Welcome to our blog covering sailing on Amalia, our current yacht, and previous yacht Charmary. There's also details of time at sea aboard Tecla and our various travels around the world.
Guest Blogger: Anne Mossman Sunday started with a quick check on the Amalia and a saunter back to the Clarion Hotel for a bit of TLC. After being toiletless and impeded by clambering over 2 other boats every time we wanted to get ashore, this was something of a literal relief. A lazy...
The Norwegian weather website which we have been using is yr.no. This somehow feels appropriate as in Norwegian ‘yr‘ means drizzle or light rain, so even the naming of the main weather site is trying to tell us something about the climate in Norway. This seems something of a...
Our trip today started in the sun and this led to me musing on the nature of optimism. In this case, I optimistically believed the forecast that it would be sunny – it was wrong. Dwelling on this a little further I decided that, as sailors, we are fundamentally optimists. We always...
A mysterious orange orb appeared in the sky today. A long lost friend had returned for a visit – the sun. It was a short visit, but nevertheless a welcome one and made for a pleasant trip (motor) down to Lysøysundet. As we left Kuringvågen we took another look at the hills...
We’re beginning to forget that Amalia has sails. The weather at the moment seems to have settled into bands where there is far too much wind (even for those sails) and then there is far too little. Today was the latter. Once again we headed off early, but this time the strategy was...
Norway is green. A beautiful emerald green. It is a bucolic and serene landscape, generally pristine in nature. However, it is always the green that stands out … and there is a reason it is so green. The main reason is that Norway is among Europe’s wettest countries. This does...
Part of the reason for heading rapidly down to Rørvik was because of the weather forecast. For some days the GFS model had been forecasting a windy weekend. However, there seemed to be some uncertainty as most of the other models were showing quite a balmy quiet weekend. Even the yr.no...
The next leg – Berg to Rørvik was just under 50 miles. So we decided to start early (something of a theme here!). However, we then woke earlier than we planned and so left even earlier than the original early. The log states 03.40 – left Berg. Actually that was quite slick as...
With the weather looking suitable, we carried on south. We had originally planned to head for Brønnøysund, but this would have meant a slightly longer passage the next day, so we decided to head back to Berg – a bit further on from Brønnøysund. The weather was light, but we got a...
We left Nesna at 05.45am, but any hopes of sneaking out quietly on our own were quickly dispelled. I was focusing carefully on leaving backwards as, during our stop, I had noticed a hosepipe in the water just in front of us. Running over this would probably have done neither the propellor...
Two hours after leaving Rødøya we also left the Arctic Circle. This somehow felt a little momentous. We have spent the last three weeks or so north of the Arctic Circle, which put us level (in terms of latitude) with Greenland and the northern part of Alaska. We were even north of the...
From Støtt, we head south and then south and then a bit more south. We are effectively retracing our steps and so are keen to try new places on the way down. On their way up, Robin and Brigitte stopped at Rødøya and recommended it, so we decided to give it a go. I had a careful look as we...
Getting to Bodø marked the start of our trip back south. We run out of Schengen days in mid-July and so need to be back in Trondheim to drop the boat off for the winter. A weird feeling – dropping the boat for the winter in July ….. Just when the Norwegian sailing season is...
A guest blog entry from our crew – Hugh Rayment-Pickard: If you visit the Lofoten islands, you can’t miss the sight and smell of dried fish or stockfish. The fish- usually cod – is beheaded, gutted and flattened, then dried without salt in wind and sun for three months before...
The next morning was departure day for Hugh and Liz. They had booked a fast ferry from Svolvær to Bodø at 6am. Several alarms went off in near perfect synchronicity at 5am, bags were hoisted off the the boat and the final gesture before saying goodbye was a check of the ‘Reis’...
The forecast for the day in Svolvær was not inspiring, so we made an alternative plan. We decided to hire a car and try and fill in some of the gaps in our Lofoten coastal trip. We carefully studied the Lofoten map, stuck a few pins in and headed off. Our route took around Gimsøya, past...
One of the key things that everyone seems to do from Svolvær (judging from the number of high-powered RIBs heading out of the harbour) is to go to Trollfjorden and so that was our plan. However, this meant that the four boats would then be splitting up, so we decided to anchor for our...
After lunch in Henningsvær we headed off to Svolvær. A nice short sail and the wind slowly died, but we managed to sail a fair chunk of it, mooring just before 5pm in front of Hekla. The other two boats had headed just down the coast to Kabelvåg, but both Hekla and us felt the siren call...
Having separated for a couple of days from Hekla and Aloucia, we decided to get back together again today at Henningsvær. We started out around 08.45 and even though the wind was from straight ahead, decided we would tack out to sea and back in towards Henningsvær. This was potentially a...
An early start (yes- yet another), but we didn’t intend this one. This one was prompted by a very noisy Polish boat arriving at 5.45am and then chatting loudly outside the boat. This was quite effective at getting us up, but they were blissfully unaware of their impact. Still, it...
An early start today (again). Actually we had planned to be a little earlier, but heavy rain outside wasn’t inspiring, so we lingered over another cup of tea before deciding that we couldn’t wait any longer. So, at 7.20am we finally left hoping that the rain would clear...
Another day, another passage …. This one was north (again) to Bodø – about 30 miles, so five and a half hours or so. Unfortunately (again) the wind wasn’t playing ball, so we ended up motoring much of it, but, as ever, this wasn’t much of a trial given the...
After a murky afternoon in Halsa, we decided to head off again the next day. A later start this time not least as we needed to catch up on some shopping. We had hoped to sail but we had to motor the first couple of hours, as what wind there was remained firmly bang on the nose. Once we...
May 17th is a big day. In Norwegian terms anyway. May 17th is Norwegian National Day – sometimes imaginatively referred to as Syttende mai (’17th of May’ – a bit literal?), Nasjonaldagen (‘National Day’ – a bit xenophobic?), or Grunnlovsdagen...
As is becoming the pattern, we left Onøya fairly early, planning on heading to somewhere called Halsa or possibly Vågaholmen – they are fairly close together. We had a good sail for much of the way, playing sail roulette as usual as the wind changed, but keeping moving fairly well...
Another day, another passage north. We started the day with a good breeze and then the wind died. Then it came back to life and we even had to put a reef in. Then it died again, then it didn’t. And so it went on …. Despite all this, it was a very nice sail, but we did have to...
With the weather staying fairly settled (always a bonus in Norway!), we decided to press on north and so, after another early start headed up to Sandnessjøen. This actually turned out to be a great sail. We got the sails up just outside Berg and sailed for an hour or so until we got to...
We stayed in Rørvik for a couple more days as we waited for a windy patch to go through. Though not too bad, there was a bit of a fetch through the harbour as the wind came straight down from the entrance, so we had a bouncy night. However, we managed a lovely walk up the nearby hill...
With settled weather forecast for a couple of days we decided to try and make some progress north. We had originally planned to try and stop at a few places between Kuringvågen and Rørvik, but with a storm coming through in a few days, we decided to make the most of the settled weather...
At last, we’re off. We headed off about 7.45am and motored slowly out through the channel at Hitra, not least because it is narrow in a couple of places, but mainly because it was low water! However, the minimum we saw on the depth sounder was about 2.3m, so plenty of clearance. The...