We left Akureyri this morning a bit late.
As you may recall, we had a very challenging arrival with gale force winds that were trying to push us onto the quayside, a very narrow harbor entrance and the harbor itself being a bit tight. The harbor is layed out with motorized fishing trawlers in mind that have bow and stern thrusters that can move either the bow or stern sideways.
Lacking these and sporting a 25 ft long bow sprint that projects forward of the actual front of the hull (stem) like a spear, maneuvering Nellie in close quarters is tricky. Add to that all of the masts, yardarms and furled sail (windage) in a 40 knot blow; well there's a lot to think about. To help, Nellie deploys its rubber boat with an outboard motor to push the bow or stern perpendicularly to achieve tight maneuvers. This typically works very well.
Coming into the harbor I was assigned to the fordeck to help with the docking lines (muscle), so I had a intimate view of what was happening.
Nellie's bow wouldn't move in the right direction, locked by the balance opposing forces of the wind versus the boat. For a few precarious and tense minutes it wasn't clear who was going to win. If the wind had won, she would have gone careening across the harbor and, as an emergency tactic, we would have had to drop our starboard anchor, leaving us (at best) stuck in the middle of the harbor and embarrassingly in need of a tow. Not what a captain want to have on his record! Fortunately, the boat won and our arrival went well.
Apparently, this did not escape the eye of the harbor master for, when our rubber boat bow thruster was struggling this morning to align Nellie's bow with the harbor mouth a tugboat magically appeared to provide a courtesy push to our bow and thereby assured our uneventful departure. When I looked up the harbor master was standing on the end of the quay, taking a photo and waving. Very nice!
We motored back north up the 30 fjord and back on to the open ocean on the north coast of Iceland, set our sails and are now sailing for the western fjords at about 8 knots. A very good pace. All of the sail handling fell on my watch so, with the rest of the crew we pulled and hoisted and trimmed sail in 40 degree weather with about 25 knots of wind. Upon completion we returned to our job of steering, lookout and log keeping while the rest of the crew rested.
They say that hard work is its own reward, but we got a big bonus by sighting whales 4 times. 3 were just spouts,, but the first one broke the surface just next to the ship as it spouted a then dove. Lucky for me, as it all happened right in front of me!
The consensus is that it was either a humpback or right whale. It had a small dorsal fin and dark skin.
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