Blog Archive

Friday 31 July 2015

What did you do on your summer holidays?


It's high summer and the sun is shining but whilst most sensible folk are baring their flesh we are adding layer after layer! 

Tonight we should kiss the Arctic Circle as we round the most northerly tip of Iceland leaving the Norwegian Sea behind us and entering, for the first time, the Greenland Sea.

We tied up at Vopnafjorfur at midnight last night and the harbour master was on the pier to take our lines. Supper in the form of a midnight feast meant that we didn't get to bed until it was properly dark - at about 01:30. Morning saw us stroll into town for a fix of caffeine, Internet and cough medicine. Very nice it was too. Apparently we are only the 5th yacht to visit this year so I think we are now officially off piste.

The ever so friendly harbour master drove us to a garage to fill a couple of cans of diesel and then we pushed off after lunch aiming to get to Hussavik in about 20 hours or so. That should mean that the first of the exposed capes will have been rounded in settled weather.

Raymarine isn't flavour of the month again as today our flux gate compass persistently tries to lead the auto helm astray by firing off rubbish data. We have seen this all before and thought we had fixed it when the pilot was sent back to the manufacturer and we replaced and re-positioned the compass. No such luck! So now we are enjoying the sunshine at the helm whilst cursing Raymarine and hoping it fixes itself before the weather turns grim.

On the picture below the green arrow shows the direction we are really heading whilst the compass thinks the opposite.