The Mountains Are Fake

Emboldened by such an amazing ski tour the previous day, we decided we wanted to stay around Arnøya to explore it more. The day ended up being a crappy weather day, and we needed some reception to get a forecast to make sure we could stay here with a weather system we knew was coming through. Since we wouldn’t be skiing today either, it was time to catch a fish! Once out of the fjord, we had our weather forecast, but thanks to our lure jumping off the line (after all three of us looked at the connection that we have been using the last month, say ‘that looks dodgy but it should be fine’), no fish.

There was supposed to be a bit of an easterly blow coming through the next day into the evening, but looking at the terrain and some reviews of the fjord, decided it would be nice and sheltered. We decided to go back up the fjord and explore the other side of the valley for a paragliding spot, and check out the start of nice looking ski tour that we spied from our ski the previous day. Unfortunately, by the time we got anchored and climbed up to where we wanted to launch our paragliders, it was quite late. So the nice take off breeze coming up the slope turned into a catabatic flow that definitely would have killed us if we tried to take off. So we had a nice hike.

The next day was our ski touring mission. This would be a full day ski tour, but the wind had got up a little overnight, so we mulled and discussed for a bit before deciding to pull the trigger and go for the ski. Rob and Russell managed to battle with the dinghy into the wind to get ashore, narrowly missing a willywhorl in the process…By the time Russell was heading back to pick Angela up the wind was really stonking, from the east, where there were several large mountains in the way.

Now it’s a funny thing when you anchor a boat, as it swings and moves it can play tricks on you making you think the anchor has moved. This happened to Russell as he got back to the yacht and started grabbing Angela’s ski gear, especially since the wind had switched and we were lying across the short side of the fjord. He said “that’s weird, I swear we are closer to that beach…” except, it wasn’t a trick, and we were closer to that beach. Concerningly, we kept getting closer to that beach. Time to move! By this point we were getting gusts rolling off the mountain around 30-40knots, flipping the dinghy up over the railings and generally causing some chaos as we threw ski gear below and got ready to move.
Meanwhile, Rob was meditating in the sun on the beach.
Remember the suspect engine? We sure as shit did. As we quickly got the engine ready to start, Russell was also running through how we were going to sail off anchor in 40 knots, 50 metres away from the beach behind us if the engine didn’t start. Mercifully, the engine started, and we had never heard such a beautiful sound, even though we could barely hear the engine over the howling of the wind.
Rob was still meditating in the sun.
We were quite keen to get the fuck out of there in case the engine died, so after Angela struggled a bit with pulling the anchor up, Russell took over and got rather angry with it - sometimes it’s necessary to expedite pulling something very heavy!
Rob was done with meditating in the sun, and saw us waving for him to walk down the fjord a bit to where it looked more sheltered. Angela rowed in from the yacht with a bit of a slingshot in a lull between gusts, and Russell tried to keep the yacht out of trouble, almost not succeeding when a gust blew the boat over far enough that he thought the cooling water intake was probably out of the water - slightly stressful!
After what felt like a long time, Angela and Rob were on their way back out in the dinghy in another substantial gust, but managed to link up with the yacht and get back on board, with the skis and Rob still in ski boots, only a bit soaked. Now it was definitely time to leave, as this was the part of the forecast before the wind was at its peak. By now it was late afternoon, and a 5 hour sail to the only place that looked like it might have some decent shelter (judging from the live wind readings in the area, not the charts). Luckily, as we moved down the fjord, for some reason the same mountain range gave us a little more shelter, so we could organise everything and get ready for a bumpy sail.

With a fully reefed main sail, we left the shelter of the mountains into the full force of the easterly and were met with…not much wind. Now we were convinced that the mountains aren’t real, it’s actually where they store the fans to make the wind. As we sailed toward Hessfjord, the wind did slowly build as well as the sea sate, until we were surfing down waves in 20-25 knots of breeze for a time before backing off again, very fun, very fast, but a little nerve wracking knowing how old and tired everything is on the yacht! This wasn’t made better by some suspicious sounds from our running backstay. So a backup line was rigged in case the tired looking adjustment line snapped. We made fantastic time, and we got to a cute little bay around 10pm. This cute little bay was exposed to the east with a small hill in the way, but was dead calm. Literally not a breath of wind. I don’t think we will ever understand the wind in these fjords…Read more