Solo Sailing

I was a little nervous leaving the marina all on my own, but was very pleased with how it went! However, I misjudged the current in the Kvaløysundet towards where I had planned to anchor that night and therefore had a longer trip than anticipated. But I had a cute spot, and nice and calm. The next morning however, the wind picked up a bit earlier than supposed to so I picked up anchor pre coffee and headed to the Kvaløyvågen marina.
After two failed attempts at docking between two fishing boats and a wind blowing me away from the dock, a friendly fisherman came out and helped me. I probably would have eventually gotten it, but I was very thankful for the help!

After our engine flooding issues, we purchased a waterlock for our exhaust and so I got to work trying to put this in. Unfortunately nothing can be straightforward on the boat it seems so the exhaust hose was bigger than it should be and therefore the waterlock didn’t fit in perfectly like it should have… but I had already chopped the exhaust to find this out. Thankfully, the hose is flexible and the clamps are pretty good so it still works, just doesn’t look very pretty. And most importantly, it worked!

Two days of admin and fixing things in Kvaløyvågen and I was ready to move to an anchorage somewhere I wasn’t next to a fish factory and relax a little.
The wind however had other plans and decided to be windier than forecast and provide little shelter anywhere. I headed for Hessfjorden, where we have experienced to be extremely sheltered. After a windy night here, I decided to try Grunnfjorden. Beautifully calm getting there, even saw whales! And a beautifully calm first hour at anchor, lovely spot with forest, waterfalls and some reindeer roaming around. I was pretty stoked until the wind decided it would come into here as well and I had another windy night.
The next day I headed back south to the islands by Finnkroken which was thankfully relatively sheltered, and a scenic spot.
With the wind predicted to pick up again, I figured I would head back to the marina at Kvaløyvågen. I had a really nice breeze behind me and decided this was the perfect time to try out actually sailing on my own. Sunny day, nice light breeze, gullwinging directly downwind and I was pretty happy!

Unfortunately the dock at Kvaløyvågen was full. So I dropped anchor nearby to decide what to do and wait for the current to change in Kvaløysundet. The wind picked up in my anchorage and for a while a wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to lift the anchor.. we really have the worst anchor system!
Kvaløyvågen was still full, so I went south and decided to check out an anchorage nearby the three islands. However, the wind was still picking up and funnelling through all the fjords it seemed. The upwind battle towards the anchorage I planned wasn’t going to be much fun and the anchorage was probably not going to be protected! It was already 21:30 at this point and I was pretty tired with nowhere close that would be protected.
So I gave up and called our friend Dag at Skattøra and asked if I could come in a couple of days earlier than planned. A solo sailer himself, he was very understanding and had caught me as I came in to the marina. Not my most graceful entry hahah but it worked!

I had a couple of days now until Russell was back, and I had time to catch up on sleep, restock, fix things and prepare to head out of Tromsø for the last time when Russell returned.

A couple of days in the marina is all it takes to make some friends too. I was invited by a lovely German couple to visit them in Lübeck, invited to a hippy festival on one of the islands nearby and found someone who may be interested in buying our boat at the end of summer… also got to check out a boat three guys had bought for the same amount we had paid for ours so it was a good to see just how good of a deal we got.

Solo sailing was great for the experience, but it’s definitely not my preference!Read more