Ronnie chose tonights anchorage and he chose well. Blue sky and sunshine bathed the fjord whilst dollops of cloud lurked everywhere else creating a brooding mountainscape above a shimmering sea.
Ashore was even more magical with heavily perfumed air wafting from extraordinary wild flower meadows. Huge clumps of orchids, dense purple geraniums and the heavily scented angelica.
As we walked higher the ground was densely carpeted with mosses, lichens and wild thyme.
Hummingbird, last seen by us at Torshavn 5 weeks ago, was anchored 300m from us and, as we went ashore, she sailed neatly off her anchor before gybing down the fjord and onto their next adventure.
The tiny summer settlement boasted a cafe in the old doctor's house where we ate pancakes and saw pictures of arctic fox sighted the night before. This had been a whaling station until the 1950's and rusting boilers and bleached white bones stood as stark reminders in this arctic paradise.
Jonas and his wife spoke hardly any English but were camping out in their cabin that had once been his family home. Now living in Keflavik they come here for just one week each summer to revisit the place of his childhood. They gave us a picture of the village as it used to be before the whaling and herring fishery collapsed and before the bishop moved the church.
As we ran under headsail out of the fjord arctic terns attacked a bait ball driven into the shallows by a canny whale that breached and blew yards from it.
A perfect northern anchorage.
