Under the Bridge

A 4:45am wake up in order to reach the shelter of Sørøya tonight, with a supermarket stop in Havøysund, and to pass through the channel with the right tide. Thankfully, this is the arctic and the sun was still up before we were!

Very little wind and therefore very little sailing, but we have figured out that at 1500 revs we burn very little diesel (half as much as we do at 2000 revs!) and we still go around 4.5kts.

With the tidal current up to 4kts through the channel between mainland and Magerøya, we were going a speedy 8kts! A pretty cool little channel with steep snowy sides and made even more interesting having to dodge the many king crab pots, some almost entirely under water. We’ve sailed in heavy currents before, but the bathymetry with the 3-4kts of tide made some interesting currents where we could see large whirlpools and feel it pushing our boat around. Very bizarre feeling!

We found very little information about where we may be able to stop for an hour or so in Havøysund and much of the harbour looked quite shallow… but we found an empty dock and a friendly man told us it was okay to stay there, looking quite surprised to see a sailing boat. We still haven’t seen a single other sailing boat out on the water. Apparently even during the summer few people venture east of Nordkapp.
We were astounded how clear the water was in Havøysund harbour, we could clearly see the bottom in what must have been at least 10m depth!

Some excitement heading out of Havøysund- we were passing under our first bridge! We really hoped we were right about what we thought we knew about our height.
The further south we come the higher and pointier the hills are getting, and the more ski runs we are looking at if only there was a bit more snow!

Our anchorage for the night was Akkarfjord. Again we chose to anchor where the charts didn’t recommend as an anchorage, but was a really nice little spot!Read more