September the 20th –  Oktober 10th,

Journey to Norway

Saturday, September 20th we left Groningen with our sailing ship the “Necton”. We sailed to Delfzijl, stayed there overnight and left Sunday morning with a fair South West wind. This wind direction was promised by the weather forecast until Monday night and by that time we would be close to the Norway coastal waters.

Unfortunately the wind turned North and increase to force 9 (26 meters per second) so it was a very tough trip for us.

The whole Sunday gale 8 made our trip very uncomfortable and Anne spent most of the day in bed.

Monday night around 03:00 Aldert saw a little light passing by. He opened a small part of the entrance of our ship and yelled to the life craft that held the light. People could be inside and perhaps we should offer them help. By that time it was impossible to be outside because of the heavy wind and the water which was floating over the boat. Then it turned out that the life craft was attached to our boat, until the rope broke loose so it was clear that is was our own and no one would be inside. It blew away upside down and we were glad we weren’t inside! (photo)

At the end of this day we reached Korshavn and it took us a day to dry up everything inside and recover ourselves a bit.

Our plan was to go to Bergen but with strong wind from the North we would not be able to go up North much further. We phone the coastguard to warn them for our empty life craft. It could be that people think there must haven been people inside...

We decide to head for Stavanger and the Lysefjord which is said to be a beautiful area.

Tuesday, September 25th we continued our journey. We left early in the morning. The wind was still blowing a lot (SW 7) and because it would be far after midnight we would reach Stavanger we made a stop in Tananger. During the sailing trip we use a lot of current. The radar, the automatic steering, the heater and a lot of other luxury stuff take out a lot of energy from our batteries. We only load the batteries if we use the main engine and even that is not so effective as a generator. So it would be great if this item could be repaired. We called a company in Oslo and they gave us the number of their man in Stavanger. It was already dark by the time we reached Tananger. It was a bit scary to sail amongst the rocks but with the aid of our electronic sea charts and the radar we were able to moor safely.

Friday it rained all day but we don’t mind since we were used to lots of water by now! We went out to by bread and milk and it is nice to stretch the legs after these days at sea.. In the afternoon a  engineer came on board and found out the problem was a sensor for temperature. This thing was broken and had to be send over from Holland so he could build it in, probably on Monday in Stavanger.  We also replaced a scepter. As the lifecraft went over board it hit the scepter so it was damaged as well.

Saturday 27th of September. It is only a short distance to Stavanger so we leave after a good breakfast at 09:00. In the beginning we have a lot of water over the boat again but now we made effort to prohibit the leaking as much as we can, there is not much water coming into the boat. The last bit of the journey  we have the wind from behind and the sun is shining so a quit comfortable way of traveling!

We moored in the center of Stavanger. (photo) Beautiful old houses and a 13th century cathedral are our surrounding and in the afternoon we dress up to take a look at this town.  In the evening, in a pub, we have met Uno and Geir. They invited us to make a trip to the Preikestolen, a 600 meter high cliff at the Lysefjord. For us this was a great opportunity because we had no car and traveling by bus would have been to complicated to organize in such a  short time. We would have seen this cliff below, as we planned to sail there next week.

Sunday 28th of September, we went to the cathedral.  (photo) There was a choir and a brass band to accompany the weekly  sunday service. Because there were text books with music, we even were able to sing along. From everything that was spoken we understood just a very little bit, It took more than an hour so we had tu rush back to the boat to be in time for our appointment with Uno and Geir. We wondered if they would show up because an appointment made in a pub is not always valid! We were very pleased as they came and we had to hurry to catch a ferry that would take us to the other side of the Lysefjord so we could go to the Preikestolen by car.

At the start of this climb there was a plan pointing out what type of shoes to wear and how long and high the journey would be (photo). We tried to walk as fast as possible because it would be dark at the end of the afternoon. It took us about 2 hours to reach the summit (photo). It wasn'tas easy as we had expected and we had to take some time to rest before we were able to ascent. 

(will be continued)