Sorry… It’s been a month since the last post…

We did indeed make a dash south and found ourselves in something of a convoy – with 8 other boats showing up on our AIS (vessel identification system) and since the Norwegian boats are rarely equipped with AIS, there were probably three times that number. We had a very good downwind sail and arrived to a very nice open bay anchorage a couple of miles outside of Egersund which we enjoyed for two nights with a large catamaran anchored a few hundred yards away. When we left, we kicked ourselves as it turned out the Cat was American! We yelled out as we passed and raised the captain who turned out to be French!

We carried on south east and found ourselves a very nice spot in Hidra – anchoring for a couple of days there and then moving to the tiny marina for a couple more. This is probably the most picturesque spot we’ve been to in Norway – a cluster of islands with rocky hills – along with some well preserved German WWII fortifications. The attraction of moving to the Marina was that it was a part of a small restaurant – with what turned out to be excellent dishes.

We went to another harbour on Hydra, Rasvag – with a VERY tight entrance into a completely surrounded bay – surrounded by houses. We felt like goldfish – so in the morning picked up sticks and took ourselves off to Fleckkerfijord.

 

Turned out we’d arrived in Fleckkerfjord on festival day – celebrating everything Salmon! We were persuaded therefore to take another marina berth – for a huge fee of Free for the first night, then $6/night! While there, a Newspaper reporter came and interviewed us – apparently an American boat is something of a rarity! It would be nice if we could understand Norwegian as I’ve no idea what she reported!

We did a nice long walk in Flekkerfjiord – really interesting – but sadly when we got back Laurie found 2 ticks on her – which later proved to have Lime – and she’s just finished a 2 week course of preventive antibiotics.

There’s a bit of a cape on the south called Lindesnes which apparently can kick up nasty in adverse wind – so we staged ourselves in a nice little town, Farsund – just tying up to the dock along the high street at no cost (having tried 5 times to anchor in an adjacent cove). We sampled the best shrimp – which we now seek out routinely wherever we go – but Farsund’s so far has been the best!

With some decent wind we managed to get around the cape and plonked ourselves in Mandal for a few days – we then went on to a series of anchorages along the Blindleia – trying to do the Norwegian thing of tying up to a rock face or bows-to mooring – failed miserably – but managing to shoehorn our way into smaller and smaller spots. Had an excellent stop in a tiny bay in Ny-Hellgoya – another spot with old German WWII fortifications (we’ve seen quite a few along the way). We finally entered one anchroage to find two other boats anchored (not tied to the rocks) – we’ve hardly seen anyone conventionally anchored – other than foreign boats!

Our most recent anchorage was a very small spot – we had to make sure we were right in the middle before dropping the anchor – so checked distances with a golfing rangefinder to make sure. We were rewarded with a very peaceful morning view…

Yesterday we upped anchor and headed for Denmark. We got about an hour into and wimped out! The forecast was for 16 – 18knots with gusts to 26 – 28 bit we had sustained 26 – 28 (or it was a long gust!) there was also more wave action than we expected and since we would be sailing overnight, we turned and headed further north east along Norway’s southern coast and found ourselves a spot in Grimstad’s guest harbour where we could lick our wounds.

With wind remaining high for the next several days, we’ve changed plan (oh what a surprise) and will now head further up the coast and then make our way across to Sweden – and are hoping to bump into our friends Linda and Ian on Ocean Hobo who have been in Denmark and are slowly making their way north along the Swedish coast…