Our position is 58:14.850N 08:22.771E

Distance covered 20.8 Nm

It finally stopped raining at breakfast time on Thursday, so, in spite of a wind forecast that was for strong south westerlies (on the nose for our planned destination, Lillesand) we set off with the intention of sticking, as far as possible, to a track inside the islands, where there would be more shelter and the seas would be calmer.

  Some views of Arendal as we left and it wasn’t raining. The Norwegian owner of the motorboat and his partner lived on it all the year round, but they were allowed to moor further in during the winter.

There were some very smart houses on the island on the other side of the fjord to Arendal

This appeared to be a school trip – not sure of the educational value of fishing in a country where it seems to be all most people do

  Venturing out to sail among the rocks

As the day progressed the sun came out but the temperature dropped and the wind got stronger. The windy passages between the rocks were generally in flat water but when we had to slip out into exposed water the seas were quite rough.

Guess this fishing boat had been successful judging by the number of followers he had

  Every rock had a lighthouse

  This was one of the narrow gaps we had to go through

  Yet another house with a light in front of it

During the final leg there were 30kn gusts but at least we had no sails up to get overpowered, but it was with relief we motored into the shelter of the little guest harbour at the pretty town of Lillesand.

  This house was in the approaches to Lillesand and appeared to have been sized to fit the rock it was on top of

On the adjoining pontoon was the first British boat we had seen in Norway, and they were also flying a CA burgee. On our first trip ashore we met Nick, who turned out to be an ex-Merlin Rocket sailor, but he was only part of the delivery crew and going home on Friday. Still it was good to reminisce about the old days and mutual acquaintances. His skipper, Ian also turned up, having been ashore to a café to use their wifi, but he was keen to get back on board as it was his turn to cook, so we parted. They were headed for the Gota canal and had come from West Mersea via Shetland so it would have been good to share experiences, but unfortunately they were moving on early the next day so it was not to be.

We carried on ashore and looked round the town, bought a pizza for tea and then back for drinks in the evening sunshine in the cockpit.

  These were for sale at the hardware shop and we think they are anchors for moorings

    Birds on the pontoon while we were enjoying our evening drink

Rain was forecast for Friday so we decided to stay put and catch up on laundry and some boat jobs that didn’t get done in Arendal . Luckily the rain, although heavy, was intermittent so we were able to put this plan into operation as well as shopping, showering and changing our redundant currencies at the local bank. Because it is still not the yachting season here we had to go to the town office to buy the tokens for the showers and washing machines. The day before we had arrived too late to do this as they shut at 15.00 but today there was a very friendly, helpful lady at the reception desk and we were able to obtain the necessary tokens for both the washing machines and showers.

  The town office – source of useful tokens