Slingshot South

Another early start, but a beautiful sunny day made it very easy to get up and enjoying coffee in the sun was a great treat. Eventually, after unsuccessfully trying to catch a fish the breeze filled in, and we started heading around one of the infamous parts of the coast - Statt, or Vestkapp. Luckily we had stunning conditions for it…15 knots downwind with a decent swell to surf. We took an inside route between some rocks and the mainland to avoid the big ships coming through. Good idea except one of the big ships also chose that route…made for an interesting 15 minutes trying to figure out their route while they zig zagged along. We were making great ground, and excited to get to a harbour that supposedly had a free sauna and cheap beer. The wind had other ideas though, and slowly died to nothing. So, we ended up settling for a nice anchorage next to Vågsvåg so we were nicely setup for the next day. The aim was to get all the way down to Sognefjord 60NM away. With a NW gale warning for the coast, getting there fast enough wasn’t going to be the issue, it would be whether we could do it and not break the boat or ourselves in the process! Russell woke up at 3am with a start as a boat cruised past and realised that we hadn’t put our anchor light on! Now usually it would be fair to say that was a stupid mistake, but in our defence, it hadn’t gotten dark for the last 3 months so we were a little bit out of the habit of using anchor lights…Luckily there were some lights around so there wasn’t much chance of other boats not seeing us, but still a good wake up call.

We set off in the misty morning with very little wind that built very quickly to a good breeze. This with some waves made for an exciting morning surfing waves. The wind kept building and we agonised over whether it would make more sense to go around the next cape, or head in between the islands already. We decided discretion was the better part of valour and between the islands we would be much less likely to break the boat. This proved a good call as while we were part way through putting a second reef in, already sheltered by the land a little, the wind really kicked in so we got rid of our Genoa entirely and sailed off just the reefed main until we reached the sound entrance. Here the wind died so we had to motor for a bit. We weren’t too upset by this as it was extremely narrow and we weren’t all that thrilled with the idea of coming in with 30 knots and a following sea!
As we exited the channel the wind slowly built again. For a while we had a fantastic run with dead flat water and 15-20 knots, but as we come a little closer to the edge of the coast the wind built again and made our zig zagging passage through all the rocks and islands a pretty exciting experience. It stayed a reasonable wind strength until we were out of the worst of the rock dodging which was nice, but then the wind really kicked in with 30-40 knots, letting us do 11 knots surfing down waves just off the fully reefed main and a tiny sliver of Genoa to help with the balance. The sun was out and we were flying, so although a little stressful, we were still have a fantastic sail! As we approached Sognefjord, the landscape went from hundreds of little bare islands to vast cliffs with fjords leading through them, and as we made our way through these little fjords, marvelling at the scale of the granite walls around us, the wind was kind enough to back off a little and follow us down our zig zagging path. So finally, after a long day, but a great sailing day, we pulled in to a little anchorage that was beautifully sheltered by forest on all sides, and had a fantastic, calm night.Read more