Steve and Linda write a regular column for SetSailors from wherever they happen to be. Join in as they cruise the world and discuss topics of interest to sailors everywhere. Here you’ll find their articles dating from 1996 to the present.
Norway has an incredibly complex array of channels through reefs, rocks, and islands. To assist the mariner through these are a series of sectored lights and light houses. White light means you are on course. Red or green colors of light indicate the direction needed to turn to get back into the white sector.
When laying our a course on the chart plotter we start with the white sectors.
With this new website system it is easier for us to upload blogs and photos. We can share more of what we are observing, hopefully without boring you. We are now at 64 degrees North latitude. That’s 300 miles above where yachts normally cruise in Alaska, and where you can walk on ice in the Antarctic. Yet we are told that the green pastures, flowers, and lack of snow are typical for this part of Norway in mid-May.
Efficient powering (for sail and motor vessels) is primarily a function of the speed length ratio (SLR) at which the hull operates. To determine your SLR simply take the square root of your waterline length, and divide this into the boat speed. A 36 foot waterline has a square root of six, and at seven knots would be operating at a SLR of 1.18.
For almost all vessels, sail, power, pleasure, and commercial, you will get the most distance for a given quantity of fuel at a SLR of .9. So, for our 36 foot waterline example that’s a speed of 5.4 knots.
With AIS we can check the basic dimensions of the ships we see, note how fast they are going, and get a feel for their efficiency by looking at the bow and stern waves. This is particularly interesting in Norway where ship design is a highly developed art (and has been for at least 12 centuries).
Take the ferry in the top photo.
We figured we were done with big cities this year after a month in London, but as our route north was within a few miles of Norway’s second largest city, and it comes highly recommended, we decided to make a slight detour.
Yachts tie up in the heart of the city. That’s the good news. You can walk to the main attractions within a few minutes. But it is also the bad news as you are on display, and there is a constant stream of foot and wheeled traffic.
We’re waterfall junkies. We love the shapes, textures, and visual contrasts these generate when they are turned on. The falls in Geiranger are substantial, but have a feathery feel, probably due to the great height from which they drop.
The last couple of days we have had a small oil leak on the port engine. Not much – what you see above is after six hours of running – but we wanted to find the source before proceeding.
To visit Geiranger fiord you have to detour 100 miles from the path north. We debated the need to see “another” fiord – we have seen some of the most spectacular on the planet in other countries – and then decided when in Norway one must visit a fiord.
So here we are, taking it in, and what a wonderful surprise this has turned out to be.
This fiord has a softer feel than what you experience in Alaska or Greenland.
We’ve gotten out of the habit of letting all our chain out at the beginning of each cruising season to check for chain balls and kinks. Not any more. The mess you see above came to light this afternoon as we were anchoring in 90 feet (27m) of water and so using more than the normal amount of chain.
As this twisted section came up through the chain pipe it jammed. Not a nice thing on a good day, and potentially disastrous in a difficult situation.
We’ve been hearing about the Norwegian coast around Statt for the past year. It has a fearsome reputation amongst commercial and amateurs alike. John Harries has warned us, several Brits who we met in the UK talked it up, and two local ship captains (most recently Per of who we spoke in the last blog) spoke of it with awe and respect. Sometimes reputations grow with telling. At other times they are earned with destruction and death. In this case, we can see how the latter applies.
There are a variety of factors which contribute to this situation.
With all the spectacular places there are to cruise, what we have learned over and over again is that its the people you meet along the way – afloat and ashore – who make the cruising lifestyle so wonderful.
We mentioned yesterday it was hard to drive the boat in tight spots and take photos. But we had such a good example this morning we snapped a couple of quick photos. The next series are of a passage near Rugsund, Norway, which cannot be more than 75 feet (22m) wide in places.
We admit we are visual adrenalin junkies. After places like Prince William Sound in Alaska and the Prince Christian Channels of Greenland, our tastes border on jaded. We love placid weather… for a while. But at some point it feels good to be out in a stiff blow, to see the sky lowering, and squalls sweeping down to leeward. Today the aesthetic and weather meshed, and Norway got a lot more interesting.
We’ve been using a digital programmable thermostat to control our diesel boiler. This allows us to program four different set of time and temperature during the day. Our sleeping cabin is kept cold during the day, turns the heat on an hour before bed time, and goes to low heat (but still on) until morning, when we are programmed to warm up just a bit.
We submit the photo above as a baseline for thinking about anchor size. We are ensconced in Vikingevagen, Norway. A tight, protected anchorage. Water depth is 40 feet (12m) and the barometer is plunging. It is gusting 40 knots, and the granite shore is 150 feet (45m) off our stern. This is not a situation in which you want to worry about anchor size.
So, how big an anchor is right?
One of the things we love about cruising to new destinations is looking at the boats, commercial and pleasure. Since arriving in Norway we’ve snapped a few photos of things we like and others we don’t (the latter are sometimes more instructive than the former).
We’ll start with the stern anchoring set up here. The combination fairlead and chain/rope windlass is a simple way to deal with storage if you anchor a lot by the stern. The rode can easily stow in the lazarette or a seat locker.
Here is a photo we have not seen since Greenland – Wind Horse anchored in a secure, beautiful, unpopulated cove. There is a gale blowing, low clouds are interspersed with rain squalls, and we are catching up on boat chores, writing, exercise, and maybe later today a movie.
We’re done with big cities. Stavanger and Haugesund are in our wake, and we’ve resolved our internet situation. Turns out the dongle from the UK has a block, so we needed to acquire a Telenor dongle for the enormous sum of US$150. Nobody said Norway was cheap (but we need reliable daily communications for the FPB 64 program).
Norway has to be one of the more confusing areas to navigate. There are intricate channels, thousands of reefs, rocks, and small islands, and lots of alternate routes. Add in a significant amount of commercial traffic and situational awareness becomes paramount. Our three monitor layout has been getting a workout.
Arriving in Norway on May first is cause for celebration. The locals were out in force to greet us too.
We’re alongside the town dock in Stavanger, Norway, awaiting clearance. A comfortable voyage across the North Sea is behind us. It is quite warm, considering we are at the same latitude as Skagway, Alaska and this is the first of May. We’ll be here for a day or two and then we’ll be off exploring to the North.
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5/1/2009 10:00 AM (UTC) position 58
Barometer is up to 1020, wind is behind us(go Azores high!) and we are cruising in IFR conditions (heavy fog). However, traffic is light, just oil platforms around here, and between the Furuno 2117 radar and AIS we have excellent situational awareness.
There has been a very small salt water leak in the engine room for several years. Having checked everything many times to no avail, we are pleased to report it is finally crossed off the list. There was a slightly loose hose clamp on the salt water cooling circuit at the forward end of the starboard engine. Just half a turn on the bolt was all it took, and we are back to a dry bilge.
On the negative side of the maintenance ledger our water maker membranes appeared to have deteriorated during winter storage. Productivity is down to 25GPH from 32/35GPH last summer. Water temperature is moderate – 49F – and we doubt the salinity of the North Sea could account for the drop. We’ll give the membranes a cleaning once we get moored. Note that this is the first time the membranes have been during layup. In the past they have been periodically flushed with fresh water.
We have been studying up on Norwegian cruising options, of which there are many. Too many places to visit for one summer. Going to have to come up with a plan.
Given that we are now in the North Sea, an abundance of weather caution is warranted. This area is shallow, beset with current, and not the kind of place you want to test your heavy weather skills if it can be avoided.
So, we’ve been headed for Great Yarmouth, about 80 miles north of the Thames Estuary. We can get in and out without a lot of consideration for the state of the tide.
To make things interesting the Azores high is playing games with a big depression situated south of Iceland. Right now the barometer is rising, the most recent forecasts are pleasant, and it appears as if the low is going to move slowly towards the northeast. What we don’t want to see happen is for the low to accelerate in our direction, perhaps developing a compression zone with the high in the process.
We need 40 hours to cover the 430 miles from here to Tanager, Norway, which sounds reasonable in light of the faxes, GRIB, barometer, and sky. If the weather does deteriorate, the wind will be behind us, and would only be for the last 12 to 18 hours.
So, we are altering course for Scandinavia… for now.
We’ve cleared the locks at St. Katherine’s and are headed down the Thames River. Weather looks favorable for the next 48 hours both on the surface and at the 500mb level. We’re aiming North, towards Norway. This report is the first of what we hope will be a series sent via Sailmail, and automatically posted to the website. More later (if the new system works).
When you see a photo like this, a US Navy warship about to board a Somali fishing boat towing skiffs, you realize the world of cruising has changed.
We noticed a recent item in Scuttlebut and then several racing buddies sent us the recent LA Times story about the Newport to Ensenada Race multi-hull controversy. Since we were once caught up in this ourselves – and it changed our lives forever – we thought some history might be of interest.
Dave Snow, a Puget Sound sailor sent some excellent questions about our recent blog about crossing the English Channel. We’ll try and answer them here.
You’d think London would be bristling with wifi options. There was good service in marinas from Falmouth to Southampton. But we’ve been bandwidth challenged in St. Katherine’s Docks.
We see two pay to play wifi options with our high gain antenna and access point. Both – BT Open Zone and Something Wireless – are slow and of intermittent availability. We subscribed to both – roughly US$22. per month for each – so we had a choice.
But wait. It gets better.
We have commented in the past about the British penchant for sail training. This healthy (or somewhat crazy) affliction reaches its zenith in crewed around the world races, for which the participants pay a healthy fee. There is a Clipper Race entrant off our stern today.
We are always fascinated by the signs to be found in new destinations. London is particularly rich in material, starting with the example above.
We have been using the same set of Yale Ropes high modulus dock lines coming onto four years now. These 11mm (7/16″) ropes are as strong as our normal 24mm (one inch) polyester, weigh a fraction of the latter, and are less prone to chafe. And they are obviously a lot easier to handle.
Last summer in Greenland, with water temperature barely above freezing and air about the same, we decided to see how tough we were, and if we could sleep with the diesel heater turned off.
A double dose of blankets did the trick. But the pain of warming the cool sheets at the beginning of our sojurn abed disuaded us from further experimentation.
We commented earlier on the fashions we have noted within St. Katherine’s docks. As you will want to be up on the latest, we shall now add to these observations. We begin with Wind Horse wearing her privacy panel (aka weather cloth) for the first time. These are at head height, so the folks walking down the dock cannot see in, yet our interior view is only partially restricted.
For those of you following the construction of the first FPB 64s, we’ve posted Progress Report #9 on the Dashew Offshore website. Click here to check it out.
When we purchased the Northern Lights genset for Wind Horse it was only available at the time with a sound shield. Since we were paying for it we decided to give it a try. However, a hidden salt water leak and less than robust latches convinced us to leave off the side panels. We were not comfortable with having to remove the side panels for routine inspection.
Our little enclave of St. Katherine’s docks is feeling very British. As evidence we offer the photo above of the one, very narrow street through this area.
The Thames River and London are a bit overwhelming to folks like us who are more attuned to the quiet of Greenland or Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The maze of shoals and channels at the entrance to the Thames appears daunting, but then the reality is not that bad. We hope London proves the same. The River starts to become interesting around Greenwich. The Naval War College (above) was so lovely we had to slow down to enjoy the view.
There are some confusing rules about import duty, value added tax, and the status of visitors to the EU. The safest approach seems to be to clear out of the EU, and then back in by visiting the Channel Islands and then returning. The port of Bray on the Island of Alderney is just 75 miles from Lymington and normally a casual journey, except for three factors.
Last summer we began to have intermittent electrical problems with our heavier load devices. A series of tests and checks traced the problem to a battery switch which we took out of service. It was not until our return to the boat that we got around to replacing this device. In the photo above note the discoloration from heat caused by poor internal contacts (the switch handles 300+ amps on a regular basis). Read the rest »
We’ve negotiated the tortuous course from our storage position on the hard at Berthon’s (Lymington, UK) to the travel lift bay. Although the yard crew was never in doubt, we are amazed at how easily they maneuvered our somewhat lengthy hull through a very crowded storage area. Read the rest »
Here’s an uncomfortable fact. Every year a not insignificant quantity of shipping containers are lost overboard due to adverse weather. Most of these sink, but a few, filled with light cargo and packing material, stay afloat. Since containerization has been around now for forty years, you would think the cumulative effect would be staggering. Yet there do not seem to be that many incidents with yachts and containers.
Although we have left our boats in many parts of the world, this is the first time where we have had to consider sub-freezing temperatures. We talked to folks from various areas who live in these climates and received all sorts of advice, some of which was in conflict.
We’ve been so busy the last two months, catching up on design work for the FPB 64s in New Zealand and dealing with projects put on hold last spring, that we have only recently had time to reflect on the past year.
Wind Horse is exceptionally quiet under way. She is easier on the ears, in fact, than was Beowulf at the same average speed under sail. Still, in spite of a minuscule 57dB at cruising speed we have been slowly fine tuning the sound levels.
We have been told by folks that the British Met. Service tends to overforecast, and to take their gale warnings with a grain of salt. Not this time! When we left the Beaulieu River the day was chatted up to be brisk. About 1100 we heard a storm warning on VHF. A couple of hours, comfortably secure on the dock in Yarmouth we had a great view of the Solent over the seawall, as the forecast force 9/10 breeze came in.