We left Rorvik yesterday morning under engine and have motored all the way since then.  Having decided earlier that we would stop short of Bodo, we’ve found a gem of an anchorage on the south side of the island of Fleine in a beautiful sheltered inlet with a huge mountain just to our north.  Although I normally hate motoring it has allowed us to explore places en route that we would never have reached under sail and it has been close pilotage all the way.  The real luxury has been that only one of us has needed to be on deck at any time, so we’re now all well rested.  We’ve seen several sea eagles – huge birds and the largest of the eagles – and a number of sea otters on rocks only meters away as we’ve motored through.  And finally we seem to have broken through the northern edge of the rain that has dampened progress for most of the past 24 hours.  We’re also now really in the Arctic, having crossed ‘the line’ at 0800 this morning (in the rain).

 

Tomorrow we’re going to head directly across to Reine, which is towards the south western tip of the Lofotens, and from there we’ll cruise in a slightly more leisurely fashion to Tromso where we need to be by next Tue ready for flights home the next day.  No photos this time as this is being sent via the satellite link and it doesn’t seem to want to play with large files tonight, so we’ll save pics of us celebrating crossing the Arctic Circle for later.  We considered paying homage to King Neptune but were pretty sure he doesn’t like gin, so saved it for ourselves.  Let’s hope we don’t regret it!