Nærøyfjorden, and Leaving Sognefjorden

We couldn’t quite believe our luck sailing into Nærøyfjord with the wind behind us and funnelling through the fjord - a perfect downwind sail the whole way in, a sunny day and spectacular scenery with mountains rising straight up from the sides of the fjord. After days of torrential rain, this felt pretty damn good!
We dropped anchor in the most scenic part of the fjord, and the only part it was shallow enough. Even the many tour boats coming past didn’t ruin this spot.
We had planned to go for a hike once we got here and potentially a paraglide for Russell, but Russell decided the wind was too temperamental to paraglide and we were tired after late night/early morning. So we settled on a scenic evening paddle and got to watch some wingsuit base jumpers fly off the cliffs.
Good thing Russell didn’t paraglide from there, he would have looked lame.

The next morning we got to watch porpoise jumping while having coffee in the sun. The porpoise were more active here than we have experienced them so far, normally they are quite elusive and you are lucky to see just a fin.
We weren’t as lucky with the wind coming out of the fjord so it was a day of motoring. Our next stop was Fresvik because they had a washing machine and by now we were becoming quite desperate to do laundry.
Fresvik was a pretty little town with not much going on, but we bought some homemade raspberry jam and eggs from an honesty box and enjoyed wandering round the town. The dock was also pretty shallow, so we went around meticulously measuring and checking there were no sneaky rocks - who says we are slow learners…

Leaving Fresvik, the first challenge was to pass under the new power lines being installed across the fjord. In New Zealand there would be signs and boats everywhere and probably a million road cones if they could figure out how to make them float. Here there was a little sign on the chart with a number to call, and a cute little fishing boat either side keeping watch. So we had to pass within 200 metres of the western shore as they had a low cable running across the entire fjord, never a dull moment with power lines in Norway!
Not long after we cleared the new power lines, the wind filled in and we blasted our way out of the fjord in 10-20 knots of downwind breeze, flat water and current with us, meaning we were constantly sailing at 7-8 knots. We had planned on just going half way out of the fjord, but we made such good time we made it all the way to the entrance. Unfortunately, the anchorage we had picked wasn’t very sheltered, and with high winds forecast we weren’t that keen on a sleepless night, so we upped anchor and headed across the fjord to the bay we stayed in when we first got to the fjord. We liked this bay - beautifully sheltered, tucked away amongst little islands and pine forest.Read more