Märket is open again! Today at 5 PM four lighthouse guards stepped on the Märket rock and are to spend the Christmas in this special place.

It all started in the end of November. Eliisa and Heidi were at the Christmas party of the Finnish lighthouse society and heard that there was no one planning to go to Märket on Christmas time. They felt it would be spectacular to experience a Märket Christmas and started to consider the options. Within a week, the deal was done. Märket would be theirs for a few days in December!

After some equipment shopping, changes of the trip plans and almost the whole night of packing, this morning finally came. Thanks to our flexible employees, we headed to Turku at 6 o'clock AM sharp, all packed. One day earlier as planned.

We were a bit nervous about the boat trip to Märket rock since the weather forecast wasn't too good for today. We knew the unloading would happen in the dark, but at least there was a chance to get to Märket. Tomorrow the chance would probably be gone due to the change of the wind and then we would have had to forget about our memorable Christmas.



We were half a sleep during the ferry trip, but the excitement started rising while driving through the snow covered countryside of Åland in a beautiful cold weather to Mats's boat, for the last part of our trip. The sea was unbelievable calm and the sky was clear.

We couldn't believe how lucky we were - especially when we saw Märket right after the sunset: There was snow (and ice of course) all around the rock! Beautiful. We could only see parts of the rock, thanks to the strong lights of Mats's boat. Can't wait for the sunrise tomorrow!



Mats couldn't find a good place for us to tie his boat for going ashore because the waves were still pretty rough and there was too much ice on the usual aboarding places. Instead of the usual parking, he drived the front of the boat nicely against the icy rock and held the boat there with the engine so that we could step on the rock. That was the best part of our day.



Without such a good service by Mats, this wouldn't have gone so smoothly. After Mats and our very good friend Mr. Humell, who helped Mats, were gone, we started to carry our stuff to the lighthouse. We got off the boat pretty far from the lighthouse, so it was a real exercise for us to carry all inside. We also had to be really careful because of the ice and snow which made it hard to see the level differences on the rock. Since it was dark and we only had our head lights we hope we haven't
forgotten any of our stuff outside. The work was done in an hour (so far nobody was feeling cold) and it was time to carry chops for the heating. Of course they are in a different building, so again we were walking up and down the stairs in the lighthouse, still exercising hard.



At the moment we are heating the lighthouse carefully, since this is the first time after October, and we have bread covered with tomatoes and cheese in the oven. The temperature of the kitchen was -3,5'C when we came and after five hours of heating, it's already above zero! Outside it is -7,5'C.

Good night from the Märket guards!

Eliisa, Heidi, Klaus and Ville