Last Saturday I with Oli and Bubbi took morning flight from Reykjavík to Egilsstaðir on Iceland´s east coast and purpose of the trip was to get their boat afloat and sail it Reykjavík as their boat came with ferry Norræna from Bergen in Norway three weeks ago, but were unable to go earlier as the weather forecasts had not been favourable, so finally we arrived at Egilsstaðir and we took all our gears which included our stuff plus lifeboat, survival suits, charts, food....... well which did include some Iceland´s dlicatesse..... "Lifrarpylsa" (liver sausage, Icelandic version of Haggish), "Blóðmör" (Bloody black sausage), "Þrumari" (black bread, which is baked over steam) all giving great energy
.
Ones we had accomulated all our stuff we found out there where no bus service to Seyðisfjörður where the boat was, so we had to take a taxi, which we did.
We got to Seyðisfjörður and immediately saw the boat on the flatrack, we started to prepare the boat for the hauling into water, Oli which was the lightest chap of us
and probably in best shape as well
got that job to get on top of the boat putting the mast back on to its position and putting the radar scanner back on while we other untigthed the boat.
As we were getting ready the crane arrived and Sævar prepared everything to haul it into the sea and that was a succesfull task.
Now was to start the engine, switch on all gadgets, refuelling and for that we got truck from Olís (one of four oil companies in Iceland), all performed well apart the Raymarine E 120 didn´t want to work, we tried to reset whole system but nothing worked out, so had to call my colleages at work who are specialists in Raymarine and Garmin (nice to have access to them day in day out...... free of charge
) and to admit I am not a technician of gods hand... so ... anyway nothing happened and Sævar even had one of his employee who had computer skillness to install the Navionics map into PC but unfortunately that did not work so we ended up that Sævar lended us the laptop with Garmin mapsource and Icelandic road map so we could sail to Neskaupsstað where we could have our representative for Raymarine to look at it. By this we had lost quite a few hours which we had planned to cruise to Höfn.
Just before 19.00 hours we left Seyðisfjörður and headed out the fjord, the daylight was coming to dust we got out and set the course south and navigating with landmap wasn´t the best but our only chance and now it was getting dark and visibility coming to zero as we approached Neskaupsstað just after 21.00 hours, had called Kári out to look at the system, even he was to late leaving his home for Akureyri where he was to take flight abroad early next morning he spent over hour and a half trying to fix the E 120, what he managed to do was resetting the system so the radar started to work properly but no GPS nor smart pilot so he gave up and now we had to make our mind for next step.....so what do you do in trouble.... answer was easy call mates at ICE-SAR and Daði came quickly and he was better than no one helpful and knowledgeable of all data end electronics, found out that the GPS signal got into the smart pilot but did not got into the main display so he decided to get one of his old Garmin handheld GPS´s to be exact Garmin 19 and fixed cable between the two units to enable E 120 receive the NMEA signal from Garmin and what a magic all started to work properly and he left us just before 02.00 clock in the morning. Daði we owe you meal at Friday´s when you come to Reykjavík to attend the SAR convention later in the month
Sunday morning came up and we woke up just before 05.00 and the goal was to sail to Vestmannaeyjar. Good breakfast and as we finished we sailed away from Neskaupsstað, nice conditions and we passed many interested places including Papey (an island named by Irish monks, settlers of the island) and as we got closer to the southeast corner the weather got to the worse but we got into Höfn via its difficult entrance.
We refueled and went back out again, as we got further away from Höfn they conditions incrisingly got to the worse with waves up to 18 feet and very sharp and short between the waves and after beeing cruising for an hour and half we only had gone 8 miles and we calculated that it would take us at least 20 hours to sail to Vestmannaeyjar and we would sail all night without any visability so the hard decission but wise decission to return back to Höfn, that took less than half an hour
Once we got back to Höfn we decide to go to the local hotel´s restaurant where Bubbi and Óli ordered Lobsters, but as I am not fish fan I picked duck and it all went well down to our stomach and we got back to the boat and went early to bed as decission was made to depart 04.15 hours.
We all woke up 03.45 good healthy breakfast, visability totally zero, we where lucky that local fishing vessel Hvanney was also departing and we were not used to depart Höfn we followed their track and safely we got out to the ocean, the sea conditions where totally different from the earlier day. Ones we approached Vík í Mýrdal it started to be bad again, our intention was to cruise through the hole at Dyrhólaey but due big waves this was not an option so after a bit of sightseeing we took the course to Vestmannaeyjar for refueling and the further west we sailed the weather started to worse further and we had to slow considerably down the speed, ones we got to Vestmannaeyjar there where bunch of friends waiting for us, the both teams that went across Iceland for charity in two ribs and it was great meeting them again.
After refueling we took the course to Reykjanes and as the wind was northwesterly our friends advised us to take the course straight ashore then heading west, we took their advise, but honestly that was not helpful as we approached the shore the wind and wave was more westerly and waves probably 20 feet or more as when we got down the valleys only vision we had was cloudy skies but as we had set ourselves a new goal, a day behind schedule we wanted to complete the trip today and we wanted to go through Húllið in broad daylight as we had no idea what to expect, so we speeded up more than we should do and we did abuse the boat a bit and it was challanging to steer through the waves gently, afterword it was challanging to steer and adrelaine on for hours especialy when on the helm.
As it started to dusk the waves started to ease and we managed to keep 20 knoths speed and ones we got to Húllið the sea was nearly calm so we could sail it without any visabilty but was nice, however soon after we got the worse part of the cruise all way to Reykjavík and our approach to our marina was 22.58 in the evening and Bubbi´s wife welcomed us with sandwiches which was very much appreciated.
Here comes my photos which where taken at Seyðisfjörður, then I took loads of photos on Óli´s camera and I am awaiting to have copy of them and soon I will add hopefully some magnificent scenery pictures, the time will tell.
Bogi
White Noise
