Moondog's new crew of Chris and Berwyn joined me at Liverpool airport on the 13th for the start of the next stage, where the first port of call turned out to be Grimstad ( 58:20.4N, 008:35.7E). Both are good friends ( let's hope this continues at the end of the voyage!). Chris is an old work colleague who did a very similar journey last year bringing his new yacht from Sweden to the UK, and Berwyn and I spent many months togetrher battling the Irish Sea on our Yachtmaster course last year. So we have 3 Yachtmasters on a 32 foot boat, so what can possibly go wrong ?!

 

Our Norwegian friends Greta and Knut collected us from the airport, gave us lunch and took us to the harbour, where Moondog was still in one piece after her first week alone in a strange port....perhaps I should get out more...Most importantly some small jobs that needed to be done to fix a small leak in the bathing platform had been completed and the Horten boatyard, working with the Sirius office in Germany had done a good job. We provisioned the boat ( beer etc) and then were ready for an early start on Wednesday.

 

We spent much time looking at long term weekly weather charts on the Tuesday night, and agreed a general plan of aiming to be in Kristiansand ( about 140 miles away), our jumping off point for the N Sea crossing, on Friday evening. It looked like we might then have a weather window ( defined as a period not quite as bad as the others before or after ) for the crossing to Scotland.

 

So, up with the lark and off our mooring at 6am, and off w ewent for Stavern, a nice little holiday town near Larvik , and 50 miles away, for the first day. This turned out to be motoring into a headwind all the way, down Oslo Fjord and then the wind was still unsailable as we went round the corner to travel SW to Stavern. The last section got very bumpy , with a strong F5 wind and a very confused and heavy sea...there is a reason for 'dangerous waves' warnings on the charts. We had thought of going on to Risor ( about another 25 miles or so) but these seas and winds persauded us to go to Stavern, where we arrived at 2pm. All very busy and we 'rafted up' 3 deep to some boats already there.

 

This is a nice little town, and we settled in to relax, and went into town, as the weather improved. Then we spoke to one of our neighbours who waqs planning on leaving that night to travel south, to catch a weather window of winds in the right direction, before bad weather and strong winds in the wrong direction later on Thursday. Berwyn and Chris ( aka 'the weather gurus' ) confirmed that assorted internet forecasts, GRIB files ( some strange data files decoded on our laptops) and a review of tea leaves and general feeling in the bones persauded them that this was indeed correct....so great news....off we went to sail through the night on our first day back in Norway.

 

We set off from Stavern at 7.45 pm, after refilling with fuel ( and paying for a night stay we were not going to use ) and off we went towards Arendal. The weather gurus were right, since the wind was fairly light at first as we motored along the coast, and settled in to '2 hrs on/ 4 hrs off' watches. At nightfall the wind increased to a F5 but we were now running straight downwind at around 7.5 kts and making so much speed that we were going to arrive in Arendal in the dark at about 2.30 am. So we slowed the boat a bit and stayed out at sea ( rather than weaving around the inner island chain in  the dark). We decided to press on to Grimstad, and finally arrived there at around 4.30 am on Wednesday, and groped around in the early dawn light for a berth...ultimately rafting alongside a nice big Halberg Rassey yacht. The owner seemed at bit surprised to being boarded at such an hour, but was much friendlier later in the day...obviously not an early morning person.

 

We then all got some sleep for a few hours and then regrouped for brunch and a concensus decision that the weather was such that we should stay and go to Kristiansand on Friday, and we treated the rest of the day as a rest period, and of cours emore time for weather map gazing. Since Grimstad has both an excellent fish shop and some good bars there seems little pressing need to move on !

 

We have made excellent progress , and covered about 100 miles in this first day, and since we took a direct sea route for most of it, this has got us to about 30 miles from Kristiansand, and  the forecast for tomorrow on ths bit of coast looks good, so hopefully we will meet our goal of Kristiansand by Friday evening.

 

Not many pics, since much of this trip was done at night and / or while I was asleep.However, I attach a few which show the very well organised marina here, plus action pics of the weather gurus hard at work.....