Two friends of mine, Diego and Pelayo, and I planned to sail to either Germany or Denmark (depending on the corona situation) some time ago. Before venturing on such a trip, and especially crossing of the North Sea, we decided to trial Syvsover together on something a bit shorter, i.e., sailing to either Haugesund or Stavanger. Unfortunately the weather in south-western Norway has been disappointing this “summer” so far. The winds were either way to strong or it rained constantly, making any trip outside just uncomfortable.
Now in mid August the weather seemed to calm down a bit, we picked Haugesund as our destination and went right at it.
Day 1 Florvåg – Goddo
I picked up Diego and Pelayo at the ferry and we left Florvåg for our first stop Goddo at around 10:00. It being sunday with a lot of traffic on the waterways in and out of Bergen we decided to motor our way until past Bjorøyna.
The weather was above all our expectations. After weeks of gloomy, rainy and cloudy skies somehow nobody expected anymore a real sunny day with bearable temperatures.
Once the motor silenced and the sails up we made good progress, around 5 knots average. The northerly wind at around 12kts only dropped around Huftarøy and changing direction due to terrain.
Heading in south-easterly direction into Selbjørnsfjorden we got a bit more wind, around 17kts gusting 21kts. So we crossed Selbjørnsfjorden faster than expected. I think the maximum speed over ground I saw on the plotter was 7.8kts.
Entering the entrance between Eggøya and Siglo the boat rolled a bit around since the stabilising effect of the sails was absent now but it quickly calmed down as we got more and more sheltered to the waves.
The last part of our way consisted of slowly navigating through the tight channels towards our planned mooring spot. Pelayo was at the wheel and I was concentrating on the chart plotter and the crosschecked position and depth on the paper map. Diego enthusiastically caught us two mackerel as dinner supplement. The last, and most narrow part started at the cairn at Steinkrossen and we reached Goddo around 1.5 hours later.
The boat safely tied up to the floating bridge we explored the surroundings a bit and Diego made us a very nice dinner with the two mackerel he caught earlier.
With a full belly Diego tried to catch some more fish while Pelayo and I collected cockles on a little sandy strip next to the floating bridge. We even found two kind of oysters.
The cockles were kept in the fridge for the next evening. Of the oysters we found, the native one got to live out its life where we found it. The other oyster species we found, of the invasive, mediterranean kind, got sampled by Pelayo who concluded quite colourfully that they were no good.
During the evening, the concentration of gnats increased significantly around the boat. This put an end to any more fishing/exploration, and we tucked in for the night.
Day 2 Goddo – Haugesund
The next morning we awoke to a completely calm water surface, and according to the forecast another sunny day in stock for us.
After some coffee we left for Haugesund. The main objective of the day was to get the boat out on the north sea and find our way around all the small islands to our destination. Unfortunately the winds were very calm, maybe 5 knots at the most, so we had to motorsail on our way south.
With Diego at the helm, main and jib hoisted, and a simple preventer rigged, the boat was stable and it made for a comfortable ride with little rolling motion.
We arrived in Haugesund in the early afternoon. When we were done with some shopping and lunch, a pilot colleague, his girlfriend, and a colleague of hers dropped by for some beers on board. Later that evening Pelayo prepared the cockles with spaghetti for a nice dinner, and after some reminiscing about all kinds of stuff and just enjoying the moment, we went to sleep.
Day 3 – The Way Back
Before we left Haugesund Pelayo had a special mission, i.e., visiting the place he left in 2016 with the viking ship Draken to sail to the USA after working there during the building process. The place was located right around the corner and we could moor directly in front of it.
By now Diego and I had heard quite some stories about Draken and for us it was interesting to see were it was built, while for Pelayo it seemed to be a bit of a strange experience to find a place were Draken’s crew worked and lived in a state almost as they left it around 4 years ago.
After having a conversation with one of the ship builders we met in the office we were on our way north towards Bergen again.
Since the weather forecast gave us only light winds, and on top of that right on our nose for the next few days, we decided early on to just keep motoring back through the fjords in one day-long leg. Thus the last day went by rather uneventfully apart from two sightings of whales, probably harbour porpoises due to their size. More or less twelve hours after leaving Haugesund, we were back where we started and content with a successful trip without breaking anything major.
Syvsover 
Hei, habe alles überflogen! Werde es mit Papa nochmal in Deutsch lesen 🤣 Scheint ja ein gelungener Ausflug gewesen zu sein! Willst Du sowas nicht mal Sebastian, Marcel oder Maurice anbieten mitzufahren? Damit die mal rauskommen? Bis bald! Mama 🍀🍀🍀