Sailing across the North Sea to Norway | Sailing Florence Ep.210

We are Amy and Matt. We have decided to try and sail our 40 year old 37 foot sailboat from the south coast of the UK all the way north to the arctic. An idea that sounds a little crazy even to us. We're hoping to see polar bears and walrus and sail in the icy waters of Svalbard. We'll sail past the northernmost town in the world to the edge of the charts. It's unlikely to be easy but it's certainly going to be an adventure. This is where the real adventure for this season begins. The last few episodes of us sailing up from the south coast up the Irish sea to Scotland have just been the prelude to the real adventure and this is where that is going to begin. We're about to set off out across from Scotland to Norway on a passage which is probably going to take us about a week at sea and that is going to take us up into the arctic circle which is really what we're all about this season and then from there we're going to be sailing even further north up to Svalbard, icebergs and polar bears. So we're about to set off. It certainly feels like a real adventure. I've got a few butterflies in the stomach and I don't think it's a real adventure unless you're slightly nervous about it and we're both certainly a little bit nervous about this but also very excited to be heading offshore to another country again. We are leaving Scotland at the start of May to try and reach Svalbard at the optimum time of year for sailing. The best chance of settled weather and ice-free anchorages in Svalbard occurs in June and July. Before then the sea ice can be a problem and later on fog can become a regular issue. Of course the weather is not always predictable but this timing gives us the best chance based on historic weather patterns. So we have around one month to sail to northern Norway which will be our kicking off point to cross the Barents Sea to Svalbard. be fairly calm for about the first 24 hours. We're at the moment protected within the Murray Firth and that should last for about 24 hours and then we'll be into the North Sea which won't be quite so calm and then the North Atlantic Ocean which at the moment there's some pretty big swells out there which we're hoping to avoid but you never really know on a passage like this so yeah we'll probably get a bit of everything on this trip. Because we're leaving the UK and sailing to Norway we have to deal with the formalities at this stage with immigration for leaving the UK and arriving in Norway. Leaving the UK is pretty simple it's just an online form and you get an instant response with a green tick that it's okay to go but getting into Norway was a little bit more complex. I had to look it up online. They have an online system that you're supposed to register your voyage but that is all really set up for commercial shipping and it's very difficult to actually do it as a private individual. I looked at all the advice online I couldn't make it work so what I've done instead is emailed the police headquarters for the region of Norway that we're sailing into and they were really good they got back to us within a day and said thanks for the information we let them know when we're expecting to arrive and they said just drop us an email when you get here and then we can sort out the immigration formalities with them so hopefully already three and a half hours into our night watches as you can see it's not yet dark the sun's just starting to go down. I think this evening we'll probably both have about three hours of darkness in each of our watches and then that's just going to decrease as we go north to the point where later in the summer we shouldn't have any darkness at all. It's going to be a new experience. The wind's still very light and the sea stayed really calm but we're now sailing upwind so we're going to have to be tacking through the night which is going to keep us busy. It's a glorious day for sailing today unfortunately it wasn't quite so glorious last night and early morning. The wind died to absolutely nothing and we had to motor from about 10 o'clock at night until half past eight this morning and motoring makes me really grumpy so I actually had to apologize to Amy when I got up this morning because I was very grumpy that we weren't sailing. Thankfully a zephyr of breeze appeared and we're managing to sail. We're only doing three knots but three knots in the right direction and on a glorious day like today can't complain too much. Setting off for Norway we knew that this section would be challenging to sail in very light winds and likely require a fair amount of motoring but the forecast was showing that if we had waited another five days for the wind to fill in closer to Scotland we would then face strong headwinds at the end of the trip so it was a conscious decision to be out here in these very light winds. Making the most of the sunshine and all of the nice fruit and vegetables that we've got on board to enjoy some salad for lunch. It's definitely not what I expected sailing to the arctic sunshine and salad but I'm gonna take it. Just had a big wind shift gone around the breeze now coming more from the side. It's still quite light so we've taken the pole down and it's time to put the spinnaker up. the North Sea and the wind has really got up so we've had 25 knots for most of the day and with that the sea state has also increased because we've no longer got the shelter of the Isles of Shetland so this world's actually coming from two different directions which means most of the time it's okay and then occasionally the waves meet and peak together and then we get really get thrown around but we're making great progress we've been doing six or seven knots all of the day and now we've just got to work our way through all of the oil rigs there's a huge number of them between Shetland and Norway and they look really close together on the chart but in reality we should be able to keep a good distance from each of them if we plot a bit of a zigzag route through and because we've passed the northern tip of Shetland this is now the furthest north that either Matt or I have ever sailed. We've got about a thousand miles to go to Svalbard so we're not going to celebrate too quickly but yeah pretty cool. here so even though we were being thrown around on Florence we were very aware that what we were experiencing was a calm day on the North Sea. The oil rigs are well charted and have large gaps between them they also appear on AIS so plotting a route through them is easy. They look deceptively Norway it's four o'clock in the morning it's been light for about an hour and you can really see the mountainous coast of Norway ahead of us it's exciting never been to Norway before. Actually the waves calmed down last night so we were both able to get a bit of sleep and this morning I can see Norway it looks incredible so many mountains and there's snow on most of the tops it's absolutely gorgeous. We're just passing a major headland which is supposed to be one of the most dangerous along this coast but we're a long way off. I think the headland's got a bad reputation because it's one of the few places that you can't sail inside channels you've got to go offshore to get around it but we're six nautical miles offshore so we shouldn't have any problems with the wind over tide issues that they have around that headland. We were planning to be a bit further offshore and go all the way up to Bodo but last night we downloaded the latest weather forecast and we've been keeping an eye on it for a couple of days because further north near Bodo there are some really big waves and winds gusting up to 35 knots and those waves are going to be four meters with only an eight second period which means they're really steep and they were going to be dead on our beam so they're really going to roll us quite violently if we went up there so we decided instead to pull into Ålesund which is a bit further south it's about 330 miles further south than Bodo we're pulling here and then from here there's actually a lot of channels inshore that we can make our way up towards Bodo in more shouted waters it looks amazing with all the hills just stacked layer upon layer upon layer back into the distance this will be my second time to Norway first time was by bike and over 20 years ago I went on a cycle touring holiday with my family and through Europe so we took a ferry from the UK to Holland and then cycled through Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and by the time we got to Norway unfortunately the summer holidays were running out and we were in a rush to get back to school so I didn't see as much of it as I would have liked we did the Rallavegen to Bergen and I just remember standing at the top of a fjord and just my mind being absolutely blown as to the scenery and I promised myself that I would get back here one day can't quite believe that it's taken me over 20 years but also can't believe that I'm here on my own boat as well and with Matt so yeah really really looking forward to this trip it's been a long time coming whenever we arrive in a new country by boat there's always that initial excitement when you first spot land and then between spotting land and actually arriving to your destination there's normally at least another six or so hours so a lot of time anticipating the arrival sailing may still be a slow means of traveling but I love the fact that instead of just carrying the bare essentials on a bike on board Florence I've literally been able to pack the kitchen sink coffee thank you very much very civilized so calm it's calming down the breeze is really dropping off you because it's calmed down it gives us no excuses not to tidy up the boat got into a little bit of a mess as it often does when we're sailing offshore and it's a bit rough and so yeah better clear up and make us a bit more ship shape ready for our arrival easy to do the washing up now we're not getting thrown around so much last night the decision was to leave it for the morning because we were getting thrown around so much it would have been very difficult to do how cold's the water well because we haven't been notary the water is cold I don't think there's any hot water left in the tank from when we were leaving Inverness so now we're a lot more ship shape down here and can enjoy arriving these bananas didn't fare very well did they it's interesting we've almost been sailing in company with a big 45 foot aluminium expedition yacht a Garcia 45 they left just behind us from Inverness and when it's been light winds Florence has actually been faster even though we're so much shorter but when the wind got up yesterday they were so much faster we were reefed down and they just I think still had all their sail up and just shot off they were 10 miles ahead and now we're going in light winds dead down wind into port and so we've got polled out wing on wing so we're going short distance I don't think they've got a pole so I don't think they can do this so they're zigzagging to keep their sails filled and they're out offshore they've just gone out that way they're coming back in now and I think when we cross they're going to be about half a mile ahead so we've really eaten into their lead just interesting to see how these metal expedition yachts perform when sailing I think they're a lot heavier and need a lot more wind to get going which is what you have where they're designed to sail I guess in fact they're a lot more comfortable yesterday and last night they probably just plow straight through it don't really notice anything whereas Florence was just getting tossed around because it was so much lighter at heart we are still racing sailors and having another boat sailing on the same route at the same time adds to the enjoyment of the passage these guys have been visible to us on AIS for almost the whole trip we're not racing but we would dearly love to arrive in front of them and we suspect they feel the same way ready when sailing into a new country it's courtesy to fly their national flag from the starboard spreader we also have to fly the yellow q flag to indicate that we've not yet checked in with the authorities stopping here was not the plan but far from being upset but having to change our plans we could not keep the grins from our faces at the unexpected chance to explore this part of Norway's coastline the experience of approaching the Norwegian coast is immersive not only do you get to look at the magnificent view from the ocean but you sail into that view to the point where it surrounds you and you don't know which way to look it was difficult to concentrate on the navigation task of threading our way between the outlying rocks and islands without being distracted by the scenery around us instead of sailing the 800 miles we plan to Bodo we've made just 430 miles to Ålesund which means we are still 290 miles south of the arctic circle Ålesund is an official port of entry for yachts coming into Norway so we can get our passport stamped to the police station here and make a brief pause before sailing on further north towards the arctic circle happily we were safely docked on the pontoon and ready to take the lines of the aluminium expedition yacht when they arrived shortly after us we struck up a friendship chatting about the voyage and hopefully we'll see much more of them as they are also headed to Svalbard in the same time frame as us Ålesund is noted as being one of Norway's most beautiful once built of wood most of the city was burned down in one night in 1904 the town was rebuilt in stone brick and mortar mainly in 1904 to 1907 and the architects were influenced by the new prevailing style in europe the trending art nouveau it will only be a brief stop for us here and next time we will sail on to cross the arctic circle where we find a natural environment that takes our breath away of course don't forget to subscribe to make sure that you don't miss the next episode here on youtube continuing our voyage on Florence would not be possible without the support of our patrons thank you to all of you and especially to our star patrons three two one all right we can turn around now let's go home it's a cold it's no colder than it was five minutes ago