Norway trip

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!