Aunøya to Midsund - Back to Headwinds

After our overnight sail, we had a bit of a sleep in until the wind eventually got us up, but because it was a strong headwind in a narrow channel with the next days forecast for light winds, we had decided to stop in at the town next to us for groceries (a very shallow, narrow entrance to the harbour made things interesting), then have quite a small hop to a cute looking free pontoon in amongst some islands. The sun was out, and once we got to the islands it was beautifully calm (by this I mean the gusts coming through were less than 15 knots), so we enjoyed a wander through the forest and then the last of our Norwegian gin on the dock soaking up some sun. It was a popular dock so we got to talk to a Norwegian who absolutely loved NZ, he also confirmed this was a terrible summer, to the point where he was planning on calling his boss to ask if he could please come back to work early from his holiday!

The following day was an early start to make the most of the calm day. It would be a full day of motoring, and we had to stop in at Kristiansund to fill up diesel as the next stretch of coast didn’t seem to have too many fuel options. It wasn’t a particularly nice day as we just motored in the rain for hours on end, but it was still quite beautiful and the boat kept things interesting when the alternator charge light came on and then the tachometer died, but nothing else seemed too out of place so we figured water must have gotten into the wiring. After our fuel stop in Kristiansund, the wind had got up so we were motoring into quite a nasty sea as we were now open to the Norwegian Sea heading west. Luckily there was a tiny channel through some islands we could duck into in order to continue to our anchorage. This turned out to be really cool, going under a bridge and then down through a very narrow passage with a village built around it. Again, we were very thankful to have a small yacht, as our mast only just cleared the bridge and power lines. As we came out of the passage, into the sheltered islands, we watched another bigger yacht that had been ahead of us coming through the main entrance, rolling their guts out. We tried catching a fish, to no avail but found a cute floating dock that was free so tied up to that for the night.

Another early start in order to motor past the exposed coast before the wind got too wild because, you guessed it, there was another storm coming. So Russell was up at 5am and enjoyed a lovely calm start to the morning tucked inside the islands. This didn’t last long, and once we cleared a lovely little village we were back out in the wind and swell. We were treated to some epic colours though, and potentially the coolest (kind of) rainbow as the sun filtered through some gaps in the cloud. The wind steadily built as forecast, so we were doing some true rock hopping as we ducked between all the tiny islands we could. Thankfully we cleared the exposed stretch we needed to get past before the wind really kicked in, and we had a relatively cruisey motor until we hit the last stretch before Midsund that was a fjord funnelling the wind. So a couple of hours of bashing into waves and rain were had before finally spotting the crack in the mountains and ducking in to Midsund. Well, we were happy to have made as much progress as we did - but we are pretty sick of windy, rainy days now!

As horrible as all these days beating into the wind have been, one upside is that we have explored so many tiny little channels and passages, and come across so many tiny little villages in just the most absurd places. The number of these little villages is really amazing given the size of Norways coast and their small population. Rural is an absurdist understatement.Read more