Torshavn, Faroe Islands

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.