(17’ clinker double-ender, lug & small jib)

We left Eel laid up waiting to explore the Lofotens in 1983. In fact my ambitions were more grandiose: the tacit understanding was that I’d like to get to the North Cape, if possible. But in deference to cautious (and equally tacit) disapproval at home, my plans stayed fluid until I was within striking distance of the cape itself. My only commitment was to have Eel back at Bodø by August 20th to have her shipped home. This, the only practical problem of the cruise, had already been resolved for me in a typically generous Norwegian fashion. As with all my Norwegian problems, I had written to Kim Berner in Stavanger, asking how much it would cost to get her shipped home. In reply I received this amazing letter:

“Good news: Eel will be taken from Bodø to England at zero cost. You just name the time to Trygve Middelthon at C Middelthon's Dampskipsexpedition in Stavanger.”

And on my side, that was it, except for heartfelt letters of thanks to Kim, to the Nord-Poolen and Nor-Cargo Shipping Companies, and especially to Trygve Middelthon who arranged it for me.

My twin, Robert, reluctantly agreed to join me for the first fortnight. As student travellers we took the train to Bodø via Harwich - Hook, Copenhagen, Oslo and Trondheim. We were carrying four bags of clothes and food, about 30 charts I was lucky enough to borrow from the club, and an 8ft oar, now expertly repaired by my college boatmen.

As we changed trains in Trondheim, I spotted an RCC burgee and called on Major Kerr (Assent) for a very quick drink. In Bodø we had to work out the bus company's timetable and eventually found two buses and a ferry which connected to get us to Halsa four and a half hours later, three days out from London.

Eel was as we had left her, at the top of a boatshed with three launches between her and the water. All that had gone were the flags, including the club burgee; so I assumed there was an unauthorised fourth (perhaps toy) yacht flying the RCC burgee in Arctic waters last summer. Robert said he was “bored with this shed”, so we set to boat-moving immediately (at 1700). We had to move out the launches, wash out Eel, patch her paintwork and slap on a coat of antifouling, launch and rig her, and finally return the launches to the shed. We made good use of the midnight sun with ten solid hours’ work, but we were glad to get to bed at 0330.

Up late next day (26th June), we drifted and rowed a little way in the drizzle. It was nice to feel her lifting to a swell again. We really started sailing on 27th when a gentle breeze and a drizzling day took us to Støtt: islands teeming with terns, oystercatchers, guillemots and eider. We discovered in the morning that a causeway now joins the islands, but Eel could just squeeze under the bridge, saving a four-mile detour. We were surprised how much harbour work had been completed since 1971 (when the charts were last corrected), and this is coupled with factory and road-building work, often on the tiniest islands. We had a good run, still in drizzle, to the skerries outside Bodø, rock-hopping in moderate visibility. The sun emerged as we anchored at Givær and frightened the puffins off the shoals of fish. We spent the morning of 29th June taking turns to row gently north. Later we picked up a zephyr and started sailing through a dead calm sea. From this Robert concluded that if Eel was ‘sailing on her reputation’, her reputation had improved since last year. Even so, we only made ten miles in eight hours, and the following day began in much the same way.

But when a NE 2-3 appeared as forecast, we bore off for Værøy, the penultimate Lofoten Island 35 miles away across the Vestfjord. Conditions were perfect with a light tailwind, bright sunshine and no swell; in fact it was so calm I managed to light the Primus for some soup under way, another Eel first. We could see the whole Vestfjord from the splendid 3,000ft peaks at the northern end of the Lofoten Wall, right round to the tiny hump on Røst in the south west. The shark’s tooth outline of the mountains was vividly clear, and as we got closer a few clouds gathered to vary the shades of pink through the sky. We entered Værøy harbour at 2200 with the sun blazing in our eyes, far earlier than we’d expected. The wind had increased gently through the crossing to give us an average speed of 3 knots. It was the longest open sea passage I have yet done in Eel and probably the most enjoyable. I rounded off the day watching the midnight sun sink slowly behind the Lofoten Islands in a steadily reddening sky.

In the morning we rowed up to Moskenes in a flat calm, intending the tide in the notorious Maelstrøm to sweep us to an anchorage on the seaward (western) side of the islands. But when a fair wind sprang up I handed over the helm, intending now to sail up the eastern side of the islands. Half an hour later I realised we had been swept seawards after all, but instead of reverting to the original plan I took to the oars while Robert sailed her. In a horrible wind against tide sea, it was hard work. Robert, with sarcasm I found too biting, called this my ‘Grace Darling’ effort. Round the point the westerly wind increased and, oddly, cloud rolled in from the south east; it tussled with the stationary clouds over the mountains, causing a random display of sun, masked by swirling cloud of four distinct densities which hid, revealed and spot-lit different mountains.

We spent the night in Sørvaagen which ‘looks a good harbour’ according to Peter Guinness (1960 Journal). And so it is, but not nearly as good as our next at Nusfjord (2nd July), a couple of quays hidden behind a large rock, in an impressive mountain fjord setting. The fishing huts are used by tourists in the summer and their large and expensive German cars looked rather out of place. From there we had fair winds and foul drizzle and saw little of the mountains. We sailed through two Lofoten fishing centres, Stamsund which seemed run-down and desolate, and Henningsvær which sits peacefully in a pretty island group. I’m sure one should really see (or perhaps smell) them both at the height of the fishing season. We reached our anchorage at Ørsnes feeling cold and wet; fingers too numb to stretch elastic over the tent-hooks. When I warmed up, my feet itched horribly from a salt water rash and I spent the evening washing them gently in cold fresh water to soothe them. From then on I stopped sailing barefoot, which cleared up my feet. But when it spread to my hands I had to spend all day licking the salt off them until I got some Calamine lotion in Tromsø.

4th July: we left Svolvær fully provisioned and carried a light south westerly up the spectacular Oihellesund to the yet more spectacular Trollfjord. We rowed in between sheer cliffs, reading the names of past visitors, including the Colin Archer Sailing Lifeboat No. 1. From the head of the fjord we did the FPI’s recommended scramble up to the Troll Vand, still covered with small icebergs in July. It was hard going, climbing on and beside the pipe supplying the hydro-electric power station, and up a steep and rather dangerous scree slope.

5th July: With a strong tail wind and a fair tide we quickly covered the famous Raftsund and reached less imposing country, with a few farms between mountains and sea. We also caught our tide through the Risøyrenna where we stopped for the night; a good 42 miles made good. Then we rowed and sailed to Harstad to put Robert on a bus for home. We saw the first of many sea eagles this day: at least I think we were more discriminating than Lynam’s crew in 1912, for whom the Blue Dragon Ornithology rules that ‘any large bird not obviously a seagull is an eagle’.

Alone again, I managed to get myself thoroughly terrified. After a good forecast (SE 3-4), I left Harstad in bright sunshine with a good SW 5 behind me. Within half an hour I was reduced to double-reefed main and reefed jib, running very fast downwind. Judging by the foam streaks on every wave, the wind increased to gale force soon after and I had to heave to to drop the mainsail. This done, I ran before it again. Occasionally a haloed sun showed through racing sea-level cloud, and once a blurred red crescent appeared on the horizon behind me. But it was the sea that terrified me, not because of its size (though with a 30 mile fetch, it certainly wasn’t small), but because it was breaking. Though I tried to avoid breaking crests, five or six times I found Eel shaking bodily as she accelerated on a breaking wave, before dropping on to the next wave with enough of a thump to push water up both sides of the centreboard. It was an hour and a half before I gained shelter off Engenes, and I was very grateful to the coaster which stood by a mile off for the last half-hour.

By morning it was flat calm and I had to row up the Dyrøysund. I was buzzed by an army helicopter, but I still don’t know if they were looking for me. At Finnsnes I rang home and discovered both my crews had got first class degrees.

So Patrick Maxwell was able to join me on 10th July at Tromsø. I had a good sail to get there, though I had to stop short of the town itself when the 3,000ft peaks above the Rystraum threw some very nasty squalls at me. I had a very uncomfortable night off an open beach. In my short sail to Tromsø next morning I passed an old steamer converted by charity into a holiday ship for handicapped and retired seamen, and also four or five sealing boats, their lookout baskets and harpoons conjuring up another world. In Tromsø I moored alongside a French centreboard cruising boat. Over an excellent lunch they told me Norway was their shake-down cruise before Patagonia. They had a wood-burning stove, and fuel for this occupied most of the space taken up in a normal boat by the fourth and fifth berths. They were also navigating the inner leads on three small-scale charts. Another French boat was in harbour, but we didn’t manage to meet them; she was a small steel ketch not much more than 20ft, which had apparently sailed to Spitzbergen in 1982.

Patrick arrived on the evening bus bringing a replacement burgee. We looked in vain for a Norwegian flag of less than 18” fly, but Noralf Anderson, the enthusiastic watchmaker who entertained Fubbs’ crew in 1980, gave us three small flags left over from the Independence Day procession. After some needlework the ship was properly dressed for the first time.

All this meant we missed our tide on 11th July, but with a fair wind we made over it to Tjeldsund. This was our last fair wind for ten days. We spent 12th July beating across Ullsfjord and the Lyngen Fjord, looking broodingly impressive in low cloud, to Follesøyan, a pleasant group of islands full of particularly noisy seagulls. 13th July was simply wet, but we reached an anchorage which (we discovered next morning) was very pretty; a cove below precipitous mountains with snow and waterfalls sparkling in the morning sunlight. We rowed over to Jøkel Fjord and beat up it against a noticeable current. In spring or winter it must be an impressive sight; a flow of ice and snow from an extensive ice field thousands of feet high; right down to sea level. We only saw one piece of ice falling, and the snow was looking very grubby. Even so, it made an impressive backdrop for a photograph of Eel under sail. We anchored in a pleasant bight down the fjord where supper was spoilt by a salt packet disintegrating into the saucepan.

15th July was another calm overcast day. We rowed to the next fjord and spent a calm night in an exposed anchorage. We discovered at the Beaulieu meet that Assent RCC must have crossed our path for the second time during the night.

16th gave us a fresh north-westerly. We beat to Brynilen and turned NE across Loppahavet. This was one of my principal worries, a shallow and exposed stretch outside a promontory, with no shelter for miles. As the winds showed signs of increasing we stopped on Loppa, a beautiful sandy island where, we were proudly told, Prince Albert went ptarmigan shooting in 1862, a year after his death! We were lucky to spend an evening with the splendid shopkeeper who runs most things on the island; we think Lynam may have spoken with his father in 1912. He told us that an Englishman in the mid-19th Century negotiated to buy the shooting rights, and arrived to discover he’d bought the whole islands!

Unfortunately, we had read the FPI literally and moored in a tiny harbour suitable only for dinghies. We had to moor alongside a rough wall and I spent all night tending warps to deal with the strong surge. I wasn’t feeling at my best in the morning and after rowing much of the 20 miles to Hasvik, I went to bed and was later sick. We took things gently on 18th July, just rowing to the Kipper Fjord because we liked the name. We were now in the Sorøysund, an enormous sound bordered by a variety of fjords (22 in all), mostly with good anchorage, the whole backed by the snowy peaks and glaciers of the Loppa Peninsula in the west, and Seiland Island in the south. Patrick swam before breakfast in the Kipper Fjord, and judged it colder than the fjord in which he swam in Greenland in 1982. As if in retaliation it rained hard and blew not a breath for the rest of the day, and we were miserable, especially Patrick in his leaky oilskins. We finally reached Hammerfest on 20th July, which is now a dull place, like all Finnmark, razed to the ground by the retreating Germans. No one could sell us any paraffin, and the fish we bought was disgusting, but the club room of the Royal and Ancient Society of the Polar Bear was rather fun, being a museum of Arctic animals and hunting.

The next few days were luckily very fine, sunny and warm with unpredictable breezes. We sailed most of the way to Burstad (21st July), then rowed most of the way to Havøysund (23rd July), and Gjesvær (24th July), a colourful island harbour full of Alpine plants, where we found a tiny anchorage of our own.

Gjesvær is the last anchorage before the North Cape, 12 miles away. The forecast on 24th July was SW 5-6, so I decided to round before the sea got up. We left immediately, taking a short cut behind rocks before reaching Knivskjærodden, by a mile the northernmost point of Europe. It is a long, low point, but high enough to obscure the North Cape which appears dramatically from behind it, rising sheer from the sea to a 1,000ft plateau. We were troubled by squalls, so dropped the mainsail to take our photos before reefing and rounding the Cape. We didn’t stop in Hornvika to climb the Cape, and so missed seeing Deerhound, RCC, ICC, rounding two hours later. Instead we had a long beat into Honningsvaag with horrible squalls down from the mountains, much the same as we suffered outside Sandnessjøen last year (19th August). Then it took us 4½ hours to beat 3 miles; this time it took us 6 hours to make 5 miles. We followed a yacht in, discovering to our surprise that she was a local who could show us a free berth in the small-boat harbour. This was the first Norwegian we had seen sailing in 1983, and only the fourth yacht of any nationality.

As we emerged from baths at the Seaman’s Hostel next morning we saw Deerhound, and went to introduce ourselves. At 71°N this is probably the furthest north that two club yachts have ever met. John Guinness as a Norwegian Consul in Ireland was receiving VIP treatment; his contact turned out to be the owner of Honningsvaag’s only yacht, who had showed us to our berth the night before. He took both crews on an extensive tour of the island of Magerøy, more impressively barren close-to than from seawards. We ended up at the North Cape where, refreshed by Norwegian ‘caviar’ and ‘champagne’, we watched an excellent slide show of Magerøy through the seasons; first the darkness of winter when you can just read a newspaper headline by the mid-day twilight; then May, still with snow enough for cross-country skiing, followed by a compressed spring and summer, rare birds and flowers in a barren landscape lit by a soft night sunlight, cut off by a swift decline into dark and stormy autumn.

We left Honningsvaag early on 26th July, but with a strong headwind we never had a chance of catching our tide, and after an hour we retreated, leaving Deerhound to beat into a squally SW 6-7. In the evening we beat up the Magerøsund making 7 knots over the ground and 1 knot through the water. We missed some hours of fair wind next morning but still made an easy 26 miles to Burstad. But that crater-like anchorage funnelled the wind, swinging Eel all over the place. With two anchors down and the tent reefed, we dragged off the shallow weedy shelf in the middle of the night. Luckily I noticed she had stopped snubbing, so got quickly dressed and rowed Eel with tent, sleeping bags and lilos lying in chaos around my feet. We couldn’t make against the wind, so proceeded crabwise across the anchorage, dropped an anchor which immediately dragged, and eventually grabbed the only mooring buoy in the place. This nightmare left me with the unpleasant reality of a wet sleeping bag.

Another late start on 28th July meant that, after a good sail, we were becalmed six miles from an anchorage. But at least it was a good one as we were now back in the Sorøysund. We had a whole day of the same on 29th, rowing with sails up to catch any favourable breeze. We covered a strenuous 20 miles and were rewarded by a very special anchorage, a Sorøysund anchorage designed for Eel. Straumen Fjord has a very shallow entrance where the tide races over a sandy bar, so the fjord behind is a place where an adult Swallow or Amazon would feel at home, an expanded mixture of Swallowdale and Secret Water, with all the attractions of mountains and islands, remoteness and inaccessibility.

We left early before the entrance dried out, and while becalmed outside were joined by a fisherman who talked continuously and incomprehensibly, with an occasional lunatic laugh. After smiling our way out of this situation we suddenly picked up an exhilarating full-sail reaching breeze. It carried us 15 miles at 6 knots to Hasvik, but deserted us as suddenly while we were shopping. So we had a slow sail round the exposed point of Sildmylingen to Loppa. This time we used the new and well-sheltered small harbour on the east side.

By now we had enjoyed more than a month of continuous daylight, though the sun had theoretically set for the first time two days before. Now we could see due north again. We could also see a picture postcard, jam-red sunset. We ran out to the point just as the sun appeared from behind the island, an enormous, blood red disc. It took from midnight to twenty one minutes past to set completely, and we had hoped to see it rise again minutes later. But thick cloud rolled in and blanketed the whole scene in thick mist within five minutes.

Next day we finally lost sight of the Sorøysund, a place I must return to: imposing, impressive, wild and remote; you still don’t need an expedition to explore it.

Without midnight sun or Søroysund the cruise began to feel like a delivery trip. We now had to be back in Bodø in less than three weeks (though I could have put Eel on the coastal steamer any day at vast expense). We started well with a fresh NW breeze to take us across the shallow and confused Loppahavet. As usual we were then becalmed and had to row to a most unsuitable anchorage. We were lucky it stayed calm overnight, less lucky that it stayed that way next day; we were getting tired of rowing. Then it blew a gale. I woke in the middle of the night to find us aground. The anchor had skated over hard rock covered with a deceptive layer of sand. I walked it out, dug it in and returned to bed, only to be rudely awoken an hour later by a wave breaking over the side of the boat onto my head. It was blowing and the anchor strop had broken, leaving her broadside on, attached by her middle. I tied the warp to the mast, lashed it to the forestay and returned to bed. It blew hard and after moving to a more sheltered spot we had a day to catch up on sleep.

3rd August: A morning’s progress gave way to a calm afternoon. As a change I tried towing her along the shore. This was faster than rowing, but much harder work, especially where boulder climbing was involved. It was a hard wet beat to Tromsø next day; the wind stayed dead ahead as we turned every corner, and the tide turned against us just as we entered the sound. Nine hours and 14 miles later we reached the marina, after hitting a rock just short of the entrance. There we happened to meet Einar Jensen, who moored us alongside his boat, whisked us off to showers and bacon and eggs at his home, and then drove us in his immaculately restored pre-war Mercedes to visit his friend Oivind Dahi. We walked through a rambling profusion of wooden outbuildings to the beach where Oivind was feeding his tame eider duck. He was trying to wave away scavenging gulls and looked something like an old-fashioned farmer learning how to direct traffic. He proudly showed us round his home dedicated to preserving wild life and the traditional Norwegian lifestyle. We saw his fishing hut, the fishing boat he had built, the workshop where he made his own soap and cod liver oil, and the theatre where he used to produce his own entertainments. It all seemed quite in character with his unaffected eccentricity.

Tromsø treated us just as well next morning. We called again on Noralf Anderson who found us some cheap oilskins to replace Patrick’s leaky ones. And we were given a bottle of home-distilled firewater of frightening potency. It burned better than meths, but after 20 minutes in a pressure cooker, it added a pleasant fiery quality to the Eel duff. ‘Since all ills are good when attended by food’, to quote Tilman, we ate a lot in the next week. At first we had to work very hard to make any progress, rowing or beating against headwinds never quite strong enough. It rained a lot, and then it blew a gale with torrential rain for two days. The tent started leaking, so we didn’t even want to go to bed and sleep it out. Instead eating became a pastime as well as a consolation; at one time we finished one duff and immediately set-to making another, this time accompanied by raw spirit butter, very sweet and very strong. It blew hard for another day, but it was crystal clear and we had a good walk on Dyrøy (‘øy’ is Norwegian for island), with good views of snowy mountains miles inland. We could now see new snow on the tops in the mornings, and when we began sailing again we really noticed the cold.

11th August was below 5°C all day and that night it dropped below 2°C according to the weather forecast. The following morning it was bitter, and my hands were painfully numb after pulling up the anchor. We were now in the Tjeldsund, which separates the whole Lofoten chain from the mainland. Tides run fast there and it didn’t take long to get through the narrows, even beating. But then we had to beat into a nasty short sea and a funnelled, squally wind. The ratchet on the mainsheet block chose this moment to break, so I couldn’t pull the mainsail in hard. When we anchored (in a deep pool surrounded by rocks and sand banks) I discovered the mainsheet had torn skin off both hands.

We were now back in more typical Norwegian coastal waters with islands, islets and rocks to explore and provide protection. Our last long day was one which would have been infuriating in open water, with a slight headwind to kick up a sea and stop her. But among the islands we had fun finding the quickest route between rocks, and we made a steady 2K to windward. Even the sun shone occasionally and put contrast and colour into the sepia wash of sea, rock, mountain and sky. Islets changed in a moment from a threatening grey to a warm amalgam of pinks, yellows and browns. As we emerged from behind the islands we got a spectacular view of the Lofotens stretching southwards across a reddening horizon. A recent light covering of snow had altered the mountain panorama of six weeks before.

With a gale forecast, we were glad to reach Svolvær after our longest day, 12½ hours under way, 25 miles made good. This turned out to be our last real passage, though we were still hoping to reach Bodø. We shopped in Svolvær and picked up two packets of suet kindly sent by a friend of Patrick’s. I rang Bodø shipping agency, who told me it would be easy to have Eel picked up from Svolvær. But I wanted to get to Bodø, so we sailed two miles out to Skrova, an island harbour only 12 miles from the mainland. I had hoped to hop over when the depression had passed through, but it was blowing very hard in the morning. We beat up the harbour a little way to look at the seas (which were gigantic) and worried the officers on the ferry into waving and hooting at us. Back at anchor, we cooked a pudding (at 0930) for the lack of anything else to do. Six hours later the wind had dropped to SW5, so we returned the 2 miles to Svolvær. It was a hair-raising sail because the seas were still very large, dead on the beam, and for some reason occasionally breaking, in fact just the conditions where an open boat is in danger of being swamped. We avoided trouble by putting her stern to the breaking crests. As always the harbour entrance was unfamiliar, even on the third acquaintance, and I was very glad to get in safely.

Only the clearing up remained. Patrick took a ferry to Narvik to catch the train home. I got Eel lifted onto the quay and spent a day cleaning her up, then a static night on board. I finally left on a plane for Stavanger on 18th August. Eel was picked up by a Nord-Poolen ship two days later, transferred to a Nor-Cargo ship in Stavanger and shipped to Grimsby.

After his 1960 cruise in ‘Rob Roy Macgregor’ in these waters, Peter Guinness wrote, ‘A stove is an absolute necessity; it might even be foolhardy to go without one’. Obviously I don’t agree. In fact the cold was the least of my worries. Before I left I knew of 2 kayak expeditions in the area, and sea canoeing is a far wetter sport than dinghy cruising. Eel is a fairly active boat to sail, and we were well equipped with excellent Northcape jackets (appropriately) and with Helly-Hansen underwear (which I only wore on the coldest days). More important was a good sleeping bag, as a tent doesn’t retain much heat overnight. The cold was occasionally unpleasant (especially at the end), but never dangerous.

I was more worried about shelter on the open sea passages. My uncle, who has covered the ground, had emphasised how the country changes north of the Lofotens, where mountains drop sheer into the sea, leaving little shelter and exposing sailing craft to ‘fallvind’ squalls from above. On examining the chart I found an anchorage of some sort every ten miles: that is five hours rowing or two hours running before it if caught out. That was about right, though we had many more disturbed nights in safe but uncomfortable anchorages.

I never faced up to my last worry; what would I do in distress or emergency? My uncle had advised me to take a small VHF transmitter and I refused. There was something of the ostrich in this attitude. I also felt it was slightly ridiculous to carry a piece of equipment costing a quarter of what Eel cost me, which contributed nothing to her safe handling. Finally I was afraid I would rely on it, and North Norway is a place where you can’t rely on being rescued, even if you contact your rescuers. My attitude was probably irresponsible. On 7th July I needed a radio, not to call for help, but to reassure the coaster standing-by that I was OK. My wave of thanks was insufficient and could have been misinterpreted. A transmitter might also have been useful for getting forecasts or keeping in regular contact with the coastguard. But I was already translating 4 or 5 Norwegian radio forecasts every day, and regular contact with the authorities might have caused more anxiety than it saved.

Otherwise Eel was well equipped and did all I expected of her. But I think I’ll have a slightly larger craft for my return trip, so I can sail all the way.