Monday, 3 August 2009

The final Norwegian days, for now



We spent two nights in the beautiful Berefjord, hiking, bathing in the freshwater lakes and even portaging our canoe to explore these lakes. The inflatable canoe (a Sevylor, in Dave and Fran's spirit we have named it Seymour) makes a great tender - easy to inflate on deck, easy to board, even stows on the sidedeck and no need for an outboard engine.

Then we went up to Flekkefjord to meet my parents who were also on holiday in Norway. In Flekkefjord we checked the weather forecast and decided we had better go the next day so we left on Monday, 27 July, in the pouring rain.

The passage back was pretty dreadful. It took 77 hours for the 250 miles to Peterhead. We had headwinds (which made us go as far north as 59 degrees before the wind finally came around to the south as forecast), rough seas, Force 7 forcing us to heave to for 12 hours etc. We were seasick again but not as bad as on the way over. However, not much food was consumed in the course of the three days and it was two ravenous sailors that pulled into the northeastern Scottish port of Peterhead on Thursday. Luckily, a very nice Dutch couple with a beautiful steel boat cooked us dinner for us that night and we recovered quickly.

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