Greetings from Märket! The season has been opened!

We started our trip by boat from Turku on Friday evening. The Viking Line boat reached the Aland Islands at 1 A.M. on Saturday. We tried to sleep a few hours before our boat left from Eckerö Postbryggan towards Märket at 8.30 A.M. Weather in the morning was cloudy but almost no wind so landing on Market succeeded very well. With us came also Jan from the Museum of Åland and our activist Pera, but they spent only one hour and returned to Eckerö.


Photo: First visitors of the year.

First we studied how well the lighthouse had succeeded on the hard winter storms. We found one of the four small wind generators damaged on the rock. Our security fench for the tourists needs also some maintenance.




Photos: Damages from the winter.

Our worst observation was that our accumulator which gives electricity to the lamps inside the lighthouse was totally empty. It is charged with solar panel, but something has happened. Hopefully the accumulator is not totally destroyed.


Photo: Maintenance of the diesel engine.

Inside temperature inside the lighthouse was between -1 and 0 degrees, so first we put fires to all ovens. Heating must be done at the beginning very cautiously. Next step was to do maintenance to diesel generator. We changed the oil and both oil and air filters. After this we started the generator to charge the empty accumulator and our computers and cellular phones.

We were quite tired and because we had only candle lights we went to sleep very early waiting for a new exiting day here on this desolate rock between Sweden and Finland.

Just give us a call when You are coming! The number is +358-40-8499333.

Harri and Pekka