Rain and Midsummer

In Harstad we had a good contrast of just how small our yacht is, tied up at the dock next to 3 other yachts - it almost looked comical! After leaving Merel and Axel in Harstad and doing a big stock up which included our first proper Asian supermarket of the trip, there was only rain in the forecast. So we headed to a small island outside Harstad that had a beautiful pool to anchor in for our last sunny evening for who knows how long. When the weather is beautiful and calm and the sun doesn’t set, it’s easy to get lost in watching the sun, birds and scenery until long into the well…not night, but night time. A cuckoo even made himself visible and we finally got to see one after hearing them for weeks.

Next stop Meløyvær. We had a great downwind sail to another set of islands, as the clouds rolled in and the wind increased steadily. A quick stop to catch a fish, then drop anchor in a very cute bay in amongst a bunch of islands. There was a bit of a storm coming, and we were trying out a new method of only having low lying land to protect us, as every time we’ve had mountains around, we tend to get crazy “Fallvind” or Katabatic wind that makes life on the boat quite unpleasant/scary. Turns out this worked pretty well, so we spent a couple of days here exploring and getting some admin done on the boat. This also coincided with midsummer and the solstice, so from here it was just going to get, ah, I guess less bright rather than darker as it’s still a month until the sun will set - unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to see the midnight sun on midsummer, thanks weather.

We had a plan to head through Risøyhamn, but after meeting some people who recommended going past Andenes to see whales and orca transiting along the continental shelf and the weather not playing ball, we decided a downwind sail to Andenes made sense. It was quite a stunning sail downwind in varying breeze, and extremely moody skies alternating between sun, low cloud and heavy rain the whole way. A very wet walk to the shops outside Andenes followed in order to pick up more essential supplies, one of which was the alcohol for our stove - it’s an amazing stove, and we love that it almost is incapable of breaking, but we almost burn more alcohol cooking than diesel running our engine! Not very efficient…
It kept raining.
We were incredibly grateful to have access to shore power so we could crank the heater up and dry everything out, but the boat still just felt, damp.
The next day we headed off to try see some whales after filling water and diesel, it wasn’t raining, but only just…As we headed out to the edge of the continental shelf however, we did get a bit of sun come through! But no whales…
It was quite crazy thing seeing the charts drop off from around 50 metres deep to well over 1000 metres deep in very little distance, just one absolutely giant cliff under the water! Although we couldn’t see any of it, it still felt quite freaky watching the depth on the chart drop off as we motored along.
We didn’t spend long out at the continental shelf as there was quite a swell and motoring is not all that relaxing, so we set a course for Bleik, with a view to catch a fish and check if an island just off the coast would be sheltered enough to anchor for the night. No fish and the swell was still wrapping around the island a bit, so since it was raining again, we decided to treat ourselves and go into the marina at Bleik. Well, turns out they had removed the two visitor pontoons and when we tied to the outer pontoon of the dock, a little voice came out of a security camera on the boat next door telling us we weren’t allowed to be there, so we headed back out to the rolley island, soaking wet and feeling a little sorry for ourselves. There was one consolation, the island turned out to be a breeding island for puffins. So we were surrounded by hundreds of puffins all night - and the odd tour boat. Seeing so many puffins was a bit of a highlight!Read more