Cruises from Hamina

Lake Saimaa is the largent lake in Finland and the fourth largest lake in Europe with more than 120 lakes and 14,000 islands forming a huge mosaic of blue waters and green nature. The total area of the lake is 4,460 km2 the average depth of the lake is 17 m and the total length of the shoreline 14850 km.

The Saimaa Canal from Lappeenranta to Vyborg, Russia, connects Lake Saimaa to the Gulf of Finland. Other canals connect Saimaa to smaller lakes in Eastern Finland and form a network of waterways.

One of the rare and endangered freshwater seals - the Saimaa Ringed Seal, lives on at Lake Saimaa. Also, the Saimaa salmon is another endangered species in the same habitat.

The Saimaa Canal was built from 1845 to 1856 and opened for traffic in 1856. The canal was built between the cities of Lappeenranta and Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia), both of them then in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire.

In the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940, the Karelian Isthmus and the city of Vyborg were ceded to the Soviet Union, thus effectively splitting the canal in half and ending all traffic.

Following a treaty agreement in 1963, Russia leased the Russian section of the canal area to Finland for fifty years. Negotiations in 2008 agreed upon an extension of 50 years in 2013. A new deeper canal was constructed by the Finns and opened to traffec in 1968. The length of the canal itself is 43 km.

There is a height difference of 76 m between the levels of the Gulf of Finland and Lake Saimaa. There are 8 locks in the canal to level this difference.