Life’s Easy When the Weather Behaves

We stayed for two nights in Lillesand, waiting out a storm and using the stormy weather to have shore power so Russell could work on the project he was given as part of the interviewing process.
From Lillesand, we had a few days to get north to Sandefjord, where the company Russell was interviewing for was based. Conveniently on the way, he agreed to stop in to have the next interview in person. That gave us enough time to work our way up the coast without too much stress to go far each day. The weather was being very kind, with sunny days and reasonable winds forecast. When we set off from Lillesand though, it was quite grey and windy, so we were concerned the forecast was lying again. But nothing terrible materialised, and we had a pretty nice sail downwind for an easy 38Nm sail to Lyngøya. There was a bit of a swell so it wasn’t the most comfortable going, and only having a main to sail with now is quite a handicap, but it was still nice to be going downwind, with the only real excitement coming when we turned to make the entrance between the islands. Luckily the swell was easy to manage coming into the gap, and it was beautifully calm when through. Unfortunately it was a weekend, so the Pub owned dock we were aiming for was full, so we continued along a bit further to a very cute, fully enclosed bay to anchor in close by. This was guarded by a very narrow entrance with a charted rock right in the middle, so some very careful steering was involved to get in without touching any rocks…luckily, we have had some practice at this now. The rock was not spotted, but also not hit.
The next day we were off again, heading to an area where we had many options, as we weren’t sure how far we would make it with the lower wind forecast and our slow sailing speed now. It turned into a really lovely sail, mostly in the open, but then we found some respite from the swell behind a long flat island - supposedly good for kitesurfing, but not this time. Good thing we had respite from the swell, as the long rolling swell seemed to be getting Angela a wee bit sea sick, much to her annoyance. Some fish caught for lunch, and some fun once again sailing between tiny rocks like some sort of slalom race passed the time until we made it to a beautiful bay at Åbyelva. Here we were treated to a stunning sunset, almost fish for dinner (it got off the line before we could get it on board) and once again, a beautiful calm bay. We were really starting to remember why people enjoy boating as a relaxing past time…
The next morning, a fruitless hunt for mushrooms, but a nice walk in the forest was had, and then we set off for a short sail to a little rocky island with a lighthouse on it. This was a painfully slow sail, so we decided we really needed to fix our Genoa, but sail tape was needed first. We at least caught some more mackerel for dinner, and as we came to our first anchorage choice on the island, realised there was still too much movement in the water for us to tie to the rocks with our tiny fenders, so we decided to check out the other side that had a pretty narrow entrance and was open to the swell which was not nothing. The comments we had read about it say the locals know that the entrance is a lot more relaxed than it looks. We aren’t locals, so it looked pretty fucking scary to us. But once again, trust the charts, trust the boat and trust ourselves, we decided to give it a try. The locals were mostly right, and it wasn’t quite as scary as it looked, and dead calm once we were through the entrance. What we were greeted with was one of the coolest spots we’ve been the whole trip, with a tiny settlement next to the lighthouse, and bolts in the rocks to tie to. So once we were all tied up, we had a wine on the rocks watching the sun, and after dinner explored the island a little. This meant some rock climbing of course.
The next morning we had a stunning coffee in the sun watching our yacht tied up to the rocks (our yacht wasn’t in the sun so we paddled to the other side of the bay to drink our coffee) and then an explore of the settlement and lighthouse. The settlement is mainly just a tourist destination now and you can stay the night in some of the houses, so we felt like we were exploring a ghost town a little bit. It was time to say goodbye to the little island though and head to Sandefjord. We ended up motoring the whole way as there was no wind, but the sun was shining and all was well.Read more