Blog Archive

Friday 3 July 2015

A week in the Faroe's

The sun did come out once or twice during the week we have been in the Faroe's but fog, drizzle and rain seem to be the default weather. On Thursday we took a trip by bus and ferry to Mykinnes and only found the lighthouse on the headland when we were 5 metres from it, such was the density of the fog. Great walk though out to the most western point which I am sure would have been very spectacular should any of it have been visible.







Puffins posed for their foggy photos and the ferry took us out to look at the gannet colony below the lighthouse - which we had not been able to see from above.

The ferry trip itself was an adventure. On the way out it ploughed into the swell at 15 knots before lurching to starboard to enter a tiny cove guarded by foaming rocks on either side. Once we had squeezed and surfed past these the captain spun the boat in the nautical equivalent of a handbrake turn before coming along side the jetty at the foot of the cliffs. On the way back he clipped the frothing headlands with only a few metres to spare and then ran the tide as he threaded between sea stack and cliff. Quite a showman!





The sun came out on the bus back to Torshavn and the lovely green Faroese landscape was at last revealed.

Back at the boat there were the usual decommissioning  jobs and then a leisurely supper in Torshavn's most expensive restaurant. Janus the harbour master dropped by at midnight to say his farewells and we chatted with Rachel the skipper/owner of Hummingbird who was rafted up to us. She runs a sailing adventure company (www.rubicon3.co.uk) that plies northern waters aboard her ex-Clipper 60. We may see them next month in north west Iceland when they are back from Greenland.



Boat jobs update:
Hallelujah the diesel generator is fixed with the help of our neighbouring ship yard. A relay had failed and a tiny wire to a thermal cut-out sensor had come adrift. 
The Tacktick wind sensor is being returned to Tacktick having given up the ghost after just 2 days.
The Digital Yachts internet router arbitrarily stopped talking to the wireless hub so that too is being returned.
Most other things are working- at least for the time being.