Scoresby Sund Expedition 2022
Day 37. 17th July 2022
Position: Moored Vopnafjordur, Iceland
Weather: Calm peaceful evening
We have said goodbye to Torshavn and hello to Iceland!

I must admit that I rather like Torshavn and I can see why some people like to linger for a while. Sony who lives on a really wonderful Colin Archer yacht called Spenner, is one of those who decided to linger. He looks after the needs of all the visiting yachts people and we bonded over our love of Specter fuel cans. Sumara lay alongside a German yacht with an extremely competent sailor called Bjorn. Bjorn, Sony and the lovely couple from Artika all helped us manoeuvre Sumara out of our snug berth. The lady from Artika then gave us a yellow rose to wish us luck on our journey to Iceland – how nice was that!
13th July. So, with a little sadness we set off hoping that we got the tide calculations right to take us up the coast to round the northern tip of the islands before making course for Iceland. Unfortunately, the wind died on us as we neared the northern island and we had to motor into a confused sea and foul tide to try to flee the grip of the Faroes. As we were only making 1.9 kn, it took quite a while but then the wind came to the rescue so by 02:00 we were making 4 kn with one reef and in the right direction. The wind continued and increased until by the early hours of 15th July it was reaching F5 and we had two reefs and a reefed Yankee. After that the wind became light and variable so we needed to mix motoring with some enjoyable goosewinged downwind sailing. At 17:44 16th July an Icelandic Coastguard made contact to ask us about our intentions. They seem very effective at maintaining their coastal security by tracking every boat from the air. I suspect their main interest is to ensure their valuable fishing grounds are not infringed by foreign boats but for God sake don’t mention the Cod War!
Our landfall was a dramatic view of snow capped mountain looming over the low lying fog but sadly most of the journey beside the coast was obscured by fog. We eventually moored on a small pontoon next to the lifeboat in Vopnafjordur at 11:15. There were no other yachts here which was surprising.
We have just started to explore the delights of the area. Tomorrow we will walk 10 km to a swimming pool by a river and then set sail to Husavik.
Well it is tomorrow and we have completed the 20 km walk to the outdoor swimming pool and hot tubs. Certainly worth the effort but now we are late to get sailing so no time to add more pictures to the blog but just enough time to scoff a burger in the local garage before casting off.
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