Husavik 66:02.7N 17:20.9W
Millybrown
Mark Hillmann
Fri 27 Jun 2008 23:14
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A wet, windy and worrying end after a promising
start.
It looked on the forecast as if we might have a
reach all the way, after the previous run in sushine, but no such
luck.
Instead of staying north the
wind steadily worked round to west. It came on to rain and the wind
got up to 30 knots in the gusts.
Just before the rain I saw what looked like rain
squalls, except they did not move, perhaps they were sunshine patches, further
away than they looked, but in the end I suspect they are steam from the
sea, or from a marsh ashore. What do you think?
 They were near Bakkalaupsos at
a position of about 66 degrees 10 minutes N and 16 degrees
47 minutes west.
After that there was a long beat around a headland
in a rising wind. Down to 3 reefs and the staysail, bashing to windward
and raining.
Then we bore away down the coast but that meant a
run into Husavik, single handed into a strange port in 30 knot gusts, a full
force 7.
They did not answer the radio, well it was after
5pm and I have yet to get a response in either Iceland or the Faroes.
The harbour master at Torshaven in the Faroes did
apologise and said he was on a call to a commercial ship.
The Iceland coastguard sounded relieved when I
suggested email, to let them know what we were doing.
Perhaps the fjords give them patchy coverage
inshore
We motored with only a little mainsail after I took
the staysail down, while I got ropes and fenders out.
Then mainsail down and we motored
into Husavik.
It was straight downwind into shallow water, but
there was nowhere else to go.
I opened the throttle to help steering and we
surfed down a couple of breakers but with a total absence of drama rounded
the breakwater.
There ahead of us were full size freighters,
it was a proper harbour. It is strangely difficult to visualise
scale from a chart.
Arrival in a little harbour, going fast with no
room to turn and too much wind would have been tricky,
but here there was plenty of room to motor in
circles if we wanted. Head to wind alongside a fishing boat and
tie on - easy.
Mark
on Milly Brown |