Turku · Finnish Archipelago · Since 1923
The sea is not a backdrop.It is the neighbourhood.
Puerto Deportivo De La Kokkola ry is a registered Finnish non-profit association of boat owners, sailors, instructors and shoreline volunteers. We teach people to come home safely from the water, we keep small harbours open to ordinary families, and we look after a stretch of Baltic coast that cannot look after itself.
A member-run association governed under the Finnish Associations Act (Yhdistyslaki 503/1989).
What the last twelve months looked like
- 1 480
- people trained in water safety
- 62
- youth sailing clinics hosted
- 134 km
- of coastline under active stewardship
- 218
- boat berths kept in community hands
adults and juniors, all courses
ages 8–17, Turku & Kokkola waters
surveyed, cleaned, monitored
across four member harbours
Figures cover the 2025 operating year (1 Jan – 31 Dec) and are confirmed in the association's audited annual report.
Our mission, in one paragraph
Keep the water open, and keep people alive on it.
Finland has 187,888 lakes, 1,100 kilometres of Baltic shoreline and, in a bad year, more than a hundred drownings. Almost none of them happen to people who were taught properly. Our answer has never been complicated: put a qualified instructor next to every beginner, keep the cost low enough that a family can say yes, and refuse to let harbour space become a luxury good. Everything else the association does — the cleanups, the eelgrass surveys, the winter theory evenings in a cold clubhouse — grows out of that.
Read more
On the calendar
Coming up on the water
12 April
Spring Launch & Safety Inspection Day
Ruissalo slipway, Turku
Free hull, bilge-pump and flare-date check by our volunteer inspectors before the first launch of the season. Coffee, pulla and a lot of unsolicited advice about anodes.
3–4 May
Junior Dinghy Intake Weekend
Hirvensalo training bay
Two days of Optimist and Zoom8 basics for newcomers aged 8–13. No equipment or prior experience needed; buoyancy aids provided in every size we own.
17 May
Baltic Shoreline Cleanup — Spring Sweep
Six landing points, Turku archipelago
Our largest single volunteer day. Boats, sacks, gloves and a sorting station at each landing. Last spring 214 volunteers pulled 3.1 tonnes off the rocks.
8 June
Open Harbour Day
Kirstintasku clubhouse, Turku
The association opens every berth and boat we can crew. Free short sails for anyone who turns up, priority to first-time visitors and accessible-access guests.
23 August
Night Navigation & VHF Refresher
Clubhouse + open water, Turku
Classroom hours followed by a supervised night passage. Counts towards the association's coastal skipper endorsement.
11 October
Autumn Haul-Out & Winter Storage Clinic
Member harbours
Correct cradling, shrink-wrap alternatives, and how not to crack a keel bolt in February.
Baltic Sea stewardship
The most polluted sea in Europe is our front garden.
The Baltic is shallow, cold, brackish and slow to flush — a full water exchange takes roughly thirty years. What goes in stays in. Our conservation work is deliberately unglamorous: monthly shoreline transects, eelgrass and bladderwrack monitoring on eleven fixed sites, a strict no-discharge pledge for every member vessel, and a black-water pump-out station at the Kirstintasku pier that any boat may use free of charge, member or not.
- 3.1 tonnes of debris removed in the 2025 spring sweep alone
- 11 fixed monitoring sites reported to regional environmental authorities
- 100% of member vessels signed to the no-discharge pledge
- Free public pump-out station, open May to October
Voices from the association
People who show up.
“I joined to get a cheap berth. Eleven years later I run the Tuesday junior group and I know the names of forty children who can right a capsized dinghy on their own. That is not a hobby any more, it is an obligation.”
“In August 2022 we pulled two teenagers out of the channel off Hirvensalo. They were cold and very frightened, and they were both wearing buoyancy aids because they had been through our junior course the summer before. Nobody wrote about it in the paper. It is still the best thing this association has ever done.”
“My daughter uses a wheelchair. Four clubs told me, politely, that it would be difficult. Puerto Deportivo built a transfer bench onto the pontoon and asked her which boat she wanted. She sails every Thursday.”
From the clubhouse
Association news
18 March 2026
Annual General Meeting confirms 2025 accounts
Members approved the audited financial statement and discharged the board from liability. The full report and auditor's statement are published on our transparency page.
2 February 2026
Junior fleet grows by six Optimists
A donation from a retiring member and a small municipal grant let us retire the oldest three hulls and add six second-hand Optimists, fully refitted by volunteers over the winter.
9 December 2025
Safeguarding training completed by all youth leaders
Every instructor working with under-18s has now completed the association's safeguarding module and submitted a valid criminal record extract for work with children.