Iceland and Faroe Islands

[Dockhead]

The last four years in a row I have done exactly the same cruise over and over again -- depart Cowes on 1 May, transit the English Channel through the Dover Straits, cross the North Sea to Helgoland, then Elbe River, Kiel Canal and into the Baltic, then cruise from one end of the Baltic to the other, then back again in August. I've been doing it over and over again because, first of all, it's a bloody awesome cruise, covering 10 countries and some of the coolest places I've ever been, but secondly because I have work in Finland and cruising there during the summer is easy to harmonize with my work.

It's all so good that I'm tempted to do it for the fifth time, but I have long wanted to go further North and so now I'm toying with the idea of doing an Iceland cruise I was working on some years ago --

up the East Coast of England and Scotland to the Orkneys, from there to the Faroes, then on to Iceland, circumnavigate that (the Arctic Circle runs just North of the North Coast of Iceland), and back directly to Scotland, then cruise the Western Isles en route to the Irish Sea, Land's End, and home. It's similar in mileage to what I've been doing the last four years so ought to be realistic over a four month window.

But I'm not quite sure whether the timing is right in terms of weather. Because of my work, I will have to leave the boat somewhere for a month or two in the middle, and so probably most of the sailing would need to be done in May and August. Is August too late to be sailing back from Iceland and cruising the Western Isles? August is cold already in the Northern Baltic. Is May too early to be going up there? I guess I could break up the trip there into two parts, get the boat up to the Orkneys by mid-May, leave her there for a few weeks, then continue in a better season, say the middle of June.

I know the weather in the North Atlantic in those latitudes varies from dead calms to violent gales, and that the proportion between these extremes varies a lot month by month. I would be very grateful for any tips anyone with experience or knowledge might have.

[estarzinger]

We were in the Faroes May 24th

Blog post:
May 24, 2001
62 degrees North, 6 degrees 45 minutes West
Torshavn, Faroes

Hello everyone!

We have spent three weeks in the Faroes after an easy two-day passage from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. We had the most incredible experience here the other night, which I wanted to share with all of you.

Two nights ago, we boarded the 100-foot gaff-rigged schooner, Nordlysid (Northern Lights) with a group of about thirty people. We were all dressed in multiple layers and foul weather gear against the low 50-degree temperatures and steady drizzle. Birgir, Nordlysid's skipper and our friend, handled the six-foot long tiller (about as big around as a fence post), as he guided her away from the dock and out into the open harbor. There a large hard-bottomed inflatable and a traditional local fishing boat were tied astern, and we set out for Nolsoy, the island just a few miles from Torshavn harbor. Visibility was so poor, we couldn't see the island until we were within a half mile of it, and then the low cliffs of the northern side appeared as no more than a shadow in the mist.

We motored around to the east side of Nolsoy, and into a small bight among the cliffs where sea caves opened black maws at the base of the sheer rock faces. A series of boxes and bags were handed down to the skipper in the small traditional boat and then a dozen other people climbed into the twenty-foot boat, all of us wearing awkward life preservers at the insistence of the Nordlysid's crew. We bumped and jostled against one another and the boat swayed alarmingly at the shifting load as the skipper motored us into a sea cave through an opening only a few feet higher than the roof of the boat's small wheelhouse.

Once inside, the cave opened up a bit, and we found ourselves in an asymmetrical oval chamber about 150 feet from end to end and 50 feet across. We could see the Nordlysid silhouetted against the mouth of the cave, but it took a long time for my eyes to adjust so I could see the far corners of our rocky amphitheater. The water swooshed and huffed, wheezed and whooshed, breathing in half breaths and large sighs, creating its own rhythm. As I got my bearings, the group aboard started to open the boxes and bags. The rigid dinghy puttered into the cave with us, a dozen people sitting on its large inner tubes. Suddenly, a liquid note sounded into the darkness and reverberated in the stony space, its voice fuller and richer and deeper than in any concert hall. Light from the cave mouth glinted golden off a brass saxophone held to the mouth of a sandy-haired musician dressed in an orange survival suit. The concert had begun - "cave music" they call it.

They played with the sound of the ocean sighing, using its rhythms to measure theirs. Percussion provided counterpoint to the saxophone's sweet golden voice - one fellow played a large drum lying in the bottom of the boat; it's resonant pulse felt like the beating of the heart of the earth itself. Another shook a string of mollusk shells to create a rattling sound, a long hiss ending in a whisper or a sharp chattering snap to punctuate key phrases or accentuate the sound of the swell against the rocks. He also used a drumstick on the boat's engine compartment, gunwales and oars, a staccato beat of higher notes harmonizing with the rest. And then, another sound, one I couldn't place at first. A warbling, soprano note... A golden-haired woman raised her voice in an undulating wave, sweet as the saxophone. It filled the cave and reverberated until she was harmonizing with her own echo. The music had no origin but filled the cave from end to end, surrounding us, liquid as the water beneath the boat, a living thing in the cave with us, filling me with an indescribable euphoria.

Shortly after the music started, I had realized the cockpit of the boat wouldn't hold everybody while the musicians played. I had worked my way around the wheelhouse of the boat and now kneeled on the bow, leaning on the wheelhouse roof, looking down into the cockpit on the musicians. A young man knelt next to me recording the concert with a large, foam-covered microphone. The boat and the dinghy nearby rotated slowly around the cave, moved by the unseen currents of the water swirling in and ebbing out. Every once in a while, one of the men at the back of the boat would use an oar to push off the roof or side of the cave to keep us away from the rocky walls. At the farthest end of the oval of the cave, the cave mouth disappeared completely, leaving us in darkness except for a small riding light shining into the cockpit. Then we'd wheel slowly around the dinghy and come back into the light from the mouth of the cave, and the saxophone would drip gold and the singer's hair would turn platinum and pale, slack jawed faces enraptured by the music would emerge from the darkness one by one like ghosts.

The dinghy left after the first set, discharging the first load of passengers and then returning with the second. Evans sat among this group and I watched his face as he listened to this music made three-dimensional by the space we occupied. They played for about an hour and a half, until the cold of the cave had seeped into all of our bones and the moisture dripping off the ceiling had glazed their instruments with a fine sheen. The saxophone player kept up a melody as we left the cave, and in that moment of transition the instrument's sinuous call went from full-throated and omnipresent to small and localized; devolving back to the instrument itself, dwindling into a tiny, tinny voice dwarfed and mocked by the high cliffs above us. We emerged blinking at the still bright light outside, the music welling within us.

We hope all of you are enjoying your own sea music.

[estarzinger]

And Iceland July 6th:

July 6, 2001
Reykjavik, Iceland
64 degrees 09 minutes North 21 degrees 57 minutes West

Hello everyone -

We've been a bit out of touch as cell phone connections have been iffy along the north coast of Iceland. But now we're tied up on the visitor's dock in Reykjavik, one of six visiting yachts - the first time we've seen another cruising boat since leaving the south coast of Ireland in early April.

Our first few weeks in Iceland proved more challenging than we had bargained for, including two major blizzards and a too-close encounter with some rocks in an isolated fjord on the east coast. Luckily Hawk shrugged that off, though we did have a diver take a look at the rudder and keel in Akureyri, the largest town on the north coast, when we got there. He took a videotape of the bottom and showed us how minimal the damage really was - I'm not sure we would have believed him otherwise.

After that, things started to improve, culminating in an absolutely magical experience on midsummer when we watched the sun scribe a huge arc through the sky and just kiss the horizon to the north while we sailed along on the Arctic Circle. When Evans got Beth up for her watch about twenty minutes before "sunset/sunrise", the sun lay just above the horizon due north of us, its long, golden rays painting everything with an almost unearthly glow.

We had passed the northernmost point of Iceland, called the Horn, less than an hour before and were making our way along the twenty-mile long, shallowly indented coastline at the northern end of the uninhabited peninsula of Hornstrandir. A series of steep sea cliffs well over a thousand feet high glowed rose, copper and gold in the wash of the midnight sun with the thinnest cast of green from the grass that clung tenaciously to the outcroppings. Seabirds rested on the water in large flocks, wheeled overhead and dove to rise with a flash of water from their wings, or swooped and glided several miles away in front of the cliff. Through the binoculars, these furthest birds appeared like a blizzard of snowflakes drifting down across the red and black face.

The sun grew more and more intense as it approached the horizon, turning from yellow to a blinding orange that left us blinking spots whenever we glanced at it. The cliffs glowed a deeper and deeper red in its evanescent light, and the seawater became black and opaque. Eventually the sun touched down and grew fat, then it seemed to simply hover there for about half an hour. We kept taking quick glances, unable to avoid the feeling time had stopped and might never start again. After forty minutes we could perceive a tiny separation at the horizon as the sun heaved itself skyward once again.

That magical time still stands as if stationary in our minds. The birds, the cliffs, the light, the oily surface of the sea, the mist from our breath all combine into a powerful memory, a defining moment of our voyaging. An incredible experience - everything we had hardly dared to hope and it will be one of those memories, like rounding the Cape of Good Hope, that will live on in our imagination long after we end our sailing adventures.

To magical midsummer memories!

[estarzinger]

We went south from there - Uruguay Oct 22

October 22, 2001
35 degrees SOUTH 55 degrees West
Punta del Este, Uruguay

Hello everyone!

It has been a very long time since our last Hawk update and in so very many ways the world has changed. We hope that none of you lost friends or family in the attacks on September 11th. We all lost something else, the value of which we won’t know for some time to come.

Since our last update from Iceland, we’ve been without easy communications and mostly underway, sailing some 7,000 nautical miles from 60 degrees north to 35 degrees south. The passage from Iceland to the Canaries was almost uneventful. We snuck out of the Vestmann Islands on the southwest corner of Iceland in front of the first of the fall low pressure systems in the North Atlantic. We forereached for 24 hours several hundred miles off the coast of Ireland in 30 knot headwinds, and otherwise had a fast and easy 14.5 day passage straight south to the Canaries.

We spent a month in the Canaries - longer than we had anticipated but we decided to haul the boat to be sure everything was in decent shape after our grounding in Iceland and before the next 4,500+ miles to Uruguay. We were set to leave on September 11th when we turned on the radio while we were stowing the boat at 9:30 EST. Needless to say, we didn’t go anywhere but spent the day listening to the radio, too stunned to do anything else. We both had much to occupy our thoughts when we did get underway the next day, and it was just as well we had a fast and easy five day, downwind passage to cover the 800 miles to the Cape Verdes.

The Cape Verdes proved a pleasant surprise. An increasing number of boats are spending time in these African islands to avoid the crowds in the Canaries, and a nascent yachting industry is developing. A German yachtie has created a marina of sorts at Mindelo on Sao Vicente off an old tugboat. We found the produce at the local market excellent, people friendly, and officials professional. We enjoyed our five day break there before beginning the 3,600 mile run to Uruguay and only wished we could have spent more time cruising these almost undiscovered islands.

The passage we just completed was the toughest we have ever had on Hawk, and rivals our first passage on Silk for being the toughest ever. It started with three nights in a row of 35-50 knot line squalls with thunder and lightning because the ITCZ was much further north than normal. We then had over 1,000 miles of light headwinds or no winds at all as we battled our way through the doldrums and SW monsoon to the equator. In the middle of that, for a variety of reasons we won’t go into here, our engine got flooded with salt water and seized up and we spent twelve hours straight getting the water out and changing the oil. We only had two oil changes on board and needed at least three to save the engine - so we called a passing freighter and they dropped 30 liters of engine oil over the side with a smoke flare attached! Very exciting and very timely. We got the engine running again in time to use it more than we would have liked to get through the wide band of light and variable winds.

The passage ended with forty-eight hours of 40+ knots and twelve hours of hand steering through 20+ foot breaking waves as we closed with the continental shelf. We achieved a new speed record of 16.9 knots when Evans surfed down the face of a massive breaker with just the storm jib set. We were both more than ready to make landfall after 26 days and 3,800 miles sailed. But Hawk really proved herself in a wide variety of conditions, and we learned a tremendous amount about sailing her in storm conditions.

Punta del Este is a resort town serving the wealthy Argentineans. It boasts beautiful white sand beaches, palm trees, a quaint colonial old town and modern high rises. This is off season, so the town feels oversized for the inhabitants - two-thirds of the restaurants and hotels are closed and whenever we’ve eaten out we’ve been the only patrons. It feels a bit like Cape Cod in the off season, if Cape Cod had a smallish city on it. Though it’s the equivalent of early April, it’s warm and pleasant. No need for the diesel heater yet! We came here because North Sails recommended shipping our new suit of 3DL sails here instead of Argentina, and we’re glad we did because it’s a great place to recover from a difficult passage.

We have both been grateful for the time and money invested into Spanish. No one speaks English at all, and we’ve had quite the adventure dealing with mechanics (we wanted someone to go over the engine after the passage), autopilot repair agents, shippers, etc. But everyone is very patient and seems to enjoy the guessing game of what the crazy Americans are trying to say now.

We hope this finds all of you happy and healthy. We hope to be able to return to more regular Hawk updates now, but if you don’t hear from us for a bit it’s because we’re still figuring out the communications systems down here!

[Pete7]

Well personally I think the West Coast is by far the nicest coast, indeed if I were to try I might not make it past the Orkney Islands even with a whole summer to sail. The prevailing wind will be behind you for most of the time too. Return via the East coat into wind but some shelter from the coast.

Your draft is limiting but places you must see in no particular order:

Dublin, (big marina just outside to the North).

Conway, if you can get in and moor in sight of the Castle.

Isle of Man, Douglas harbour may have a marina now, if not dry out against the wall :-) or Peel harbour against the wall. Avoid June, a rather busy place with motorcycles.

Strangford Lough, must see, one of the few places see water can be seen running down hill plus whirl pools. Anchor up in the sheltered lough or Portaferry. Strangford narrows, the tides are an impressive dive site, got the tea shirt.

Belfast, small marina all the way up through the docks right into town center past Harland and Wolf cranes and Titanic Dock.

Rathlin Island, anchor outside the harbour there is no way you can get in with your draft, use dinghy to walk the island to the light houses, very impressive cliffs. Really odd tides in Rathlin sound, very entertaining.

Corryvreckan Whirlpool. RN said "impassable" just choose your timings, bucket list dive site sadly I didn't manage to dive.

Oban, for the highlands experience. Possible stop location as train to Glasgow available. Lora Falls impressive and worth a visit. No you can't get under the bridge or up the falls, but I might be able too, still working on that.

Tobermory, quintessential Scottish harbour and the one that always appears on the postcards. Sound of Mull impressive and sheltered even in a storm, bit like the Solent without other boats.

Kyle of Loch Alsh, yes you will fit under the bridge, look right on the way up the sound of Sleet to see Ben Nevis.

Stornayway or Ullapool and more alongside harbour jetties. Very pretty little towns. Plockton, probably too shallow and serious midge problem.

Cape Wrath, formidable big cliffs, small island offshore is a bombing range because they look like a ship from the air.

Scrabster, big, easy to access sheltered harbour. Jumping off point for Orkney.

Stromness, having sailed past Old Man of Hoy, through Scapa Flow, bit of history here. Stromness possible stop point for yacht in small deep sheltered habour along side jetty.

That should take about 6 months :-)

you will need at least two big fender boards.

Pete

[rognvald]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

We were in the Faroes May 24th

Blog post:
May 24, 2001
62 degrees North, 6 degrees 45 minutes West
Torshavn, Faroes

Hello everyone!

We have spent three weeks in the Faroes after an easy two-day passage from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. We had the most incredible experience here the other night, which I wanted to share with all of you.

Two nights ago, we boarded the 100-foot gaff-rigged schooner, Nordlysid (Northern Lights) with a group of about thirty people. We were all dressed in multiple layers and foul weather gear against the low 50-degree temperatures and steady drizzle. Birgir, Nordlysid's skipper and our friend, handled the six-foot long tiller (about as big around as a fence post), as he guided her away from the dock and out into the open harbor. There a large hard-bottomed inflatable and a traditional local fishing boat were tied astern, and we set out for Nolsoy, the island just a few miles from Torshavn harbor. Visibility was so poor, we couldn't see the island until we were within a half mile of it, and then the low cliffs of the northern side appeared as no more than a shadow in the mist.

We motored around to the east side of Nolsoy, and into a small bight among the cliffs where sea caves opened black maws at the base of the sheer rock faces. A series of boxes and bags were handed down to the skipper in the small traditional boat and then a dozen other people climbed into the twenty-foot boat, all of us wearing awkward life preservers at the insistence of the Nordlysid's crew. We bumped and jostled against one another and the boat swayed alarmingly at the shifting load as the skipper motored us into a sea cave through an opening only a few feet higher than the roof of the boat's small wheelhouse.

Once inside, the cave opened up a bit, and we found ourselves in an asymmetrical oval chamber about 150 feet from end to end and 50 feet across. We could see the Nordlysid silhouetted against the mouth of the cave, but it took a long time for my eyes to adjust so I could see the far corners of our rocky amphitheater. The water swooshed and huffed, wheezed and whooshed, breathing in half breaths and large sighs, creating its own rhythm. As I got my bearings, the group aboard started to open the boxes and bags. The rigid dinghy puttered into the cave with us, a dozen people sitting on its large inner tubes. Suddenly, a liquid note sounded into the darkness and reverberated in the stony space, its voice fuller and richer and deeper than in any concert hall. Light from the cave mouth glinted golden off a brass saxophone held to the mouth of a sandy-haired musician dressed in an orange survival suit. The concert had begun - "cave music" they call it.

They played with the sound of the ocean sighing, using its rhythms to measure theirs. Percussion provided counterpoint to the saxophone's sweet golden voice - one fellow played a large drum lying in the bottom of the boat; it's resonant pulse felt like the beating of the heart of the earth itself. Another shook a string of mollusk shells to create a rattling sound, a long hiss ending in a whisper or a sharp chattering snap to punctuate key phrases or accentuate the sound of the swell against the rocks. He also used a drumstick on the boat's engine compartment, gunwales and oars, a staccato beat of higher notes harmonizing with the rest. And then, another sound, one I couldn't place at first. A warbling, soprano note... A golden-haired woman raised her voice in an undulating wave, sweet as the saxophone. It filled the cave and reverberated until she was harmonizing with her own echo. The music had no origin but filled the cave from end to end, surrounding us, liquid as the water beneath the boat, a living thing in the cave with us, filling me with an indescribable euphoria.

Shortly after the music started, I had realized the cockpit of the boat wouldn't hold everybody while the musicians played. I had worked my way around the wheelhouse of the boat and now kneeled on the bow, leaning on the wheelhouse roof, looking down into the cockpit on the musicians. A young man knelt next to me recording the concert with a large, foam-covered microphone. The boat and the dinghy nearby rotated slowly around the cave, moved by the unseen currents of the water swirling in and ebbing out. Every once in a while, one of the men at the back of the boat would use an oar to push off the roof or side of the cave to keep us away from the rocky walls. At the farthest end of the oval of the cave, the cave mouth disappeared completely, leaving us in darkness except for a small riding light shining into the cockpit. Then we'd wheel slowly around the dinghy and come back into the light from the mouth of the cave, and the saxophone would drip gold and the singer's hair would turn platinum and pale, slack jawed faces enraptured by the music would emerge from the darkness one by one like ghosts.

The dinghy left after the first set, discharging the first load of passengers and then returning with the second. Evans sat among this group and I watched his face as he listened to this music made three-dimensional by the space we occupied. They played for about an hour and a half, until the cold of the cave had seeped into all of our bones and the moisture dripping off the ceiling had glazed their instruments with a fine sheen. The saxophone player kept up a melody as we left the cave, and in that moment of transition the instrument's sinuous call went from full-throated and omnipresent to small and localized; devolving back to the instrument itself, dwindling into a tiny, tinny voice dwarfed and mocked by the high cliffs above us. We emerged blinking at the still bright light outside, the music welling within us.

We hope all of you are enjoying your own sea music.

Evans,
Were you burning incense during this experience? Good luck and safe sailing . . . Rognvald

[Pete7]

Dockhead, I have a chart portfolio of about 30 - 40 interesting charts of the area you might like. I will bring them home from work for you. All 10 - 15 years out of day, but useful for planning and also include the weather charts by month for the N Atlantic also some Astro planning tables and stuff.

Pete

[Kalinka1]

Good morning. we might be doing the same trip leaving the South of Ireland the first part of June Probably up the Irish Sea cross to Gigha then up to Stornaway the Faroes? and Iceland. From there either Labrador or Newfoundland. August in the Irish Sea West Coast of Scotland can be problematic as the strong Westerlies begin to fill in. We've been harbour bound for 4 to 5 days at times. Howth is the YC/Marina North of Dublin Draft can be a problem. We've touched at 1.8 m at low water. Dun Laoghrie is a deep water all weather harbour to the South. Dart station right outside Easy trip into Dublin city. Further South not much until you get to Arklow. The tides in the Irish Sea are such that for us anyway we can only run with them. Though from Belfast to Dublin you can do in one shot because of tide split at St. Johns Bay. Look up the Website. In your footsteps. It contains all the info you will need to sail around Ireland.
Our other and preferred choice is to head to the Baltic via South coast of UK across to France North up the coast and through the Kiel Canal and lay the boat up for the winter in Lubek. Too many choices! Might all depend on which way the wind is blowing when we leave the Barrow River?

[boatman61]

Hi Dockhead.. maybe it would be best to contact Roger Taylor for detailed info.. its his stomping grounds..
Voyages by Roger Taylor in his junk-rigged Corribee Mingming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSq80MtHXsM

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Dockhead, I have a chart portfolio of about 30 - 40 interesting charts of the area you might like. I will bring them home from work for you. All 10 - 15 years out of day, but useful for planning and also include the weather charts by month for the N Atlantic also some Astro planning tables and stuff.

Pete

Fantastic!! Thank you very much!

And you also know, that you would be very welcome to join us for all or any part of this.

[nigel1]

I cruised the west coast of Scotland and Hebrides in 2015, over the months of May, June, July. In mid August departed Stornoway and arrived Faroes two days later. Spent 2 weeks there before heading back to Scotland and spent September on the West Coast.
Stornoway is a pretty good departure point for the Faroes, plenty of places to provision, and has a pretty good marina.
Plenty of places to hide from bad weather both on the west coast of Scotland and the Faroes.

[kish]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

The last four years in a row I have done exactly the same cruise over and over again -- depart Cowes on 1 May, transit the English Channel through the Dover Straits, cross the North Sea to Helgoland, then Elbe River, Kiel Canal and into the Baltic, then cruise from one end of the Baltic to the other, then back again in August. I've been doing it over and over again because, first of all, it's a bloody awesome cruise, covering 10 countries and some of the coolest places I've ever been, but secondly because I have work in Finland and cruising there during the summer is easy to harmonize with my work.

I know the weather in the North Atlantic in those latitudes varies from dead calms to violent gales, and that the proportion between these extremes varies a lot month by month. I would be very grateful for any tips anyone with experience or knowledge might have.

I think that your plans are out of synch. with the weather.
I do not think that the Northern part of the North Sea in mid May is very pleasant. My experience is in crossing in May from Inverness to Skagen in Denmark, which was bearable but not very pleasant.

I have circumnavigated Iceland counterclockwise in the month of June, in a 35 footer, going north from Dublin directly to St. Kilda then to Tromshaven in Faeroes and up along the Icelandic east coast to Seyoisfjörour and on north to Grimsey (on Artic circle) then Akureyri (on north coast) and then west and south to Reykjavik and south east again to Ireland. We had 6 on board so passage making was not stressful in just over 4 weeks..
We were fortunate in never being weather bound and having only moderate to fresh winds.

June is the best month to be in Scotland and even further north, due to lengthy days and twilight all night in high latitudes and barely dark at all above lat. 65N.
Seawater temperature in Iceland was between 3 and 4 degrees C

Search Amazon for cruising guide by Willy Kerr
"Faroe Iceland Greenland" ISBN-10: 0852887655 0852887655

[Symphony]

you will also enjoy this lovely video from another CF thread
- great footage of Faroes in the last few minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Dq0f3WwW8&t=1s

[Cat White House]

Iceland and the Faroe Islands are bucket list world-class photo opportunities.

Make sure you rent a car for 1-2 days in the Faroes if not just for the experience of driving the tunnels that connect the islands.

Iceland is another place that driving around for a few days is a must.

[Dauntlessny]

I totally agree with you about the Baltic. I'm already planning on returning in 2025.

I've been in a fair bit of weather. I consider the North Atlantic one of the most treacherous waters, other than the Southern Ocean.
June and July are fine. May and August, especially the last two weeks in August can be risky, meaning low pressure systems with 60 kt winds especially North of Ireland.