-shame because of some gusts that helped us pass about half a meter on the correct side of the buoy. Shortly after, a heavy fog descended, but thankfully we were already in Pirita harbor.

Appendix: My Return Trip

Glad you've made it this far! This is just to document my fairly dumb return-trip decision.

I woke up around 10:30 after four or so hours of sleep, and on my way to the restrooms I stumbled across a couple of friends who had raced on a J/105 the previous night. As we were catching up, they told me that they were headed back towards Helsinki immediately as there was a pretty nasty storm approaching. I enthusiastically expressed my interest in joining them despite already having purchased ferry tickets for the return trip. :')

The first hour or so getting out of Tallinn Bay was quite smooth, but once past Tallinna Madal we had to head very close-hauled to make our way towards Helsinki. This is when I decided it might be a good time to take a "brief" nap, which was a grave mistake given that (as one would usually expect) going below deck made me ever so slightly seasick. To make things worse, even just trying to get out of the bunk intensified the seasickness, let alone the thought of putting on full foul-weather gear. Consequently, I spent the better part of the return trip in the bunk, pretty much all the way to Helsinki. :-)