Farewell to Norway

We cast off from Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen on Friday, July 1, for the 1200 mile passage south. Our destination was Skudeneshavn, just south of Bergen where we’d arrived in Norway eleven months ago. We chose Skudeneshavn because it looked like an easy landfall from offshore and also a nice place to visit. Our passage plan was easy, a direct course for a waypoint about thirty miles off Stad, the westernmost point of land in Norway, then southeast to the island of Utsira, near Skudeneshavn. Depending on the winds, we hoped to get there within 14-21 days.

We had to motor away from Spitsbergen as it was flat calm. We motored to get offshore a bit, then turned the motor off and waited for wind. We sat for seventeen hours. It was a little frustrating, but, the flat conditions gave us our first close whale encounters and that was very exciting. The first one came up right beside the boat and then circled us for a while. I’m not sure what kind of whale it was, but, it was huge, longer than the boat! When diving, we saw its characteristic, double-fin tail as it went down.

A close whale encounter, Spitsbergen.

When the winds came in, they were generally from the north and they blew steadily from that direction for the next two weeks. We were thankful that we were sailing south and made the passage in record time, five hundred miles the first week and seven hundred miles the second. We arrived in Skudeneshavn just fourteen days after leaving Svalbard. A seven hundred mile week is a new record for us.

Downwind sailing sounds great, but, in reality it can be not much fun. When the wind is directly astern, it can be difficult to keep the sail (we just use a headsail when running downwind) full. The boat also tends to roll from side-to-side continuously. This motion day after day becomes very tedious, but, the fast sailing tends to make up for it. However, a problem resurfaced on the boat that made it almost intolerable on this passage. Inside our mast is a small aluminium wire conduit that is pop-riveted to the mast. The idea is you run your wires through this and it should stop most of the motion and noise associated with the wires moving around inside the mast. On our Atlantic crossing last year, due to the rough sailing, the pop rivets holding the conduit to the mast gave way one-by-one. By the time we’d crossed the ocean, there were only two screws at the top of the mast holding the conduit on. Now, instead of just a couple of wires banging around inside the mast, we had the whole conduit and the wires banging from side to side. There is no way to get inside the mast other than unstepping it. We thought we could get away with just redoing the pop rivets, which we did, but, it came loose again and the whole conduit was banging inside the mast on each side roll. The noise, at best, was like a metronome on steroids. At worst, it was like somebody clanging two garbage can lids together every thirty seconds. To add to the cacaphony, after a while, a new noise developed which sounded like a dinner gong. All this was going on about three feet from our heads while trying to sleep! We realize now that the only way to fix this properly is to unstep the mast and refasten the conduit properly. As the mast has to come down when we enter the French canals anyway, we’ll do it at that time. We tried to maintain our sense of humour throughout and we had a good laugh when I went to wake G up for his watch and had to pick the tomatoes and garlic heads from around his neck that, due to the rolling, had landed on his pillow after jumping out of their hanging basket.

After the first calm day, the weather became dismal, cold, grey, cloudy and rainy. At least it wasn’t dark as we still had twenty-four hours of daylight, but, we couldn’t sit outside as it was too cold and we were confined belowdecks for twelve days straight. G started to call it our ‘coffin with windows’ and I must admit, it did start to get to us. It made us appreciate all the more, the five days of glorious cruising weather we had had in Svalbard. The sun came out for the last two days of the passage and we were finally able to get some fresh air.

Following seas.

Generally, the winds stayed around force 5-6 throughout, although there was nasty little force 7 in the middle of the passage. It only lasted around a day and a half and we endured it without too much anxiety. We were running downwind with only the staysail set, but felt, at times, that we were surfing down waves a little too fast and toyed with the idea of deploying a drogue, or, warps. At times, when surfing, boat speed was around ten knots, but, it didn’t feel like we were out of control and the waves weren’t big enough that we were in any danger of pitchpoling, so, we did nothing and it was ok.

After we left Svalbard with all its cruise ships and expedition boats, we didn’t see another ship, or, hear one word on the VHF for over a week. It is a very barren piece of ocean, or, so you think. A mark of good seamanship is to use the detail level of chart that is suitable for the type of passage you are making. So, for an ocean passage, we were using an ocean chart. One night, while scrolling around with the chartplotter, I zoomed in closer on where we were. To my horror, on the next chart level, there was a buoy indicated, about five miles away. It wasn’t on the paper chart, or, the higher-level electronic reproduction of the paper chart. Keep in mind that we were about 150 miles offshore and depths were 2,000 meters, so, this was totally unexpected. On further investigation, it turned out to be a weather buoy. A large ship running this over would probably just push it out of the way, if we hit it, we would probably disintegrate. We didn’t get close enough to actually see the buoy, but, after that, I kept the electronic chart zoomed in and there were two more of these buoys later on, one of which we had to change course for in order to miss it. A valuable lesson learned and I changed our chartplotter configuration to always indicate when we’re looking at the ‘best map’ available. This is another reason to have both paper and electronic charts aboard. In this case, the electronic charts saved the day.

An interesting-looking graphic on this cruise ship.

We made landfall in Skudeneshavn on Friday, July 15. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny summer’s day and our first real taste of summer in 2011. Skudeneshavn was as beautiful as I had read. The old section of town is a typical ‘white village’ found all along the south coast of Norway consisting of tiny, narrow streets of old wooden houses, all the houses are painted white and in Skudeneshavn have the same red clay tile roofs (in other places, like Bygdoy in Oslo, the houses are all white, but, have black tile roofs). There must be strict planning guidelines to get everybody to maintain the same colour scheme. The effect is totally charming.

Images of Skudeneshavn, Norway.

After leaving Skudeneshavn, we spent a few days cruising the local area around Stavanger/Tananger. We travelled up the beautiful Lysfjord, which has the famous ‘Pulpit Rock’ and many lovely waterfalls. One night was spent near Utstein Kloster, an  old monastery we walked to one evening.

Utstein Kloster

Lysfjord

Lysfjord

A lot of Norwegian homes have sod roofs, these examples blend in beautifully with the surrounding landscape.

After leaving the Stavanger/Tananger area, we headed south to round the southernmost point of Norway, Lindesnes. We planned to follow the coast to Sandefjord and from there take a bus to Oslo. This would save us the long journey up the Oslofjord. We rounded Lista and Lindesnes with no problems. However, once on the other side, we found ourselves with a strong adverse current, wind and waves on the nose. We have discovered that our boat doesn’t sail to windward, at all, period. It took us ten hours to do seventeen miles, most of it with the motor on. There didn’t seem much point in continuing further along the coast with this slow progress. Only the Oslo visit was left for us to see in Norway anyway. So, we stopped at Mandal, another lovely ‘white town’ and from there it was two buses and about six hours to Oslo. We had a whirlwind two-day visit and Oslo did not disappoint, it was wonderful. We spent one night in a hotel (what a treat!) which included an Oslo Pass and we took full advantage of it to visit fascinating museums and travel the length and breadth of the city.

Oslo still seemed stunned by the events of less than a week before. Our hotel was just a couple of minutes from the site of the explosion and the devastation was just left as-is, no attempts at a cleanup had yet been started. Of course, it was all cordoned off and there was a police guard. The damage was widespread and even buildings far away from the site sustained significant damage. There were impromptu floral tributes and shrines all over town and people were still laying flowers.

With only two days, it was a bit of a rush, but, we crammed in everything we wanted to see. This included visits to the following museums:

1) the Viking Ship museum, a stunning display of three Viking ships that had been used as burial chambers. One contained two females and this was the most elaborately outfitted containing a complete carriage and four sleds. These were carved in the most intricate designs and embellished with silver and bronze nails. The amount of well-preserved artefacts was amazing and fascinating to view.

One of the four sleds buried with the ship.

2) the Fram museum – The ‘Fram’ was the boat built by Nansen and used in many polar expeditions. It was used by Amundsen on his successful voyage to be the first person to reach the South Pole. Having just been to Svalbard and Skjervoy, where the ‘Fram’ made landfall after its first northern polar explorations, it was interesting to look at all the maps of the polar regions and see where we had been in relation to where they went. I had also just finished reading Shackleton’s account of his Antarctic polar voyage of 1914-1917, so it was all timely information and most interesting. You can actually get onto and right inside the ship. One observation was how much Norway had to do with early explorations in the Canadian Arctic. Amundsen was the first person to sail through the North West Passage and the ship used to do that, ‘Gjoa’, is also onsite at the Fram museum. Norway also did much of the early surveying of Ellesmere Island and environs, which became Canadian territory only in 1925.

the Fram, inside its own museum building

3) the Kon-Tiki museum – didn’t know much about Thor Heyerdahl and his voyages before visiting this museum other than the famous ‘Kon-Tiki’ name. The museum displays the balsa raft he used in his first major voyage across the pacific and also ‘Ra’ the reed boat he used in a later voyage.

4) Norwegian Resistance museum – bit disappointed with this display, there was only a little mention of the ‘Shetland Bus’ that I have previously discussed. However, it did manage to fill in a few blanks about events during the war.

5) Vigeland Sculpture park – I guess everybody who goes to Oslo comes here, they get about a million visitors a year and there were loads of tour buses having a look. It’s the life work one man, consisting of about two hundred bronze, granite and cast iron sculptures.

Vigeland sculpture

Vigeland sculpture

The Oslo visit was a fitting farewell to Norway as we will be leaving here tomorrow, headed for Goteborg, Sweden. After eleven months cruising almost the entire coastline and experiencing both the polar night and midnight sun, it’s time to leave. It will be a short (hopefully) 140 mile voyage across the northern tip of Denmark and down Sweden’s west coast to Goteborg, where we will travel through the Swedish internal canal system to Stockholm. We are leaving from Mandal, the most southerly town in Norway. The town is very yacht-friendly, the gjestehavn (guest harbour) is run by the town and every morning they leave freshly-baked rolls with butter and jam and a newspaper on your boat! Makes us feel like staying in Norway. It’s been a wonderful visit, but, we are eager for new horizons now and ready to move on.

Sand sculpture