Skagerrak and Back
Martin Edge
Copyright Martin Edge 2011
Published at Smashwords
First Edition
Published in Great Britain
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Skagerrak and Back
Zophiel’s Two Summer Cruises in 2007
Martin Edge
These scribblings are dedicated to my other half, Anna Pizzamiglio, without whose help this trip would have been halfway between unpleasant and impossible.
Table of Contents
Part 7 Beautiful Belgium (Probably)
Post Postscript Rant: The Great e-book Tax Scam
Preface
This is the holiday journal of a floating, ranting wimp. It is the tale of that wimp’s progress round the seas of northern Europe.
In 2003 I bought a small and slightly scruffy yacht called ‘Zophiel’. Though rather small for long distance cruising, the cutter rigged Vancouver is a seaworthy heavyweight. The first one was designed for a couple of nutters who were emigrating from Canada to New Zealand and wanted to do it in a 27ft sailing boat. Other Vancouvers have crossed oceans and sailed round the world.
My ambitions are rather more modest. Actually that’s not true. I’d love to join the ranks of the fearless ocean navigators and sail round the world. But, as I’ve already mentioned, I’m a bit of a wimp.
So over the past few years I’ve spent summers cruising around parts of northern Europe from Zophiel’s base under the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh. Most of these journeys have been sailed solo but sometimes I’ve had a crew, particularly for the longer sea crossings. Again, I’m no Bernard Moitessier.
Skagerrak and back is the tale of the first of these trips, in the summer of 2007. I wrote the account intending it to be a sort of extended log of the journey. My tendency to rant about everything I see around me has been, as usual, my downfall.
So to distinguish between simple descriptions of the trip and observations about the landscape, wildlife, customs, economy, politics and boats of the places I visited, I have rendered the latter in italics and headed them ‘Pondering’. I hope you won’t find this somewhat unusual schema too annoying.
By 2007 I’d spent four seasons exploring the coast of Scotland, north-east England and Northern Ireland aboard Zophiel. This had culminated in 2006 in a circumnavigation – more or less – of mainland Scotland. In 2007 I decided that the time had come to expand our horizons.
The plan was to try for a North Sea Circuit. I would head to Norway then round the coast to Sweden, through the Skagerrak and Kattegat to the Kiel Canal, then through the Dutch inland waterways and back up the east coast of England.
Normally, the short North Sea crossing, heading north-west on the return leg, would avoid heading into the teeth of the prevailing south-westerlies in September. But in the summer of 2007 concepts like ‘prevailing’, ‘normal’ and indeed ‘summer’ had little meaning.
There is a follow-up account to Skagerrak and Back, called “Floating Low to Lofoten”. This describes Zophiel’s 2008 cruise north along the coast of Norway to above the Arctic Circle. It’s even longer and more opinionated than this book, I’m afraid. A third volume, “A Gigantic Whinge on the Celtic Fringe”, is an account of Zoph’s 2011 circumnavigation of Ireland.
Martin Edge
December 2011
Cruise 1
We set off
from Port Edgar, under the Forth Bridge, heading for Peterhead – en
route to Norway - bright and early on June 16th at 6 am to
get the full effect of the spring ebb out of the Forth. The
crew for the first leg to Peterhead was two victims
volunteers from Port Edgar Yacht Club - Ian Cameron and Jon Roberts -
and me. We’d had a series of north-easterly gales of late, but the
previous day’s strong north-easterlies were predicted to die away,
leaving gentle enough conditions for the trip. Just before we left
there was certainly very little breeze in the marina.
The first major problem circumnavigating the North Sea was getting out under the Forth Rail Bridge. The wind was back up to 30 knots from the east and wind-over-tide created a steep sea that had us practically stopped. Half the crew – Jon Roberts – began to look a bit green round the gills.
We battered away in the hope that conditions would improve outside the main flow of the tide, but the wind and the steep sea kept increasing. This was quite surreal. I was expecting to have to face dodgy conditions at some time, but this was my home mill-pond. Between us we’d sailed under the bridges thousands of times. This was supposed to be the easy bit.
After about an hour and a half of motoring as hard as we could we’d covered just under four miles. We decided to stop amongst the moorings off the small Fife town of Aberdour for breakfast to see if the predicted lessening in the wind would happen. We picked up a vacant buoy. It was so rough on the mooring that Jon was too busy chucking up over the side to eat his vegetarian bacon buttie, which was probably a blessing. The other half of the crew, Ian Cameron, then announced that the heads was broken and indeed there seemed to be some blockage preventing it flushing.
Clearly the gods did not intend us to get to the Skagerrak. We gave up and sailed back under deep reefed main and staysail, surfing at 7 knots, which is fast for Zophiel, honest, arriving back on the pontoon at 9.30, about 3 months, a week and eight hours early.
Back at Port Edgar there was a mutiny as both the crew refused to countenance another 6 am departure the following day – especially without a functional bog. Captain Bligh at least got as far as the Pacific before the crew mutinied. I got four miles. I spent the rest of the day with a mounting sense of futility and a plunger trying to clear an almighty blockage in the bog by all means at my disposal. Ah the romance of the cruising life.
A week or so later I heard that Ian had sent an account of our fantastic summer cruise to Port Edgar Yacht Club’s cruising email list, explaining in humiliating detail how we got to Aberdour and had to go home. Thanks Ian.
Cruise 2
Part 1 – Heading Norgewards
Undeterred, the following day, again at 6 am, I left Port Edgar with my other half Anna as crew at high tide and got the benefit of the spring ebb and a working toilet as we motored out on a flat calm Forth with about 2 knots of westerly wind. A dolphin helped celebrate our exit from the Forth with the last of the ebb at 11.15 am. The only thing that marred our day of sunbathing was the inevitable haar that descended after 6 pm, bringing with it a force 4 on the nose. However we entered Stonehaven harbour in the early evening and rafted up against a 45 ft aluminium Dutch yacht for the night.
That evening we encountered Zophiel’s big sister, the Vancouver 34 ‘New Chance’, dried out against a wall in the inner harbour. I had run into her (not literally) three times the previous year in different places on the west coast. I reintroduced myself to the skipper, Alan Cawthorne. It was after ten p.m, but despite the fact that I’d woken him up and he was in his jim-jams he was nonetheless friendly and civil. He is now, according to best estimates, 86 and virtually blind. His wife Rhoda is 83 and does the navigation, since he can’t see the charts. Every year they go on an extended cruise. This year it was to be all the way round mainland Britain and out to St Kilda. She was disappointed that the last time they went they hadn’t gone ashore, so they were having another go. Given that most people their age would consider a short game of bowls a challenge and getting up the stairs a feat, this seems to me pretty amazing. This spirit of quiet adventure, carried out without fanfare, is one of the best things about sailing.
The following morning we motored out of Stonehaven in poor visibility and headed for Peterhead. We couldn’t be bothered leaving early after the previous two days’ efforts, so we knew we’d have about 3 hours of quite strong contrary tide in the afternoon. After a spot of motoring we later sailed slowly against the tide in perfect sunshine but not enough breeze to do more than about 3 knots. Peterhead may be fundamentally a dump and the marina almost literally in the shadow of a maximum security prison, but it seems to put on a good show whenever we enter the harbour and this time the sun shone obligingly on its white sand beach.
Given the north easterly gales which were once again forecast to plague the North Sea, we left Zophiel in Peterhead marina and returned to Edinburgh by bus rather than taking out the necessary second mortgage for train tickets.
I spent the next few days annoying anyone I could think of who might have some knowledge of weather and conditions in the North Sea by phoning them up and asking for advice. It did seem that there would be a break in the constant north easterly gales for a couple of days as, like Moses parting the Red Sea, the isobars on the weather maps opened up and left a predicted corridor of calm between Peterhead and Norway on June 21st and 22nd.
I kept telling Anna that all the top round the world racers need sophisticated shore-side teams to support them with logistics, weather information, transport etc. Though unconvinced, early on the 21st she gave a reinvigorated Ian Cameron, David Dougal and me a lift to Peterhead. Arriving ridiculously early we breakfasted and said goodbye to Anna. We refuelled on the fuel berth – paying the lad on the quay four metres above by means of the exact change in a Co-op plastic bag on the end of a bit of string – and motored out of the harbour. By the time I turned to wave goodbye to Anna the land had disappeared into the inevitable haar – and we weren’t yet out of the harbour.
The two most scary things about sailing are climbing the mast and using the VHF in earnest, so I came over all forceful and told Ian to call the Coastguard telling them our plans. His attempts to describe the boat were impressive – talking about the cutter rig, estimating the length, weight and draft etc. “No” said the Coastguard “what colour is she”.
There’s something disconcerting about a proper open sea with no wind on it at all when there’s the residue of yesterday’s strong conditions still lurking. The sea surges about gently rippling its muscles in a non-threatening but assertive sort of way. You know it can’t last and are always expecting every zephyr to turn into a hurricane.
The new AIS system proved its worth straight away in the 200m visibility. Ships we never saw appeared on the computer screen, complete with all the details of their name, speed, destination, length, beam, draft etc. One tanker, travelling at 21 knots directly towards us, suddenly changed course by 15 degrees to pass round our stern. Is it possible that he actually saw us on its radar and changed course to avoid us? It was very reassuring to think that he had. I thought all these big ships were supposed to be crap at keeping watch. Of course the AIS wouldn’t pick up fishing boats and other small craft under 300 tonnes which didn’t choose to fit AIS. But my view – not seen as terribly reassuring by the rest of the crew – was that at least if a fishing boat sank us they would be small enough to notice that they’d done so and might deign to stop and pick up survivors.
Could this have been the tamest, most trouble free North Sea Crossing ever? For 24 hours we had 6 knots of true wind from the east, then for the next 20 hours we had 6 knots from the north. We motor-sailed across a sea with a 3 to 4 ft swell and changed tack round about the middle without changing course. The most disturbed and choppy sea was just off Peterhead. After the dry-mouthed start and the haar, the visibility slowly and steadily improved until – round about the middle - we could actually see stuff. In good visibility you’d never be out of sight of an oil rig, in the UK sector at least. Passing an entire tower-block city, lit up from hundreds of windows looming out of the fog on solo watch at night is an eerie experience.
We had a bit of excitement on the first evening as someone (David) sat on the tiller-pilot and pulled its cable off. At first I thought that the breeze was shifting, then that the oil rigs were circling us rapidly. Eventually we came to the conclusion that it was us who were circling. Since we were all crap at steering to a compass course with nothing to look at, this could have been a disaster, but David spent half an hour mucking about with a screwdriver and bits of insulation tape and managed to fix it.
There was further excitement as the minder ship to a cable laying vessel motored over and hailed us on channel 16, telling us not to pass round the stern of the cable layer. I rather smugly replied. The AIS had of course already told us exactly what it was doing, how close we could pass, how fast it was moving, how many cables it was laying etc. It was quite surreal on such a quiet sea to come across a construction team just getting on with their jobs more than 100 miles from the nearest land.
There was yet more excitement as the heads broke again after some arguably heavy-handed flushing. No bog for the rest of the trip and heavy reliance on the bucket.
On the second evening we had a brief period under full sail, but the wind soon died again. Alone on watch around 10 that night I had a full hour’s worth of performance by the 50 strong official dolphin display team. The water was so clear that you could see them swimming under the boat from side to side before jumping clean out of the water. Some would flop back into the water sideways, flapping their tails apparently deliberately to make a noise. Sunset and 50 dolphins putting on an exuberant display all around the boat. Fantastic. All three of us got our own private dolphin display at some point on our respective watches and it was an amazing, privileged experience.
Pondering...The way the dolphins converged slowly on the boat in a line from a long distance, then swam with us, led me to suspect that they were using Zoph as a fishing aid. I’ve seen this behaviour several times. After twenty minutes or so they would all converge, leaving Zoph to pass on her way, whilst a crowd of gannets would appear, presumably for some of the dolphins’ leftovers.
During our wimpy crossing we’d said it would be good if the wind increased near the Norwegian coast just enough to give the impression that we’d sailed all the way across. Obligingly, the breeze increased and went round to the north within sight of the fjords, allowing us to sail up them under full sail, waving manically at passers-by. At 1.30 pm on June 23rd we moored on a pontoon at Hjellestad marina, Bergen, just next to a seaplane. We’d crossed the North Sea in ridiculously easy fashion and were inordinately pleased with ourselves.
Anxious to let Aberdeen Coastguard know we had arrived, Ian tried calling the Bergen Coastguard on 16 and had an odd conversation which began with the manny denying being the coastguard at all and claiming to be a radio station. He was incredulous that we wanted to tell anyone we had arrived. He then confirmed it was him we had to call and, when asked if he would tell Aberdeen Coastguard, said “yeah, sure, right” like a teenager agreeing to tidy his bedroom. One felt, inescapably, that he was not really arsed one way or another if we had arrived or sank in the middle of the North Sea.
Pondering... Norwegians don’t believe in fenders or, most of the time, warps. Your typical Norwegian motors his boat into his U shaped metal pontoon arrangement, in which one arm is a pontoon you can walk on and the other is just a metal strut. He lets the boat bang into the pontoon, makes a mobile phone call, packs his bags, musters the children and then - and only then - does he fling a couple of fenders over the side and tie a couple of lines to the boat. The fact is that most Norwegians are used to tideless waters so fantastically sheltered that you scarcely need lines. You can leave your boat somewhere in the sea, near a convenient rock, without tying it to anything, go back to work for a week and when you come back next weekend it’ll still be more or less in the same place.
Hjellestad is about three miles from Bergen airport but in the middle of a popular recreational area full of walks and nature trails, so I took a long and scenic bike ride on my folding Brompton while Ian and David went to buy a ticket home. (I already had my e-ticket courtesy of our shore-side logistics team). I subsequently discovered that every square inch of Norway is a popular recreational area and that every single small town is a fantastically popular holiday resort. It seems that Norwegians all just swap towns each year for the month of July and become tourists in someone else’s. After my spot of tourism I spent the rest of an exciting afternoon dismantling the bog and fixing it again.
The following day we all flew to Scotland, Me to Aberdeen and Ian and David to Edinburgh, once the nice man at the check-in had actually purchased tickets for them. David’s dodgy credit card had been rejected the first time they tried to buy them online. Imagine just turning up at the check in desk in the UK and trying to buy a discounted economy ticket for a flight due to leave in an hour. All very efficient, these Scandians.
Part 2 – Gorgeous Norge
Business in Scotland concluded, Anna and I flew back to Bergen on June 27th. We saw that Zoph was still on the pontoon and that all the lines were OK from the air as we flew over her at about 50 feet. Within half an hour of landing we were on the boat and half an hour later - having replaced the half a tank of diesel we had used motoring across the North Sea - we were under way. A wee breeze carried us along under full sail and full sun. It increased until we were doing hull speed in a force 5. It also started drizzling. The afternoon which began in full summer holiday mode ended with us tied to a pontoon in the village of Fitjar, next to the skips at the back of a roadside Spar supermarket, on a lee shore with a wet blatter of dreich bearing down on us. On the positive side, I managed to get the charcoal burning stove going so it was nice and toasty down below.
The following morning we left Fitjar in no wind under a cloudy sky. We motored a complex route down the intricate channels and inshore waters that run practically the whole length of Norway’s coast. Most of the coast is perfectly protected by a complex string of islands and skerries, the Skaergaard. The scenery was fantastic – wee tree clad rocky islets, each with one or more wooden houses with boathouses and piers and pontoons. The scenery was extremely twee. In fact it was tweenery. (A word I invented that day and which I now offer the English language, free of charge).
Pondering... Of course we soon found out that everywhere in Norway is filled with these twee houses and cabins built right down to sea level. Every small cove has a house in it and every house has a boathouse, its own pontoon and at least one boat, usually five. Every fjord more than a mile long – and there are thousands of them – has more marina places than the whole of the east of Scotland and every person – bar none – over the age of one, has a boat with an engine in it, by law.
We stopped for lunch in the small, massively twee and rather scruffy harbour of Mosterhavn. The cloud lifted, the wind increased and after lunch we had a great sail on a close reach in the sun down to Sletta, then outside the rim of protecting islands and on to Haugesund. We motored past Haugesund, down a narrow channel and only just squeezed under a very narrow bridge claiming to have 12 metres of air draft, to what was supposed, according to the rather poor e-book pilot, to be Haugesund sailing club in a place called Royksund. We wondered why there wasn’t a single sailing boat there – only motorboats – but tied up to a pontoon, used the showers and paid the very modest fee in an envelope in an honesty box. Later we went for a walk and discovered Haugesund Sailing Club about a mile away. Not at all where the pilot book said it was.
Pondering... We had begun to realise just how crap this pilot book actually was. It’s an ‘e-book’ written by a couple of americans in the style of a blog about their holidays, which they then want 20 quid for. If it was a free - or at least cheap - blog I wouldn’t mind, but it was at that time the only English language pilot for Norway, casually put together and riddled with mistakes.
Every year there’s a race between Stavanger and Banff - or Macduff, in the Moray Firth. The direction of the races changes on alternate years and this year it started on July 1st and was from Skudeneshavn on Stavanger Fjord to Scotland. A number of the Scottish boats taking part were from our home port at Port Edgar. Wanting to get to Skudeneshavn and meet up with them, we left early next morning. By early I mean 10.15.
Pondering... On the west of Scotland you always seem to have to leave at about 5 am to catch the tide and on holiday get up much earlier than you could be persuaded to for work. But the Scandians, with no tides to worry about and the sun setting around half past midnight, seem to be a fundamentally lazy bunch in the summer and 10.15 is a decidedly early start.
We had a nice gentle beat down the fjord in a south easterly force 3. It was a slightly fluky breeze but surprisingly not blowing straight up the fjord and allowing us to sail right up it on one tack for 12 miles or so. By the time we were out in the open sea and heading for the intricate channels around Kvitsoya island – recommended by Andy and Pam Grand Slam - the wind had increased to a force 5 and the sea was decidedly choppy. As we identified the narrow channel into the island and got the sail down another boat came out and unfurled its jib. It was Grand Slam. The first British boat we’d seen and one of the few we would see in Scandinavia outside Skudeneshavn. We tied up in the fantastically sheltered and twee harbour at Kvitsoya for an hour or so.
Pondering... Every kilometre or so right down the coast of Norway there seems to be a fantastically sheltered natural harbour which would give perfect shelter from every direction in a hurricane. I think it rather affects the Norwegian attitude to mooring. Any old bit of string tied to a twig will do and fenders are something of a luxury.
By the time we left Kvitsoya heading for Skudeneshavn the wind had died completely and by the time we arrived in the outer harbour, where all the Port Edgar boats and other entrants to the race had been berthed, it was absolutely pissing down. We rafted up outside the Ronautica 40 ‘Grand Slam’ and the Jeanneau 49 ‘Erin’ and got the charcoal stove going to dry out our sopping wet things. It pissed down all night. A somewhat inauspicious start to the race build up.
The next morning dawned reasonably fine and cleared quickly to become a scorcher with not a cloud in the sky. Which was just as well because it was June 30th which of course, as everyone knows, is a major festival. My birthday. This year was particularly significant since I turned 40.... Well, entered my very late 40s.... OK so I was 50. A lazy day with early beers. The crews of the boats from the Forth, Erin, Grand Slam, Mrs Chippy, Hei Matau and the others were in boozy holiday mood as well, but you could tell that behind it, for many of them, was the slight apprehension of the North Sea race. Anna and I felt quite guilty to be hangers on and not part of the race. Mrs Chippy’s entry in the race was particularly intrepid. They were billed as the crew of three blokes with three arms and three legs. One guy was missing an arm, another a leg and the third had no arms or legs beneath the elbows or knees. Now that’s a spirit of adventure.
For breakfast we took Zoph into town and tied up temporarily in the centre amongst the festivalling traditional boats. Skudeneshavn was packed to the gunwales with boats. The outer harbour, where the race boats were, was quiet enough except for the wash of some passing boats, but the inner harbour was so crowded that that you could walk from one shore to the other across the boats. Being Norway, it was mostly motor boats with pissed and – judging by the size of the boats, rich – people on them. On land it was even more crowded as people wandered around. To exactly what purpose I’m not sure, because there didn’t seem to be anything to do but buy lunch, but just sort of having a festival I suppose.
Being a mean bugger I had arranged a virtual birthday party. I invited everyone I know to the Skudeneshavn webcam, pointing down onto the mass of boats in the inner harbour. Just before the appointed time Anna and I took Zoph down the crowded channels into town and round the corner into the inner harbour crowded with old traditional boats. It was so still and crowded that we could have just stopped the boat and left her there all night without tying her up. She’d only have moved a few feet. At exactly 9 pm we opened a bottle of proper actual champagne and toasted… well, me, I’m afraid. We got some cheers from other boats and an actual trumpet fanfare down the PA system from the temporary stage set up for the festival. The latter, I suspect, may have been a coincidence. An hour or so later my phone rang. “Where are you?” Asked a friend who has the misfortune to live in Bolton. She had driven up for the party and was standing outside our locked and bolted house in Edinburgh, wondering where everyone was. I carefully explained to her the meaning of the word ‘virtual’ and suggested she read her emails more closely in future. Later we found out that at least a couple of people had bothered to watch us on the webcam waving into thin air like pillocks.
Back at the Erin/Grand Slam raft, Andy and Pam Grand Slam had actually got a card and a birthday cake for me. Complete with musical candles. Apparently these are an essential part of Grand Slam’s normal inventory. Odd and possibly a bit kinky, but it was very nice of them and I was quite touched. Cake and champagne drunk from Erin’s endless boxes of actual real glass champagne flutes completed a pretty damned good birthday.
The following morning the race management was busy telling the race crews that, whatever they had heard, there was definitely not going to be a gale in the North Sea. Adding that, should anyone hear anything about there maybe being a gale, it was their responsibility to decide whether to go. That’s their arses covered then. They also predicted that there would be between two and four metres per second (four and eight knots) of wind for the start of the race.
We headed out to sea at around 1.30 to avoid getting in the way of the race preparations. We sailed west for an hour or so in a rising southerly breeze increasing from force two to force four or five quite quickly. Then we turned back to see the start of the race. Anna wouldn’t let me sail close enough to get good pictures, but we saw them all coming out after the procession into town, then start the race, with some of the smaller boats seeming to hang back and Erin fastest out of the blocks and seeming to be off to a flying start. God knows how the trimaran Hei Matau, whose propeller had apparently fallen off whilst crossing to Norway, managed the procession through town. As they sailed off into what turned out to be rough and difficult conditions, we continued east on a fast fine reach in twenty knots of breeze under full sail.
At around 5.30 the wind died and we continued under motor to a pontoon belonging to the Stavanger Sailing Club at Langoya island (confusingly one of the thousand or so Langoya Islands in Norway). A lovely spot, again recommended by Andy and Pam Slam. There were a couple of other yachts but we had a whole pontoon to ourselves and a deserted island to explore. There was one building – a clubhouse of the Stavanger sailing club - with toilets, a lounge, kitchen, games room and framed photos of all the past commodores since the Vikings. There was a visitors’ book and everything was completely open to use. We used the freezer to make a block of ice for our primitive ‘fridge’ which requires a big lump of ice every day or two, on account of the fact that it doesn’t actually work.
Pondering... Getting ice is not a problem in Scotland, where every supermarket sells bags of it, but is virtually impossible in Scandinavia. The first shop assistant I asked whether they stocked ice said ‘What would you want ice for, it’ll only melt?’ It didn’t seem to strike her that, if it didn’t melt, we’d only ever need to buy one bag. I managed to get a bag of ice from fish packers and fishmongers a couple of times, but never succeeded in buying any in a shop.
Apparently Langoya island is a favourite holiday spot. Of course, as I’ve said elsewhere, every single place in Scandinavia is a popular holiday destination for Scandinavians. We were told it gets very busy when the Norwegians start their holidays about the second week in July. Pah! How busy could it be? After all there’s only four million Norwegians and about the same number of islands. We were to find out in due course.
As we sipped our G&Ts on our deserted island pontoon, listening to the gale warnings on the BBC shipping forecast on long wave, we were glad not to be out in the middle of the North Sea with Mrs. Chippy and the rest.
The next day, with a south east force 8 forecast, we didn’t want to do anything too ambitious, so we cruised, under motor and sometimes jib, around four or five of the anchorages recommended by team Grand Slam. The wind got up to just about a force 6 at times, but in these sheltered waters that scarcely mattered and later it died away completely. We saw a porpoise and thought this unremarkable after the dolphin display teams across the North Sea.
Pondering... Actually that was one of only two porpoises we saw in Scandinavia. They were joined eventually by a solitary seal. The multitudinous Norwegian islands may make ours look a little paltry in terms of scenery and sheer number, but they can’t do marine mammals – or indeed seabirds – like we can.
After an easy, lazy day and a failed attempt by me to sail onto a pontoon, we switched on the motor and tied up at another sheltered island anchorage, Rossoy. Again there were only a couple of other boats, but again toilet facilities, a lawn with places for barbeques, recycling bins etc.
The following day we thought we ought to do a bit more adventurous sightseeing, so motored in a flat calm the 15 miles or so to the mouth of the Lysefjord. This deep and narrow fjord, about 20 miles long, is a handy southern example of the ‘proper’ deep, mountainous fjords to be found further north. As we motored up the Fjord through water which, though hundreds of metres deep, was the colour you get round sandy coral reefs, the wind increased to around 30 knots apparent on the nose. Presumably it always funnels up or down the fjord in this way. A quick squint at ‘Pulpit Rock’ and a scan of the horizon to see if we could spot any of the loonies who, apparently, fling themselves off the 1000 foot high cliffs tied to glorified umbrellas in what’s called ‘base jumping’ – and we sailed back down the fjord under jib. Apparently you don’t get the full majesty etc unless you climb to the top. We’ll have to take their word for it as we were buggered if we were going to climb 1000 foot high cliffs.
After a quick stop for bread and milk at a shop near the entrance to Lysefjord, we anchored for the night opposite the entrance to the fjord in Adnoyvagen, a perfectly sheltered and beautiful little anchorage about 100 yards across and surrounded by cabins and boathouses amongst the trees. We were the only boat at anchor. Unfortunately the heavens then opened as I went for a walk and got drenched, but otherwise it was a perfect day.
Pondering... There are at least enough boathouses and cabins around the coast of Norway for every man, woman and child to own 3 each. Many of them are arranged so that Norwegians can actually have their boats in their living rooms with them, a design feature that Anna fervently hopes doesn’t catch on in Scotland.
The next day we headed for Stavanger in bright sunshine under motor with no wind. We were surprised to find the old harbour area in the town so empty of boats as we entered it. We were however gratified to see that half of Norway had turned out to meet us. Crowds thronged all the quay sides waving flags and cheering. Several majestic old 1930s motor ‘yachts’ – that is large ships - were decked out in bunting and, as we reached the middle of the harbour, the only boat out on the water, they gave us a 12 gun salute with cannon on the dock.
Then a police boat appeared and frantically gestured at us to bugger off. Apparently they weren’t celebrating our arrival but the Queen’s 70th birthday. I stopped doing the royal wave at the crowds. These royal birthdays follow me around. The previous year I kept bumping into our Queen in her chosen mode of transport for her 80th birthday tour, an old CalMac ferry.
Anyway, because the main harbour was shut, berthing space was at a premium, but we were lucky to be able to grab the last space in the quieter new harbour a few hundred yards away. All very swish and new, with credit card operated parking meters. Every time you went to the bog you had to insert your credit card and the machine would – you hope – bill you 50p, not £500. Berthing in the city centre in this swish new facility was ninety Norwegian Kroner (‘Norks’ for short), or about 8 quid. This was by far the most expensive one we’d come across so far as well. We spent the rest of a good day wandering around Stavanger - resisting the charms of the fabulous Canning Museum, to Anna’s disappointment - and had no more major run-ins with royalty.
Pondering... Tying up your boat for the night in Scotland costs the same as about 6 pints of beer. In Norway it’s about half a pint.
The following day looked like a good weather window to head out of the Stavanger Fjord and down the rather exposed bit of coast to the south, without the fringe of coastal islands which makes so much of the rest of the coast such an incredibly sheltered cruising ground.
We motored round to Tananger with the sky progressively clearing until it became a beautiful sunny day. With a north-west breeze of about 6 knots we got all sail up, which gave us a wee push to assist the motor and increased our speed to 6 knots without flogging the engine at all. A fine easy day making more than 50 miles on a flat calm sea.
When we arrived in Egersund we wandered about the outer harbour looking for fuel. In various places there were pumps labelled ‘diesel’ which, on closer inspection, turned out to be abandoned and apparently derelict. We went into the guest harbour and hailed a Norwegian boat on a pontoon. We motored up close, I stopped the boat and went forward to ask the skipper where we could get diesel. As he was telling me that the only way was to carry cans from the petrol station, it dawned on us that the guest harbour was positioned at the entrance to a small river which, with all the recent rain, was in something of a spate. A strong current in this part of the world being a rarity, we were surprised to find ourselves swept down on the other boat. Happily I was able to blame Anna, since she was theoretically on the helm. With some difficulty we fended off and escaped, though the folk on the other boat remained somewhat frosty all night as they inspected their self steering gear, which Zoph had been trying to demolish.
We got on a pontoon in the slightly noisy and rotten-fish-smelling harbour, inevitably next to a big marquee in which a poor rock band was conducting a sound test.
Pondering... Every village in Scandinavia has a rock festival in July. This involves pitching a tent next to the marina, running sound checks all day, then several poor bands playing a loud gig to, on average, an audience of seven. We came across at least five of these non-events.
The following morning it was bucketing down, but the wind forecast wasn’t too bad so we pressed on, after managing to get fuel with the help of a bloke on a building site who had some way of getting access to the semi-derelict pumps. I think he was a scaffolder sheltering from the rain who paid for it with his own credit card and we reimbursed him with cash. Which is way beyond the call of duty for your average scaffolder.
We motored out in the pissing down rain in no wind, following a Swedish registered Hallberg-Rassy 34 called Elinor for most of the day. At one o’clock we put the main up to limit the rolling then, as we crept past Elinor, at about three in the afternoon, the wind suddenly increased to twenty to twenty five knots on the nose and the sea rapidly rose to a short five or six ft chop. We continued to motor into this rather unpleasant chop, actually getting a bit of sea water on us for the first time since Aberdour.
Of course the increase in wind coincided with us approaching the peninsula at the southern tip of Norway. The chart marked where we were going as extraordinarily dangerous waters. Anna read from the Rough Guide, which recommended a trip down the peninsula by road for those who wanted to stare out to sea and marvel at the power of the oceans as they remorselessly battered the coast. Elinor and another boat which had been following us chose this moment to change course and head for shelter to the west of the peninsula, leaving us feeling a bit vulnerable.
Wondering if we were doing the right thing we pressed on, but within an hour the breeze moderated and turned south then south west, giving us a push as we continued to motorsail. We motored into the guest harbour in Mandal and tried to come to terms with the fore and aft mooring to a buoy and a pontoon favoured in Norway. The harbour was getting pretty full as Mandal is, inevitably, a popular holiday spot.
Later I spoke to the skipper of a massive Hallberg-Rassy 48, who said they’d had too much wind from the east outside Mandal earlier, so we were probably pretty lucky and timed it right.
Pondering... Passing the southernmost tip of Norway was a milestone since, including my trip helping to deliver the Moody 38 Equinox the previous year back from her Spitzbergen trip, I’d now sailed the whole coast, at least from 70° north. Is the coast of Norway a window on what Scotland would look like if the clearances had never happened? A lot of the coast, particularly further north, looks like bits of the west coast. Parts look decidedly like bits of the Outer Hebrides. In Scotland we are told that these rural backwaters, more than 57° north and 150 miles from a major city, are fundamentally unviable economically. Travelling the coast of Norway you confidently expect, when rounding the next headland and looking into the windswept loch, to see nothing but a few stones, all that remains of some abandoned steading buildings. Instead, right up to 70° north and in some of the most remote and hostile parts of Europe, you invariably get a perfect village or small town of white and red painted wooden houses, with a small working harbour and quite possibly a shipyard or other small industrial concern. Norway has deliberately used its oil money to support these rural communities and make them viable. What did we do with ours again?
Despite being a popular holiday spot Mandal is actually quite a nice wee town with a few riverside cafes and some winding streets away from the quayside. The nature of the boats – here and in Egersund – was rather different to elsewhere in Norway. Fewer wee motor boats and gin palaces and more sailing boats that looked capable of going places.
It was also the middle of a major monsoon season. The following day it continued to rain cats and dogs and moving seemed like a poor idea, so we stayed put. I managed to realise my dream, since Bergen, of a full cockpit tent – seemingly a must on a Scandinavian yacht. I spent most of the day fashioning one out of the only tarpaulin I could find in Mandal’s shops and a series of hooks and bits of bungee cord. It was a roaring success in the sense that, in the middle of the night, when the wind rose, it rattled back and forth and created a roaring noise that kept half the marina awake. Oh well. Best get a proper one made this winter.
Anna was dubious about leaving the following morning, so we took a walk for a mile or so to Mandal’s quarter mile stretch of sandy beach. Apparently this is Mandal’s major draw. Reputedly Norway’s best beach it is actually below 58 degrees north and, being at the latitude of the Moray Firth, pretty much counts as the sub-tropics in Norway. Anna was persuaded by the number of open boats crewed by five year olds going out of the harbour that Zoph could deal with the conditions, so at about 1 pm we left to head further east.
Pondering... Every Scandinavian child, by law, is issued with an outboard motor at the age of 4. They must do compulsory practice razzing round the bay for at least two hours every day. This keeps them out of their parents’ hair and as long as they can still hear the annoying drone of the outboard disturbing everyone’s peace they know the little darlings haven’t drowned. There’s no way your Scandian sprog would be see dead with a pair of oars.
Though a sunny day it was blowing quite hard as we picked our way carefully through the rocks and islands. There was more or less perfect shelter from the sea, which enabled the wee open boats to motor around, but enough wind to travel at up to 4 knots under bare poles and no engine. We did unroll the jib and zoomed along at six to seven knots, me pointing out the various canoes, coracles and toy boats crewed by tiny sprogs to assuage Anna’s fear that an ocean going yacht couldn’t cope with the wind. It’s quite amazing how far you can travel along the coast in perfect shelter with a fetch of no more than a mile or so, and how many river boats and unseaworthy craft ply along more or less the whole coast of Norway.
After only three hours we dropped a stern anchor and tied the bows to a ring on a rock in the astonishingly sheltered anchorage of Ny Hellesund. There were two entrances about 10m wide at opposite ends of the round, 6m deep bay, about 200m across and otherwise completely surrounded by low cliffs and rocks. Apparently – and inevitably, the royal yacht had been in the previous night as part of Queenie’s birthday bash. God knows how they got the huge ship through the gap. A wee crowd of motor boats nuzzled bows first into the rocks, side by side, each with a stern anchor out. This is the preferred Norwegian mooring technique.
Pondering... Many boats in Norway don’t have an anchor in the bow at all, only a stern anchor paid out on a roller or windlass. Given the puniness of some of the anchors, some of which are just stainless steel mushrooms that look more like something from Ikea for squeezing orange juice than anchors, a lot of them must get pushed bows-on to the rocks. However with no tides and perfect anchorages with fetches of a hundred yards, parking is a much more casual affair than in Scotland. There are more perfect natural harbours along each and every mile of the million mile Norwegian coastline than there are in the whole of Britain.
There were more boats in this perfect anchorage than we’d seen previously. We put this down to it being famously popular at the time, but things were getting busier as the Norwegian holiday season began to get into full swing.
My lack of experience in Norwegian mooring techniques probably made us a laughing stock as I tried various, probably non-standard methods. After bunging out a stern anchor and tying the bow to a rock, I managed to tie us between two rings on two rocks at opposite sides of a small bay. I was inordinately pleased with myself for this manoeuvre, which held us on long lines in a way that a hurricane couldn’t have shifted. We carry a plank for use with fenders on rough harbour walls and canal locks. I was even more pleased with myself for an arrangement whereby the plank was deployed as a sort of boarding bowsprit sticking out a metre or so. We used this eccentric set-up a few times for hopping over the bow. Scandian pulpits are all cut away to enable you to board from the bow. Zoph’s is defiantly British and impossible to hop over without Edge’s Patented Plank invention.
We left Ny Hellesund at 11 the next morning heading for Lillesand by way of the apparently famously beautiful (and popular) channels of the Blindliea. As the wind steadily increased we motored, then motorsailed, then sailed under full sail on a fine reach in a nice force 5, down a series of complex and often very narrow channels which took a lot of careful but rapid pilotage, at up to 7 knots. As we entered the particularly narrow channels of the Blindliea, part of which involved heading to windward, we dropped sail and went under motor.
The Blindliea – literally more or less blind alley – is a mis-named channel which is even more perfectly sheltered than most of the Skaergaard and leads right through to Lillesand. It is particularly pastoral and lovely, lined with twee chalets and boathouses and strewn with boats – mostly motor boats from small speedboats to major gin palaces – from end to end. It’s a sort of cross between the Norfolk Broads, the Outer Hebrides and Switzerland, if you can imagine such a thing. Perfectly calm waterways with little villages, pastoral mountains and wee rocky islands. Lovely and a bit surreal.
Pondering... Long ago the Western Isles were not considered the isolated backwater they are now. Far from presenting a barrier, the sea lochs and passages between the islands were the highways which put places like Iona at the centre of a civilisation, not perched on the edge as it is today. In Norway they still use these sea highways for practically everything. On the west of Scotland, if you spot a ship on the horizon, you can check your Cal Mac timetable and confirm that it’s the one and only ship in this part of the sea. In Norway you play dodgems with cruise liners, scuttling ro-ro ferries, long distance ferries, hydrofoils, tugs, coasters, oil rigs, working barges, commuters in speedboats and a whole host of traffic which still recognises that the best way to get about is by water.
We tied to a pontoon in packed Lillesand harbour in hot sun, next to the neds’ party boat. Since everyone in Norway has a boat, hoodies and neds also have them, albeit scabby little ones only worth ten or fifteen thousand pounds. Our neds had settled in for a night of boozing and loud music aboard a last generation Norwegian double-ended motorboat. The worst thing was that the music – a sort of sub-Abba scandian dirge – was crap. Unsurprisingly, Lillesand is a popular holiday destination.
The following day brought a bit of sun and a force 4 from the west. We motored and sailed and motorsailed then motored on an intricate and complex route through more of the incredibly complex rocky channels that make up the Skaergaard. As we approached Allesund the wind died and the dreich settled in. It drizzled for most of the afternoon.
We led a flotilla of yachts into Arendal. Looking astern there was an odd optical illusion. The furthest away boats appeared in front of the nearest boat. This turned out to be the Father Dougal effect. (It’s not small, Dougal, it’s a long way away). The boat which I thought at first was nearest was in fact a long way away but staggeringly huge. Unusually for a yacht it gave out a signal on the AIS. It was an extraordinarily large sloop. She was 58m long, with a 10m beam and 5.5m draft. We watched the tiny little helmsman on ‘Kokomo’ sat in the tennis court sized cockpit about as far above the water as the top of our mast. They got the dinghy out. This involved someone pressing a button and the entire transom hinging up in the air. Out of the transom walked about 10 tiny little people standing abreast and coming only halfway up the transom opening. I half expected to see a nuclear submarine and a rocket launching system belonging to a Bond villain. I suppose it’s not entirely impossible that this was a normal sized yacht crewed by tiny little miniature people, but I don’t think so.
Later we spoke to a few people who had seen this giant. Most of them insisted that it was from New Zealand. In fact it was British registered.
Pondering... No-one in Scandinavia recognises the red ensign. Since the UK is the only country in the world not to fly its normal national flag at sea, it is scarcely surprising that this causes some confusion. Obviously people just assume that you aren’t from Britain because it’s not a British flag. By far the most popular guess is that you are from New Zealand. I have to confess not to disabusing a couple of people of this idea. It’s far more impressive to have come from the antipodes than just across the North Sea. I’m not a flag waver by inclination and only fly a national flag abroad and because I have to. The Norwegians and indeed all the Scandinavians are so flagmungous however that it almost began to rub off. Probably it’s just ego and the desire to be a bit different but I began to value the ensign and the fact that we were flying something different from everyone else. I regretted not having a St Andrew’s flag on board, since it was impossible to buy one here. I was sure that the further round the route we went the more British – that is predominantly English – yachts we would see. I began hatching a plan to fashion a StAn’s flag from bits of old rag.
Later the weather cleared and we entered the chocolate-box village of Linger in full sun. Again we were apparently stalking royalty as the Norgian Queen’s ship had been there the day before. Linger is a massively twee village spread over 4 small islands and, with the help of a friendly yachtsman, we managed to squeeze Zoph into the last fore and aft mooring to a buoy and pontoon outside the Sailmaker pub, an engagingly scruffy establishment into which we were almost tempted for an £8 beer.
Pondering... Invited aboard the Norwegian yacht of the bloke who helped us berth, we learned that the wee rural cottages with boathouses which covered the islands were now changing hands for large sums. A law that you have to live in a house if you buy it is apparently being avoided by the Oslo rich, who pay people a salary to live in their holiday homes for them all year. A few enquiries didn’t yield any clues as to how to land a job as surrogate millionaire. It was obvious to us, coming from the UK, that these houses would be worth a fortune and sell as second homes. Yet the Norwegians described it as a new and surprising phenomenon. They seem to be catching our disease in which the only thing worth investing in is property.
Though perfect and perfectly friendly on the face of it, rowing about the four islands by dinghy it was difficult to find anywhere to land. The islands all seem to be fully privatised, with jetties and pontoons in front of every house liberally sprinkled with ‘keep out’ signs.
The next morning was perfectly sunny and perfectly calm as we headed west, mainsail up for stability only. We had a few recommendations for anchorages from a half Swedish half Indonesian family filling the tiny yacht on the next pontoon who we’d chatted to in Linger, as we headed out on another of the sections of coast that the Norwegians regard as extraordinarily dangerous on the grounds that it isn’t perfectly sheltered by islands.
We got in a nice bit of sunbathing before we arrived at the apparently gorgeous island of Jomfruland, a long sandy spit very atypical for Norway. It’s attractiveness seemed largely to be based on the fact that it was low and flat and unlike anything else in Norway. The Norgians must get sick of startling beauty and hanker after a dull bit of beach. They certainly liked it. The harbour was full to overflowing and boats were anchored everywhere.
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