Opp På Fjellet

Midwatch in Måløy

To all our cruising friends, for about $16 a night you can have a place at the dock, showers, free laundry, a supermarket next door, and fresh bread delivered complimentary to the boat in the AM.  All you have to do is get here...

NORWAY, (By Anna)

NORWAY, (By Anna)
     
     We are in Norway, we got here on my Mom's birthday and all day... Finn and I made pictures for her. Finn made a picture of Midwatch and I made a drawing of a house. Then my mom called us in to the galley to make carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Then we went for an hour walk and went to the Aquarium. Then we had cake and went to SLEEP.

                                                                          THE END

Many Thanks to Uncle Ted!

Being without internet for the past two weeks has been a little tough on me, but many, many thanks go out to Uncle Ted who has been receiving and posting Bob's Sat phone emails and posting. This has allowed us to keep the blog fairly up-to-date. Kudos.

Vi er i Norge! (We are in Norway!)

Hi all. We arrived 11 July at 8 A.M. local time in Bergen and customs and immigration took much of the day. We had quite a passage, so as you can imagine, we are still recovering. We now have internet on the boat again so there should be more activity, pictures too.  We will try and fill you in soon.   The good news is today is my birthday and what a pleasant event to remember. The bad news is blogger is now all in Norwegian and it will take me a little longer to stumble through posting.
Went to the aquarium and ate birthday carrot cake for supper. All is well.
- Kim

Midwatch 7-9-13

Hi Everyone,

So much for calm.  Starting to not like the North Sea so much.  We did have a

couple of hours of good sailing towards the Shetlands before the winds built to 25 kts and backed to the North West.  The seas are short and snappy and the result is that 3 of 4 of us are dealing with various levels of seasickness.  Finn is fine and fortunately he is in a banana eating faze so he is easy to keep sated. 

If you want to see what you are made of: try changing out the full pee-bucket on the head in heavy seas and then spend an hour trying to decipher Norwegian names on electronic charts while at the same time monitoring multiple vessels on AIS and radar while the automatic steering periodically cries uncle forcing you to crawl up the severely angled and bouncing  companionway ladder and jump on the wheel to wrestle the boat back into a balanced course.  I almost puked just trying to write that sentence.  Then I had to dig in the refrigerator box for Finn's milk, look for a crackers for Mom, help Anna get the bathroom door open and stay on the pot and hold the little pee-bottle for Finn.  Did I mention the kids are begging for Nachos.  Anybody else need to pee?

Dad...Kim wins...you no longer have the record for quickest asleep on the settee. It’s an instantaneous thing for her.

We have changed course many times and are now headed for the nearest Norwegian coast.  I don't want to specify exactly where yet because it is likely to change but Bergen or Aasund are potential ports of entry for us now.  We are in fact

less than 150 nautical miles from the coast of Norway and that seems good.  There is also a fairly large opening in the oil fields that we hope to pass through tonight.

We just crossed the prime meridian and should cross into the 60th parallel soon. We have come far!I could see the Shetlands in the distance when it wasn't foggy.  Still seeing a fair number of boats out sailing...tough people up here.

Current location:

18:50 UTC

59 degrees 57 minutes North

00 degrees 12 minutes East (not West)

Heading 73 Degrees

Close hauled as we can get her, double reefed main, reefed genoa

Spd 5.5-6.5 kts in winds varying from 16-20 kts. 

I think it is starting to calm down.  We will probably be motoring again by midnight.

I’m Really missing those quiet canals right now.

Bob

Midwatch update from Bob:

Our current location:

20:36 UTC

58 degees 58 minutes North

2 degrees 08 minutes West

Course 31 degrees

spd 2.8 kts

sailing a broad reach under 2-4 kts of wind

We passed through the Caledonian Canal into the North Sea yesterday.  Cruising the canal was better than we had hoped for....an absolutely fantastic experience.  We sailed Loch Locky and Lock Ness with 25-30 kt winds at our backs under genoa or reefed genoa travelling at 6 kts of boat speed.  There is an amazing castle on Loch Ness but we were turned away from their dock because someone was having a wedding.  One of those moments where you look the guy in the eye and say "Dude, I sailed all the way from the US for this...you're kidding right!"  He wasn't kidding.  Maybe we will visit on the return trip.

We must be in a 1000 tourist photographs.  We have yet to see another vessel flying an American Flag.  Now instead of people asking if I have ever crossed

the Atlantic they say "you crossed the Atlantic in that!"

Anna has proven herself a great rope handler on the stern line.  Finn says he wants to go back to the Bahamas where it is warm.  Kim thinks she broke her toe today...on the steering wheel.  What do you say to that?

Our final day in the canal went pretty smoothly.  We filled up the tanks with

water in the morning and then passed through a loch and a bridge and then drove some miles into the City of Inverness.  We dropped 4 lochs and through a bridge and stopped at a marina to fuel up and ran into town to buy groceries.  Then we passed through the last sea loch and Midwatch was back in the salt again.  We motored for almost 10 miles to get out of the city and kept ourselves busy preparing the boat for the north sea.  I really missed my Dad for this...he is really good at tying things down and he has been doing it for months now.  He made a lot of improvements and it will take me some time to catch up to where he left off.  Once we broke into more open sea we were greeted by 20 kts of wind and and incoming tide dead on the nose and had to short tack our way forward into the night.  That sucked!  Then around 2:00 in the morning the wind died and has been flat calm ever since so on went the engine.  We finally shut the engine down 16 hours later so the kids can sleep better so we are speeding along at 2.4 kts under main and genoa.  I am chicken to set big blue.  Maybe tomorrow I will face it and get that sail back in action again.

One nice thing about the calm is there is little swell so it isn't that

uncomfortable.  Kim has been cooking up a storm.  Back to choking down all the potatoes you can eat because Norway doesn't allow them in.  We recently passed the end of mainland Scotland and currently have the Orkney Islands off the port beam.  The Shetlands will be next.  We have to watch out for huge fields of oil rigs between here and Norway and there has been a fair amount of ship traffic so we can't sleep on watch.  The calm is brought on by a high pressure system over the British Isles that is bringing sun and warmth.  It felt like summer in Maine today.

We have seen a lot of Dolphins and a few Puffins.  I think it is time to get my cod jigging gear out and get it ready to go.

We have not yet decided what part of Norway we will head for first.  Our

Northern most goal is still 700 nautical  miles away while the closest point is more like 250 nm.  We think it will be relatively calm for a few days which seems

great except we don't put many miles behind us in these conditions.

Bob, Kim, Anna and Finn 

We've Reached the Shores of Loch Ness

We have had a very bittersweet week here. As we read before our departure, the highs and lows often come very close to each other. We have been thrilled with Scotland, the scenery, canal and lock systems and great people. However, we have been troubled by Grandma’s “Seasickness”, that came on after the squall in the Irish Sea, and after days of optimism, Grandma and Grampa decided to head for home.  They are now back stateside and we anxiously await news of her recovery.

Grandma and Grampa in the Crinan Canal

Coming out of a Lock

A Harry Potter telephone booth!

Almost through the Crinan

Loch Ness!

Looking for the Monster