The End

Writing that title actually made me a little emotional. After 5 months of one hell of a sailing adventure, here we are.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself. As we made our way up the Oslo fjord, there was one last friend to meet up with. Anežka worked in Kirkenes with the sled dogs while we were there, and she also helped us out a lot getting the boat ready after we bought it over the winter. She was also there for our first ever test sail with the yacht, so it was only fitting that she join for one of the last. We picked her up just north of Tønsberg, and headed to an island a bit north with a lovely beach. We yarned, went for an explore, and then went for a swim after a beer in the sun. A far cry from our first sail, dodging ice bergs and trying not to use the engine too much to save our dodgy impeller… Unfortunately, there was a bit of swell coming into the bay which was making Anežka feel a bit ill. So we upped anchor and headed for a more sheltered spot near Horten. This turned out to be a great idea, as we had a beautiful view of the setting sun. We ended up coming into a new, complex bay as the last light of day was disappearing, but being as calm as a lake, it was perfect. In the morning Anežka went for a swim while pancakes were made, and after pancakes and a game of Catan in the sun (our first game outside the whole trip), it was so hot we all went for a swim! We needed to make a bit more ground up the Oslo fjord though, so we headed off, with Anežka having a go at pulling up our stupidly heavy anchor, and went to Holmestrand to drop Anežka off. After saying goodbye, we hooked into the new breeze and made our way to Sandspollen, making our way through a weird gap in an old sunken wall crossing part of the main fjord. The wall is only 1m deep, and the only markings for it are a couple of small lateral marks in the corner to signify the gap. A whole lot of markings on the chart though. We imagine this probably gets hit a lot… When we got into Sandspollen, it was nice to be able to find shelter from the wind as it was blowing pretty well now. It’s lovely to have anchorages behave again, and a bay that should be sheltered from a certain wind direction, is in fact, sheltered from that direction.
The next day dawned grey and calm, we expected to have a decent breeze to blow us into Oslo, but we had to start off motoring. After a bit it did fill in, and we had a lovely downwind sail. It was very surreal sailing into Oslo, passing all the points we passed coming in on the ferry in November last year, in relatively similar weather. I remember looking at all the ferries and traffic on the water back then thinking that sailing through here wouldn’t be any fun, and now here we were, sailing our yacht into the heart of Oslo…The ferries weren’t any more of an issue than they had been the rest of the coast though, and we celebrated the milestone of making it to Oslo by having a scotch while watching the city skyline get bigger and bigger as we sailed toward it. Coming into the marina, stepping off the boat and being in the centre of Oslo was a very strange feeling, and while we were super stoked that we had made it all the way here, it was a very bittersweet moment knowing that that was the end of our adventure.
A young couple are planning to buy our yacht now, so we plan to spend a week doing some repairs and maintenance, and then we will be standing on the dock with all our gear, waving goodbye to our lovely, crazy, quirky little yacht.
There’s too many moments that took our breath away to think of and too many new experiences to count, my vocabulary isn’t good enough to sum up what an adventure this has been, but we are incredibly happy that we’ve kept this diary/blog to at least record some of the madness that the last 5 months entailed.
Tusen takk Norge. ~2500Nm and 5 months. That was one hell of an adventure.Read more