Some More Storms, and Friends!

With another storm rolling in, we decided to run for cover and see if we could pick another anchorage that was sheltered. We picked a spot near Sydalen, between the chain of islands. Timing it with the 4 knot current was important, and we were lucky to have a decent wind blowing with us as we only just squeezed through before it switched. On arrival to the bay it was beautiful and calm. Half an hour after anchoring the wind was funnelling through at 20 knots or more sometimes. Oh well, at least we had a good hold on the anchor! We had a very rainy explore for some blueberries, and then some friends we worked with in Kirkenes came out for dinner - the trip out in the dinghy was hilarious, but felt a lot safer than the video looks!
Luckily, the bay was sheltered enough that we got some sleep, the next day was still windy, but with some sun out briefly, it was a perfect day for a run and getting some admin done. The next day we headed in to Henningsvær to catch up with our friends again, and watch the Norwegians play the FIFA World Cup quarter final - turned out it was difficult to find a pub with space left even a couple of hours before the game!
The weather was still crap so it was nice to have a day on a dock and enjoy some good food and socialising. Unfortunately the dock happened to also be very expensive, and with yet another storm on its way, it was leave now or be stuck there for potentially a few days, so one night was enough, and then we were off west again. A rough upwind sail across to some islands dead west of Henningsvær was quite a beautiful experience with dark rain clouds slowly enveloping everything, although we did feel bad for our poor yacht bashing away up wind in the waves. We spent the afternoon doing jobs like rebuilding the fuel system for the diesel heater, and had an early start the next day in order to motor all the way to Ballstad - our plan was to hide from the worst of the storm there, but it was blowing a good 15-20 knots already with quite a sea state, cold and raining on and off so it was a bit of a miserable slog. Very interesting ducking through all the little islands to avoid the worst of the swell - made it quite an interesting adventure and distracted us from how miserable the weather was!
When we got to Ballstad, the wind really started kicking in and we got quite nervous about docking in a tight spot, but luckily the dock was behind a big concrete structure, so it made docking manageable, rather than terrifying. We were stoked to get in when we did, crank the heater and have some hot showers, and to top it all off, we docked next to an old Viking long ship - now that was a pretty ship! The wind kept climbing after we got in, to the point where it would almost blow you over just standing on the dock. We watched another poor yacht come in and have a hell of a job getting set up and into the dock. When Russell went to catch one of their lines he was met with much gratitude, and some shaken looking sailors!
We also managed to source a new starter button (finally waterproof!) so we didn’t have to hot wire our engine anymore after a couple of weeks of looking like we are stealing the boat every time we wanted to leave!

One quick note on the fishing boats we have been seeing all the way down the coast. They are hilariously short and stubby, to the point where some of them really don’t look like they should float. We were thinking “wow, there must be something interesting in ship design that makes these really good in rough Norwegian waters or something”. Well, we googled it and it turns out there is a licensing system for catching fish here that means it’s much cheaper to commercially catch fish with a shorter boat. So in turn, the boats are made as big as possible, while being literally as short as possible. Utterly ridiculous.Read more