The excitement of arriving was dampened somewhat by two factors. The first was the realisation that the boat wasn’t, as we had hoped, ready for us. The boatyard had not flushed the water system properly for the winter (as they had been asked to do!) and as a result, there was some damage where the water had frozen in the system. This required a new pump, new tap, new hot water tank and a new shower fitting. A proportion of this had been done, but they were waiting for parts, so we waited as well. In the meantime we did what we could – a few jobs, some cleaning and a bit of preparation for going in the water.
The weekend was the May Day holiday – a big holiday in Norway and so we spent some of the time pottering around the island. We did a walk to a nice spot called Dolmsund. The church there – Dolm Kirke – was the main church for the parish of Hitra and probably built in the 1400s when Norway was still a Catholic country. It was repeatedly damaged by fire, storms and other interventions by the weather gods, but each time the locals determinedly rebuilt it. The final nail in the coffin turned out to be in 1920 when it was hit by lightning and set on fire. This marked its end as the main church on the island. However, in more recent decades a movement grew to restore it and in 1992 it was reconsecrated.
The walk to the top of the nearby hill led to a Bronze Age burial cairn – the remains of a tomb possibly from around 1800BCE. The next day we were a bit lazier and had lunch out at the local bakery with friends. An excellent sourdough pizza was followed by a special Norwegian May Day holiday cheesecake. The baker proudly told us it had taken her three days to make with special coloured lumps of jelly matching the colours of the Norwegian flag.
Another day we headed out to Hopsjøbrygga for a look round and a walk. This is a rebuilt trading post run by a family called the Hegge family. In the 18th and 19th centuries they expanded the business, trading as far afield as France, Spain and Portugal. The remaining buildings have been restored by the community and, as well as a very nice looking restaurant there was a small museum with various historic items as well as the history of whaling in the area.
In between all these excursions, we started preparing everything for heading off once the water system was fixed. However, all the preparation led to the realisation that they also hadn’t sent the sails in for servicing. In a way this shouldn’t have been a problem, except for the fact that the mainsail stack-pack (the bag it is stored in on the boom) needed re-stitching as the stitching had gone from UV damage over many years. The only option to do this was for me to run the pack down to Trondheim (a 4-5 hour round-trip driving). So, I arranged with the sailmaker to do this first thing Monday morning. Sure enough, I was at their door when they opened at 9am and, true to their word, they spent the next three and a half hours fixing it – excellent service ….. Opportunely, I also managed to combine this run with picking up some friends who had arrived at Trondheim and running them out to the boatyard later in the day.
So, each day we did what we could and jumped at gaps in the weather to put up the sails. The staysail went up at 8pm in the evening as the wind suddenly died. The genoa would have followed rapidly afterwards if we hadn’t found that one of the forward batteries had died. Luckily the Trondheim rigging company, as well as doing the stack-pack, had a suitable battery in stock, so that was relatively easily fixed.
The boatyard then suddenly announced later in the afternoon after I had just got back from Trondheim that we were going in the water, so we rushed to get back on board and get everything ready and five minutes later we stepped on over the bow with the boat in the slings and moved round to one of the pontoons.
Eventually all the sails were up. The stack pack went on before the main as there was a delay while we waited in between snow showers – welcome to a Norwegian spring!
Still we waited for the shower parts …… The engineer had spent ages on board trying to find an air leak in the system which meant that the system was not pressurising and finally he found a small crack in one of the strainers, so at least we had water, but still we waited for the shower parts …… They were apparently delayed for a day as the snow had meant that the post couldn’t get through to the island and so we decided that, with a suitable forecast we were going anyway and we would manage without the shower. Then they mysteriously turned up late that afternoon and were fitted. Sorted and ready to go …… The plan then was to head off at about 8am the next morning and finally get under way ……
