B IS FOR BALTIC
The Head of the Estonian Maritime Academy in Kuressaare, Anni Hartikainen, is telling us about the "blue economy".
I've never heard of the blue economy before, but as she explains the importance of this particular colour to Estonia's finances, suddenly it clicks. It's all about the sea.
From the exploitation of maritime resources - an "aquafoods lab" is scheduled to open at the Academy in 2020 - to teaching small craft competence, facilitating growth and interconnectivity between scientists and entrepreneurs is where Estonia is rapidly becoming a world player.
The day before we had visited the Kuressaare Vocational School, where they teach boat-building skills, making an ancient island tradition one of the main drivers of the local economy. According to one article, (Visit Saaremaa, pg40), boats built on Saaremaa are sold across the world: Swedish passengers ferries, Latvian border patrol boats, German sea rescue units, as well as speedboats for the US market.
But of all the facts and figures delivered to the group at the Maritime Academy, one unusual metric stands out: persons per boat.
For a sea-going nation it's an important one. Currently in Estonia, the number stands at 38 (which is considered high) but falling (which is good).
Estonia has 3,800km of coastline. Its waters are calm and sheltered from the extreme tides of the Atlantic Ocean we're used to in Britain.
For thousands of years the Baltic has been integral to the Estonian way of life.
However, under Soviet rule access to boats, and especially ownership of them, was quite forbidden . Measuring the number of persons per boat has therefore become a useful indicator of how life is gradually being restored to something like normal in the years since Estonian independence.
As far as I am aware, we don't measure persons per boat in Scotland. It makes me wonder: do we truly value the sea in Scotland? As a resource, as a thing to exploit, to extract value from - definitely. But as something we individually engage with? As something that connects to our sense of who we are as a nation? I'm not sure.
We live in a country with far greater access to the sea, but with no sense of that access being something precious or thought of as something that could be taken away from us.
The sea in Scotland is fishing, oil, shipbuilding. But the number of individuals involved in these nationally important industries is tiny - and predominantly male. There are nuclear subs lurking in the waters of the Clyde. Scotland's marinas are filled not so much with boats but with expensive floating boasts. These leisure craft
are expressions
of status, rather than cultural identity.
This may well be the view of a hopelessly metrocentric tenement dweller,
and perhaps it's related to the wider politics of who owns the land here, but it seems that the sea in Scotland is considered to be something that other people do, that the boats in Scotland are generally other people's.
But perhaps things are changing. I met a freelance boat-builder in Glasgow recently who runs courses for men and women who want to make their own kayaks out of plywood. His services are in high demand among incorrigible metropolitans like myself, increasing numbers of whom dream of one day owning their own boat.