I got the sailing bug when I found Görän Shildt’s book Toivematka (‘Dream Journey’) in the municipal library during my days at upper-secondary school. In the book, the author describes sailing from Finland to the Mediterranean through war-torn Europe. The work opened a world to me as a young bookworm that began to germinate. After graduating, boating and sailing became an extremely important part of my life. Sailing has always been a wonderful way for me to get away, particularly from timetabled, fast-paced work, and direct my thoughts to something completely different. At some stage I hope that my wife and I will have the whole summer, around four to five months, to sail around the Baltic Sea and visit, among others, the Baltic Sea Hanse towns one after the other. To date, instead of sailing around the entire Baltic Sea, there has only been enough time to visit individual Hanse towns.