“No further than eight nautical miles from the shore!”. For a long time after the war, the occupation authorities did not allow Soviet Lithuanian sailors to sail to the open sea. Even having a permission, it was only possible to sail along the coasts, staying no further than eight nautical miles from the shore. The sea, closed in the post-war years, became wide-open slowly.

Since 1970, sailors of the Lithuanian SSR took part in the Baltic Sea Cup sailing regatta. A fleet of approximately 100 sea-going yachts would start in Leningrad (present-day St Petersburg) and race in legs between Tallinn, Rīga, Pionersky, Klaipėda and other ports. In around 1980, opportunities opened up to participate in international regattas, such as the “Ostseeregatta”, held in the German Democratic Republic (Warnemünde and Rostock), where Lithuanian sailors repeatedly won prizes.

These regattas were the furthest voyages of Baltic sailors during the Soviet era. In the 1970s and the 1980s, residents of Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda replaced wooden vessels with plastic yachts. Larger and faster yachts “Lietuva” (meaning ‘Lithuania’), “Dailė” (meaning ‘fine art’), “Audra” (meaning ‘storm’) and “Žilvinas” (meaning a male name of a national fairy tale character) more and more frequently would appear in the sea.