Torshavn, Faroe Islands
I am way behind on the blog but will try to catch
up. From Akureyri we intended to make
for Raufarhohn but in the end decided to stop in Huasavik. We had visited Husavik on our bus tour from
Akureyri and it is a very nice harbor.
We arrived in the afternoon and tied up alongside the fish dock
immediately behind two cruising sail boats.
I went in search of the harbor master but he found us an indicated we
could stay but would have to move down the quay before noon the following day
because he had a fishing boat coming in.
The next morning both cruising boats left, and we moved to the end of
the quay leaving lots of space for fishing boats. We remained there for the rest of our
stay. The tidal range in Husavik is
about eight feet which makes organizing mooring lines a bit of a challenge, not
ot mention the challenge of getting on and off the boat at low tide.
We awoke the
second morning to discover that Jan Pietersma, our neighbor in Reykjavik had
arrived in the middle of the night and had tied up to Ariel. We were very pleased to see him because he
has a small boat, single hands it and had intended to sail from Reykjavik to
the East Coast of Greenland. Apparently
he set out to do that after we left Reykjavik but changed his mind after two
days and decided to return to Holland - a very good decision in our
opinion.
Sue and he had a discussion about Ham radio as he was trying to improve his Ham rig. Unfortunately, the US Ham radios do not have the same bands open to Ham operators in Holland. We did not have and 5 or 7 MHz bands so he could not communicate with his friends at home.
We are now in Torshavn capital
of the Faroe Islands in a marina with five other cruising sail boats (more on
that later) and I hope we get to see Jan again before we leave for Shetland.
Husavik claims to be the first town (as opposed to
settlement) in Iceland and is now a whale watching center as well as a fish
processing center. Four very traditional
wooden fishing boats, two gaff rigged schooners and two with no sails leave multiple times every day with a new load of tourists to go see the whales. They have an almost perfect record of success
which I find very interesting we never saw one whale on our trip in or out of
the fjord. They do a very good job of
documenting their sightings and it does seem as if the whales know the boats
and oblige by showing up at the appropriate time and place.
In addition to the traditional boats there
are RIBs and conventional cruise boats that go out as well. Husavik has a very interesting whale museum
with some huge skeletons hanging in the ceiling. Apparently whenever a beached whale dies
somewhere in Iceland the museum staff negotiate with the landowner to take
possession of the skeleton which then gets displayed in the museum.
There is also an Explorers museum and a cultural center
with an interesting collection of local wooden boats in the basement. We very much enjoyed our stay in Husavik and
made good use of the extra days there waiting for the weather to improve. It is an overnight passage from Husavik to
Seydisfjordur, our final destination in Iceland.
We decided to bypass Raufarhohn (and the
trout cooked over sheep manure) because the weather window looked short and we
wanted to take advantage of it. In the end we motored the whole way (except for about two hours of a beam reach in
the fjord going out) in head winds that veered around the compass to stay
exactly on our bow as we turned to starboard around the northeast corner of the
island. It is 600 miles from Reykjavik
to Seydifjordur and we motored the entire way; with only a couple of exceptions
the wind stayed within 15 degrees of dead ahead. The conventional wisdom for going from the
West to east coasts of Iceland is that the wind gores anti-clockwise and the
current goes clockwise. We chose to go
clockwise and can therefore confirm the conventional wisdom is correct.
The highlight of this passage was crossing the Arctic
Circle. We did so at --- on --- and
remained above it for about an hour.
Since then we have moved steadily South and are now are 6- degrees
North. Even though we are now mid way
between summer solstice and equinox the night sky remains lit at these
latitudes.
We arrived Seydisfjordur at 1600 hours on Sunday August
16th and called the harbor master on Channel 12. His instructions were very hard to understand
but there was a very inviting and empty floating dock right next to the big
ferry terminal so we decided to tie up there and then find out where we should
really go. As we came in the harbor
master drives up in his pick-up and helps us tie up. He was perfectly OK with our staying there
and although the floating dock had no power or water it was close to town and brand
new. Seydisfjordur is a small town at
the head of the fjord and is the place where the car ferry from Copenhagen and
the Faroe Islands comes to. It is a rather sleepy place without the ferry in
town but there are two restaurants and a hotel.(fully booked) and we spent a
very pleasant evening.
The weather for Monday was forecast to be very reasonable
for a passage to Faroe. Sue decided she
really needed to get back to Annapolis,and so we put her in a taxi at the ferry
terminal for the airport about 25 kilometers away and she caught the midday
flight to Reykjavik and then the Iceland Air flight to JFK the following day. She is now back home fixing all of the things
that have gone wrong in both White Stone and Annapolis. We miss her and the quality of the food has
markedly deteriorated.
Gregers and I refueled and filled the water tanks and
departed Seydisfjordur at 1015 hours and motored down the fjord.
There will be a description of both Faroe and Shetland
later. We have made a two night passage
from Torshavn to Scalloway and a one night passage from Lerwick to Norway and
will continue south down Norway's west coast to Kristiansand which is our
jumping off point for Skagen in Denmark.
We leave here (Sonstabovagen) tomorrow morning for Stavanger.
