Norwegian Waters

Just back from a 730 nautical mile trip from Bodo, up in the Arctic Circle down to Bergen, on an Oyster 55 (something of a contrast to my own smaller fleet of canoes).

Jackie dressed for Arctic Circle sailing and on the helm.

The land appears to instantly disappear into truly deep water allowing the coasters to almost skim the mountains, north & south, up the Norwegian Coast.

This coast is just peppered with rocks, with long stretches 15 miles or so out!

There were two highlights of this excellent trip for me and this was the first, diverting to explore the Svartissen glacier.

It's not every evening you pick up a mooring for the night at the foot of a glacier.

My watch on the helm!

Onoy Island

One of the Arctic Circle marks

Into Kristiansund to sit out some gale force winds in the forecast. I liked Christiansund, which was a good job as we spent several days here. The forecast around Statt headland (our next obstacle) turned to Storm force 10 and clearly that was not the place to be (so Kristiansund and surrounding anchorages became our base for a few days).

My second highlight was chancing on a wooden boat centre, including some real gems. The one that took my eye particularly, was the Colin Archer yacht 'Christiansund' and I would love the chance of a sail on one of these Norwegian classics sometime in the future.

For anyone wanting to see these heavy displacement historic boats (which formed the first lifeboat service for this coast), have a look at this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmI5_nrJ58k&feature=channel

A design above which has clearly influenced Iain Oughtred (designer of my sailing canoe on this blog) with some of his other great designs.

The moorings in crystal clear (but cold) water were something very special.

The Storm and Gales gradually went although the next 300 miles were sailed mainly in force 7, near gale conditions and with some big seas hard on the quarter. Surfing down these waves will be something to remember. The body clock during these passages had to get used to four hour watches, four hours off, repeating this cycle. This was definitely an interesting experience, particularly eating and putting sailing gear on, while the yacht rolled heavily down the waves. Sleeping was not a problem (at least for me) well tied into the berth with lee cloth in place to keep me there.

We eventually arrive in Bergen at first light.

A place of:

Fish

Dried fish

Photogenic wooden buildings and great views down over the city (below)

A really good holiday and for anyone else interested, Velvet Lady sailing comes highly recommended http://www.velvetadventuresailing.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=1

Quick video below (until I find time to edit the main video together), with Michael on the helm.

Read More..

Sailing Canoe "Swift"

First sail of the season

First sail (and swim!) of the season. It's a long time since the canoe was in the build stage in the workshop (see earlier posts) so fitting in a first sail in March has got 2010 boating off to a good start. It also made a nice change from the current maintenance work and stripping down antifouling in the boatyard. It is a great deal more picturesque and better for the lungs).

New crew

Read More..

Making Paddles

Time for a pair of single paddles for Swift


The excellent book by Warren and Gidmark provides some good tips and offsets to mark out various designs. I choose the 'Sugar Island' design and glue up blanks in Ash, with some mahogany decorative stripes and protective strip glued accross the end grain.

The blanks are marked out from a centre line, measuring out to each offset dimension and then joining up the points with a clean curve.

The next job was to cut out the profile in plan.

I will revert to imperial measurements as that's what provided in the design book. So the blanks were glued up to an even thickness of 1 1/4" (being the maximum thickness of the stocks). As the paddles will only be 3/8" at most there is plenty of waste. I choose to router the worst of this off before hand planing.

There is still plenty to go at with a smoothing plane, block plane and spokeshave. Once I have my 3/8" thickness (9 mm) in the centre and paddle endges which are shaped down to 3/32" ('say' 2.5mm) I move onto the opposite end and start to shape the grip.

The candle on the bench was left over from a wedding reception and keeps the bottom of the planes moving well over the timber!

Most of the shaping on the stock and grip is completed with a sharp spokesave and the Ash works relatively easily.

The finished grip.

And the finished product! The double paddle made at the same time as Swift last year was varnished, so I will try oiling these ones and see which proves to be the most practical finish.

Read More..

Completion

Sails Up!

An almost invisible repair complete, so back in business for some winter sailing on a very flooded welsh lake.

Passes inspection from wife - declared seaworthy.

Read More..