Sauna Onboard Ice-Going Workboats

January 18, 2023

by Sami Uotinen

Sauna is a part of Scandinavian cultural heritage. There are about 3.3 million saunas in Finland, a country of 5.5 million people.

In 2020, SAUNA was inscribed on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Needless to say… we take our sauna seriously.

For seafarers that are required to work in the extremely harsh winter conditions of the Northern-Baltic having a sauna onboard provides a home-like form of relaxation.

Sauna is also a place of no rank; meaning that a highly decorated captain and a deckhand look the same with no clothes on.

Having a sauna onboard was an initiative of the seafarer’s union in 1960s. They were able to dictate that every Finnish-flagged ship must have a sauna onboard. In larger ships, the captain and chief engineer both had their own saunas and there are even indoor swimming pools aboard some Finnish icebreakers.

Nowadays, sauna is no longer mentioned as mandatory nor required in the Finnish-flag rules of workplace safety and comfort, but it has remained as an unwritten rule and agreement between the seafarer’s union and ship owners.
There are a few items to consider when designing a sauna onboard:

• The temperature inside is between 65° to 80° degrees Celsius
• Humidity is close to 100%
• The stove is roughly 10 kW, and it requires a three phase 360 volts AC feed

In practice, this requires properly insulated construction with a great ventilation system. And it is very important to slant the floors to improve water drainage in the sauna and the shower stalls. If the floor stays wet, it will become slippery which can lead to accidents.
In the recent years we have designed sauna onboard Vilja (TundRA 3600 for the Port of Luleå), Helios, and Selene (TundRA 3200 for Alfons Håkans company in Finland and Estonia).