Sunsets and rainbows

Luckily, we got a mostly sunny day to help us dry out from our wet sail the day before.
After a relatively late start, we started another almost full day of motoring. We almost welcomed a day of motoring at this point, and at least it was a picturesque one!
It’s been a while since we have seen a sunset (or much sun really) so we thoroughly appreciated these ones!
Somehow, with all the rain clouds around, we even managed to avoid getting rained on.
The going was pretty easy, and the wind came through quite late, so we decided to make extra distance. We got in to our new target harbour at Seter at about midnight. Now the nights are starting to get darker we actually had to start using the sector lighthouses for navigation - though we were still very glad to have gps.

There was finally some northerly wind in the forecast but only overnight… we weren’t about to waste this opportunity though so we had a long sleep in and started with a motor in the afternoon which turned into a lovely sail for the rest of the night, getting in to our planned anchorage about at the planned time of 5am. We were treated yet again to a stunning sunset and, of course, some rain.
It’s still a bit of a novelty for us to have it actually get dark. Russell had to spend the first part of the day wiring in our steaming light (we hadn’t needed one until now), and again, the light houses and markers became very useful in the dark with heavy rain clouds all around! This, and the sheer length of our route in waters with lots of obstacles where we had never sailed made the navigating extra interesting. Throw in things like a squall making us need another reef at 2am close to rocks made the night disappear quite quickly. In our 12 hour over night sail, we covered about 70NM, double what we did upwind in 10 hours, and with a whole lot less stress and water everywhere…amazing what a difference sailing downwind makes!Read more