Dear friends,

As I have been asked to write in English, I will give it a try today. We are currently sailing up Trondheimsleija with one reef in the main and no fore sail and are doing between 8 and 9 knots. In other words blowing hats and high meaning ten to fourteen m/s. (Admittedly, we do not see any hats and high, but maybe they have just decided to blow somewhere else today).

We started very early this morning, at 0645 and have sailed 35 nm by noon.  We have some ambitious plans today but more about that later.

Surprise,surprise, we are about to take a big risk, changing the menu for lunch. A bag of Pea soup appeared from the freezer. It was careully made at home in Snarøya and smells promising.

Back to Kristiansud, we arrived at 1800 last night. PG and Marianne brought with them a fancy bottle of Gin and after a careful consideration, we decided that it probably would not benefit from being captured in the bottle too long, so we had to test a small GT while coocking the fish we had captured earlier in the day. It was soooo good.

Just after dinner two French guys from a nabouring boat came visiting to study the 2 km’s of rope on Capraia. They were on their way to Lofoten but had to wait for a crew member who was in hospital. Last year they sailed to Patagonia and there the skipper had died. With those two incidents in mind, we wondered if they could be terrorists or carried a decease (which we preferred that they kept to themselves) so they were not invited on board.

A little later we did invite another man on board. He had spotted Capraia on the AIS when we arrived in Ålesund. He wanted to see a Sweden Yacht 45 and was very happy when he saw us sailing to Kristiansund, only one hour drive from his home in Molde so he jumped in the car and came to us. He was extremely happy with what he saw so now we have another member in the SY45 Fan club.

Kritiansund is interesting, once really blooming with a lot of offshore activities and a very busy harbour with loads of vessels. Not so now. An old rusty Russian fishing vessel with a name we could not read for obvious reasons, (later we found out it was Capitain Gorbachev) and a FSP ship, Njård B(FSP being Floating Storage production). Good to have a previous skipper from a Seismikk ship on board (PG). The ship was there for decomitioning (= getting ready to be scrapped). It tells it all.

Back to the sailing. No more writing while sailing. We wind increased rapidly and we saw 14 to 17 m/s (28 to 34 knots of wind) and we sailed constantly at 8-10 knots with a record surf of 11,8 knots on just the reefed main. When the wind dropped to 12 to 14 m/s we mounted the jib and we kept up the speed while sailing on 120 degres on the wind.

We logged 85 nm today and arrived at Kuringvågen Marina in time for dinner. At least the skipper is pretty tired and the creativity is low. Sorry folks… The harbour is just great. Thank you Prikken for giving us all these great tips on where to sail and which harbours to visit. We owe you a dinner !!

The anchor drink today was non alcoholic beer. Would probably fall asleep immediately if we tried something stronger today. We had a fantastic sailing day today (one of the best) and thanks to PG and Marianne who is doing a great job on-board. Now a quick shower before dinner so the blog ends here today. Should I try to write more in English or go back to Norwegian? Any input is welcome…. And with this, the blog ends today.