Sunny reunion

Merel and Axel speaking!! Dutch takeover🇳🇱

We have met Angel and Rusty during our time in New Zealand and luckily they have moved closer to us for the time being - on a sailboat in Norway - so we had to come over for a couple of days.

They were waiting for us close to Tromsø in a cute harbour. On our way there we saw all the Norwegians out on their bikes, as it was unusually sunny. This turned out to be a good omen for our stay.

We were SUPER excited seeing Russel and Angela again! After a last ice cream we set sail to Gasvaer, an island with two inhabitants and a large graveyard. While we cheersed on our reunion, it was Axels first time behind the helm, and his calmness made a promising impression (although it could also be caused by the 2hrs of sleep the night before). But a plunge in the arctic waters woke us up good. Our explore on the island was magical. We threw rocks at other rocks we threw, found chives for next mornings eggs, were confused by the sound the snipe makes while falling from the sky and enjoyed princess treatment in the dinghy. The anchorage was however not sheltered enough for the promised wind later that night, so we had to move and enjoy our south amarican wine and Dutch cheese during the midnight sun while motoring to a new spot. Not bad!

Sadly the new anchorage was next to a cliff and our hosts had to get up early in the rainy morning - after half dreams of us dragging - to sail us to a better spot. We did make it somewhat more bearable bringing out coffee and stroopwafels.

The new spot we found was dead calm and after warming up with a game of Catan - in which we are destined to lose playing with the pro’s - we got out for a grey hike to a mountain lake. The colour of the moss is gorgeous and with us as biologists, Russel being raised by biologists and Angela being raised in the bush, nature big and small caught our attention quickly. Hikes therefor took ages. We discovered the horsetail plant and some failed offshore fishfarms out at sea. Story goes that 42,000 salmon mysteriously dissapeared.

Coming back to the boat we realised we forgot to open our full waste water tank and that if we were to stay the night we had to go out and empty it. That, together with the drizzly, sunny and windy conditions, gave us an awesome rainbow sail where Axel learned the headings and their sail positions and turned into a real captain! Puffins along the way and a classic game of Catan and chai to end the day.Read more