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 beautiful scenery around us. The final leg across to Bodø the wind did increase, but...
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 rounded the tip of Åmnøya though we managed to get some sailing – not fast...
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 (‘Constitution Day’ – more symbolic?). However it is termed, the...
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 quite a bit of the way. As we rounded one corner close to Vikingen Island we saw...
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 motor the last hour when the wind finally made its mind up to have an extended...
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 Brønnøysund. This required a bit of weaving to get through the town, so we had the...
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 Gluggfjellet with a great view over the town and the channel in an out of it. View...
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 and take the outside sea route rather than sneak between the islands. This meant a...
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 weather was sunny, but still cold and we motored the first part for about an...
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...