Leka

Wednesday - Short but humid journey between Rørvik and Leka (20 miles). 

Thursday - Getting ready for the Tour de Leka, 35km on this brand-new and very red tandem-bike!

Leka is the geologic mecca of Norway. The ocre rocks that can be seen on the western part of the island used to be submerged. The crash between American and European tectonic plates made them rise from water depth of several hundred meters. See geologic map here.

View from the road - 1

View from the road - 2

Oystercatchers (adult and kid) looking for lunch

Trondheim-Rørvik

Hasselvika, on our way out from Trondheimsfjorden. Saturday night.

On Sunday, it all started with a beautiful sailing. On a sea without waves, and with a clean hull, l'Olonnois is faster than ever.

View of Smellingen, near the outlet of Trondheimsfjorden. During this 19 hours sailing, all possible sail configurations were used, from reefed main sail and stay stail (trinquette), to full main and full genoa. We arrive at Rørvik on Monday morning at 5AM.

On the top of Vattin, near Kolvereid and Rørvik.

Marie, together with Steingrim and Marit.  Sight-seeing, hiking, lake swimming, visit of a modern stable with automatic cow milking (laser  and RFID-based... a delight for engineers). The hospitality of Nord-Trøndere is again tested hard and highly approved. Takk for oss :-)

Getting prepared to sail to the Lofoten archipelago!

After some technical work including:
- Changing the pump + cylinder to lift the rudder (see picture below),
- Changing two of the three ertacetal guides holding the rudder (thank you Celtinox)
- Tuning the pitch of the propeller for increased speed
- Changing all fixed anodes
- Scraping the old antifouling paint, and applying two strokes of new antifouling on the hull and appendages + new painting near the waterline
- Various maintenance tasks on the engine
- Changing two out of four 100Ah batteries
- Changing our fixed VHF
- Changing our main compass
- Various maintenance tasks on the sails

...l'Olonnois is soon ready for a new trip... to Northern Norway and the Lofoten archipelago, this time.

Stay tuned :-)

l'Olonnois : the movie :-)

Part I : Norway - Portugal
Part II: Madeira - Cape Verde

Right-click, "Save as...", and enjoy :-)

Distance sailed during the Atlantic trip

Based on tracking points visible on this chart

The "flat" parts correspond to longer stops, or periods during which we sailed slowly (Spain-Portugal, Martinique, Iceland).

The parts with large slope correspond to crossings :
- Cape Verde to Martinique, December 2012,
- Newfoundland-Iceland,  July 2013
- Iceland-Norway, August 2013

The total distance 11728nm does not account for the rounding of capes, legs of tacking, etc... The averaged monthly sailed distance was thus probably about 1000 nm/month :-)