Day 18 Sortland to Sørmela

Day 18/Tuesday 30 July. Sortland to Sørmela 33 km 518 km total
We took our time to have a long breakfast at the hotel and then resupply a bit of food before we were ready to paddle off at 1200.
A bit late relative to the current and also the forecasted headwinds, but we have ample time to get to Andenes where we have booked accompanying from Thursday to Saturday. 80 km in three days should be no problem.
We chose the west side of the Sortland sound and had a three and a half hour paddle until we reached Bremnesøya. A nice stop for lunch and a last stop before we crossed Gavlfjorden over to Andøya.
We took our time at lunch, yr.no forecasted 6 m/s + head winds across Gavlfjorden, not a very attractive prospect.
But even yr.no gets it wrong sometimes, and this time all for the best. Conditions was very favorable. And we continued to make good progress.
We kept on till we reached the lighthouse at Åknes before we started to look for a camp site.
It wasn’t easy to find something away from “innmark”, in the end we went in to a couple of boathouses and took a look around.
We had landed a stone’s throw away from the local graveyard.
Maybe not the best place to pitch the tents ?
We walked up to see if we could find anyone to ask.
We found a local guy at the porch of his cabin, he was from here and knew the area well.
No problem to camp, where we had landed was the usual place to camp around there.
A very quiet neighborhood, even the seagulls kept quiet.
Tomorrow we paddle on toward Andenes, we plan for ca 35 km, to make the last leg a short one. WP.Read more