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 whole of Iceland, but not any more ….. Now we are heading south ….. 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 were expecting some strong northerly winds the next day, so wanted somewhere...
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 starting …. Step one in the passage south is Støtt. We stayed for a couple...
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 maturing indoors. What remains has lost 80% of its moisture, becoming a light...
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’ travel app. What …. ferry cancelled ….? Without warning it seemed...
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 the only golf course on Lofoten (Lofoten Links) and past some lovely beaches...
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 last night together in an inlet on the northeast side of the island of Stormolla...
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 of washing facilities to be too great, so on arrival headed straight across to...
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 good plan, but frustratingly the sea was quite lumpy (left over from a stronger...
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 meant we had an early start to Reine and we moored in the guest harbour shortly...