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EVERY MONTH DICK RECORDS
A PODCAST OF HIS COLUMN
Listen online or download via:
http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/podcasts14 http://www.yachtingmonthly.com APRIL 2016
T
he fi rst thing I noticed, while leafi ng
through the tourist board bumpf in the
room of my Tallinn hotel, was barely
a mention of what I’d been invited to
Estonia to promote: the coast. And yet this tiny
country has two thousand miles of coastline
washed by the Baltic Sea and
its 1,520 islands sport more
than 150 harbours!
Over dinner at the Kalev
Yacht Club, I discovered that
during the ‘Soviet time’, from
1940 until 1991, Estonians
were banned from the beach,
their boats were chainsawed
into kindling, sailing was forbidden, and soldiers
checked the ploughed coastal fi elds every
morning for footprints. Even Estonians needed
visas to visit Estonia’s off-lying islands.
After fi ve decades behind the Iron Curtain
the forbidden coast became a mental block that
lurked deep in the psyche of many Estonians.
As the club commodore, Kalev Vapper, said:
‘We lived with a fence around the club from the
Soviet time. This year I suddenly noticed it and
removed it and now we have access from the
road. I realised I had a fence across my mind.’
Club manager Idrek Ilves agrees: ‘Our job now
is to open up our coast to the world, because in
the Soviet time we were living in a bubble.’
Yachts and sailing – the pastime of decadent
capitalists – was anathema to Communist Party
apparatchiks, until Moscow was awarded the
1980 Olympics. Then Tallinn was host to the
sailing events and although the yacht ‘uniforms’
were frowned upon as not being proletarian
enough, the ideological myopia started,
momentarily, to lift as Estonian sailors got
results for the Soviet team.
Nationalism has become a dirty word to many
liberals in the West, yet throughout Estonia I
found the clever, friendly and welcoming people,
of all ages, were united by traditional costume,
folk dancing and most important of all the
national sing-songs they hold in giant arenas
where they harmonise their solidarity.
Some ethnic Russians wonder if perhaps
they would be less isolated, more secure, as
part of a federated Russia. Estonia is, after all,a tiny pimple on the back of the great Russian
bear. For them is reserved a Grimm-style fairy
story. It goes like this: a man who welcomed
the Russians in and who once enjoyed playing
Chopin and Liszt, now can only listen to the
Balalaika. The brandy he once enjoyed has been
replaced by vodka. The house
he once owned now belongs
to the state and he must share
it with his Russian father,
mother and grandparents.
To this cautionary tale, Kalev
Vapper adds: ‘And the Swan
45 you love sailing? Forget it.’
At the end of my visit Egon
Elstein, president of the Estonian Yachting
Union, took me to the Hotel Viru overlooking
the marinas of Tallinn. The country’s fi rst
skyscraper, Hotel Viru was built for and
formerly owned by Intourist, the Soviet travel
agency, to amass foreign currency and also
evidence of sedition.
On the 23rd fl oor, a hotel staffer unlocked
the doors to a secret KGB offi ce. Untouched
since they abandoned it 25 years ago, half-
shredded documents lie scattered over the
fl oor, obsolete listening devices sprout balding
wires and tin helmets hang on walls. We were
shown dinner plates fi tted with microphones,
cameras in peepholes and an exploding purse.
The latter was used to ‘recruit’ guests as spies.
Planted in a corridor, anyone who opened it was
sprayed with indelible dye, which could only
be removed with from a security service offi cer
who promised not to act on the fi nder’s greed
in return for reports on insurrection. The offi ce
smelled of dust, the legacy of a failed system.
On my last night I leafed once more through
the tourist brochures. On the back of a guidebook
called Visit Estonia, Fun at Every Turn was
the statement: ‘The Republic of Estonia is a
member of the European Union, and NATO.’
Just in case anyone needs reminding. W‘ Their boats were
chain-sawed into
kindling, sailing
was forbidden’
A long-forbidden cruising ground has opened up as
the shadow of history finally recedes over Estonia