Standing on the bridge of the lighthouse. A head of seal pops out of water between the Märket reef and the islette off coastline.
The head is like a periscope, turning; turning and pulling down.
A few moments later, on the North side, another head of seal pops up. Winks her/his long eye lashes, pulls down.

Still some moments having passed, on the East side, two heads pop up; they are taking turns. Tiina wonders whether they float. I ask if they have to paddle all the time.


The museum people came by rubber boat...

Our line of thinking gets cut suddenly, a sound of motor boat. Visitors!
We grab some old car wheels to help the boat to land; but this is in vain. It is the Marine Guard; and a rubber boat is already being put on the waves. (They have diminished since these couple of days that we have been wondering where the wind might be blowing so that the waves are so grant here at Märket as well.)


The museum people - Elisabeth, Pjotr and Jan.

A group of three people lands on the reef. Jan Andersson, about to write a book on Märket lighthouse, and two researchers, Piotr and Elisabeth Palamarz.

They are from Ålands self-government's museum department.
"We have been reading your diary; and when we saw that you dug out the tapestry from the 1890s, we know we had to come without a delay!" says Elisabeth.

We are delighted to have company and WATER. (We had stopped drinking coffee for shortage of drinking water.)

"We wanted to come already on Tuesday, but the wind has blown from Denmark and that is why we had to wait until Friday", Jan Andersson remarks.


....but the repair men were in a hurry and had to come by a helicopter.

But what now? An enormous noise fills the air. A helicopter! Is it with the museum folk? Not apparently for they are as astonished as we are.
The sea turmoils as the huge wasp lands on the territoir of the terns. (The aggressive birds will not let us stroll on their premises, but even they cannot help but save themselves as the flying machines lands.)

We do not know which way to turn when we find out that it is the Frontier Guard's repair men who came with the Turku forces' helicopter to repair the guard camera on top of one of the lighthouse's warehouses.

Everything is happening at the same time! Katja points out that the military know how to synchronize things... Yup.

The museum folk want to know in which order the wooden panels, the cartons, the plaster and the tapestries were in the walls.
We try our best to explains the architectural details in Swedish. We find out that the room we have been clearing belonged to the lighthouse watch guard. Hence the telegraph on the wall.

They are impressed on the work the Lighthouse Society has done since May. At first, the museum folk seem somewhat worried that we might have destroyed some historical layers; finally, however, they like to see that our work has improved the bad condition of the historical building complex.

Meanwhile, the two repair men have checked out the camera. The fault is apparently not on the Märket system. The line that transfers the footage from here to the next island, Enskär, seems to be faulty in the other end, not here.

Then the time is 4 PM. The Marine Guard's boat comes and picks up the museum folk.

Before they have the time to leave, it is the return of the huge wasp. The repair men hurry in the middle of the Southern part of the reef and rise inside the helicopter.


One may-have-been-broken camera, one helicopter and two repair men.

I lean veeeeeery much back in the turmoil to shoot some photos as the wasp takes off. Almost fell down, but not quite.

The aftermath of all the fuss, we see more seals than ever during this watch week: atleast 20 heads. The seals are just as amazed as we are. They look stupefied turning their heads as periscopes. Some pop their heads up directly next to the Marine Guard's watch boat.

What a day, wow - we on the bridge of the lighthouse agree.