In most senses (except the scientific one!) the weather is entirely unpredictable, but … one thing we can predict is that when we want to go southwest, the wind will be from the southwest as well. Sure enough, that was the case today! We didn’t leave until around lunchtime while we waited for the rain to clear and stopped to fuel up, but then had to start using lots of that fuel as we motored just under 30 miles to Arendal.
It was a lovely run – we are now starting to weave through the islands and skerries and often get some shelter from the prevailing wind (on the nose!), but there is a steep learning curve as we work out how the Norwegians mark all their channels.
We moored on the outside pontoon of the harbour as we are planning to head off fairly early in the morning. However, it is a reasonably attractive town with an intriguing history of smuggling various goods to the UK and Denmark. The peasants on the surrounding land were meant to only sell their good within Arendal, but they used local cutters to smuggle goods out, presumably giving them a much better price.
