I had a look around for photo publishing sites but didn't like the terms, so here we are. Thanks, blogspot, for providing this service. This website is probably best viewed from the bottom up.
My employers agreed to let me take all my leave in one chunk and to tag on a few weeks unpaid. This gave me enough time to sail to Norway and cruise around a bit without rushing. Had a wonderful time.
Norway is a perfect place to cruise in a sailing boat. I spent about 6 weeks on the southern end of the west coast, between Egersund and Bulandet. This area features many off-lying islands which offer protection from the open sea, often it's as if one is sailing on a lake. The scenery is spectacular and the people are really nice and friendly.
----- some notes about the sailing ----
When I was planning this trip and first started looking at the charts I was astonished and somewhat concerned by the coastline. There are so many islands and fjords, it looks like a smashed plate that has gone into a million pieces. I thought I'd be in danger of losing track of where I was (I expected to be on my own for much of the time). In fact navigation, when the weather is clear, couldn't be easier as one is surrounded by land marks. There is a system of ancient and superbly situated navigational marks, varde, rather like one gets in the mountains, that remove all ambiguity about one's position, so navigation is by eye-ball and the gps can have a holiday. Of course, if the visibility closes down and the wind kicks up then it is a different story when knowing that one is surrounded by rocks and other hazards can be stressful.
The water is mostly too deep for the depth sounder to find the bottom. I took an extra hundred metres of anchor warp in case we had to anchor in deep water. In fact one hardly ever has to anchor in these waters unless one wants to. Every settlement has quayside and the tides are often negligible, so tying up alongside is easy. We only anchored a few times, and then in not more than 11 metres. Having said that, I'm used to anchoring in 5 metres or less and found that my 'foot on the chain' braking technique didn't slow the chain down as it went out, but gave me a good bruise. We use a 'delta' type anchor which held well except when the bottom was awful with kelp, when I doubt anything would have held properly.
We left in June. This is early in the season for Norweigans, when one has most of the harbours to oneself. The popular places can get busy in July. But there are countless fine places to go and it is easy to be alone. We only went to places that had been recommended by local people (we found that if we looked at the chart in the cockpit when in harbour then often someone would come and give us some advice).
The north sea can be nasty. We checked the weather before departure on http://www.wetterzentrale.de - this website hasn't let me down yet and we had a good crossing each way. Or perhaps we've got a lucky boat: one of the first things people seem to ask is whether anything broke down. Apart from a battery dying on the return trip (not a problem we have 2) everything worked.
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There are probably too many pictures here and there may be some spelling and other innaccuracies - I'll come back and edit it down another time.
its a blog and is in reverse chronological order - start from the beginning!
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Monday, August 07, 2006
east coast
had a thunderstorm on the last night, but it cleared up in the daytime, here we are off the Deben, if you look very closely you might see the east coast of england (it is low lying!) above the opaque water. big tides, strong currents, mud banks, shallow water, expensive marinas: home again.
journey home
slack pressure over the north sea, another no or low wind crossing, had to motor a lot, we were lucky that when there was some wind we could make the course close-hauled, ended up doing 37 hours of motoring over 4 1/2 days.
stavanger
biggest cranes i've ever seen. Norweigan ship builders have now mostly switched to supporting the oil industry. Stavanger has a good museum devoted to the history of oil exploration in Norway. One gets an insight into the tough life lived on board the rigs in the north sea. Having sailed past the rigs and their associated support ships it was interesting to find out more about them.
Lysefjord
to get an idea of the scale of this, those are 20 foot high trees, a small cruise ship is probably about [--] long
Lysefjord
Prekestolen seen from below (square bit in the middle). It is 600m high, there are people standing on the edge, my camera doesn't stretch that far.
what's that?
from head on, at a distance, it looked like a rock with a light on top, with a bow wave..
bergen
At the head of the old harbour in Bergen. At the weekend. Lots of motor boats, many with disco-quality sound systems. It doesn't get dark, the music plays all night.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Hardangerfjord
We'd just arrived in Rosendal when a boat pulled up alongside to say hello - we asked for suggestions for places to go and they said to try the Rock Garden, so we stopped there on the way back from the Baronetcy. Lots of nicely presented stones and information about how they are formed.
Hardangerfjord
In Rosendal we visited the Baroniet Rosendal, waited a while in the kitchen for the guided tour to start
Hardangerfjord
from Uskedal we travelled to Rosendal. We only went to places that had been recommended to us by locals who we met along the way. Rosendal was thanks to the local headmaster.
Hardangerfjord
it was rainy and windy but we stopped complaining once it cleared enough to see the view
Skudeneshavn
The weather would be lovely for several days, then it'd rain for a few days. This was the only harbour that I visited twice. The next time I went, in July, the boats were rafted 6 deep.
enroute to the Preikestolen
Sailed over to Tau to get the bus to the Preikestolen Hytte. From there you have a fairly strenuous, easy if you are Norweigan, walk to the Preke Stolen, the 'pulpit stone', which just out 600m above the Lysefjord.
Kvitsoy. There isn't a lot of tidal range in this part of Norway, so buildings can be close to the water.
Tananger -> Kvitsoy
"The official name on the lighthouse is Oksafoten (oxfootrock) and it is a so called lighthouse on a column." - thanks, Leif, for the information.
traditional wooden boats are still being built in Norway. One sees many Colin Archer types, these are often quite recent, we found it interesting to see how closely, or not, these replicated the originals: it isn't unusual to see stainless steel rigging and other modern features mixed in with heavy wooden spars and a gaff rig.
tied up alongside in tananger guest harbour, the Swedish wooden yacht was the star of the show. the guest harbour is run by the nearby hotel and is inexpensive and the facilites are, as all over Norway with the rarest exceptions, immaculate
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