Day 84. 4th July 2026
Reading time : 5 minutes
Confidence rating: 8.75/10
Grit and Jo arrived safely in the Faroes and we explored the town. I had a plan to leave on Tuesday morning and had been doing the usual checks on the Windy app. On Monday morning my check revealed a worsening position with strong winds building near Iceland on Thursday. It showed gusts of 32 knots, 2.8m waves, and the wind even coming more westerly. It was giving me a mild dose of the hebbie jeebies. Althouth not an ideal forecast, I gave it some more rational thought and it did show the first two days indicated fine sailing, albeit on a rather lumpy sea, it seemed best to go and take Thursday’s rough weather on the chin. There is nothing worse than sitting in port in fine weather wondering why you are not sailing. You can wait for ever for perfect weather and it may never come.
We decided to set off at 03:50 GMT on Tuesday. We celebrated our last evening in Torshavn in a rather un-Faroese maner by scoffing a huge burger in an Angus Steak House! Shame on us.
As we left Torshavn we saw Muckle Flugga leaving too, incorrectly thinking they were also heading to Iceland. We poled out the Yankee and, with a reef in the main, set off, still under power, into a foul tide. The tide soon changed in our favour and we were now making 5 knots SOG.
Then something alarming and potentionally dangerous happened. When I gybed the main across, I saw to my alarm that the uppermost part of the sail had caught on the spreader. With one reef, the batten pocket exactly aligned with the upper spreader and the cord loop used to pull out the velcro strip securing the batten had neatly hooked around the spreader end and got caught behind the bolt holding the shrouds in place. We gybed back and tried to shake it out but to no avail. This was a potentially dangerous situation. I couldn’t lower the sail and another gybe could bend or break the spreader. It looked like climbing the mast was the only solution. On a small narrow boat, climbing the mast in a lumpy sea is not easy, in fact it is very dangerous. I was about to go below to get the climbing gear out when to my delight the cord snapped and all was well again. I lowered the sail and poked all the other loops inside the pockets being ever grateful Sanders Sails don’t use Dyneema for their loops!
We caught a foul tide off the north tip of the Faroes and with the light wind in the lee of the islands it seemed to take for ever to escape their influence. Bizzarely we were sailing on starboard tack with a wind from the north west not south west.
At 22:47 I hoisted the genoa as we were only making 2.4 knots. Poor Jo had succumbed to a nasty dose of mal de mer and the lumpy sea state and being close hauled wasnt helping. By 05:51 we were back to Yankee, stay and full main and making 4.7 knots through 2m waves.
During Wednesday morning we had a technical triumph – we downloaded a grib file over the sat phone! It is not as easy as it used to be and involved our London neighbour installing Linux onto my laptop to avoid the Microsoft updates. All we need now is to receive ice charts and Mr Musk can keep his Starlink.
After lunch, Viking Maris, a cruise ship, appeared on AIS, our first vessel. It is surprisingly quiet in these parts. By mid afternoon we were making 5.6 knots and had a massive pasta bolognaise to set ourselves up for the strong weather coming soon.
At 18:00 GM we made a sat call to Paul for some weather routing. He assured us all was well but mentioned winds of 25 knots peaking at 15:00 Thursday. On Thursday, the sun came out and the wind actually went light for a few hours before kicking in strong. Sun is always welcome.
At 11:30 a pod of around 30 pilot whales entertained us for a few hours leaping out of the waves and surfing down some. Gannets flew above, it was a wonderful sight.
It solved Jo’s mal de mer at least for a while. The waves were now about 3m high and we were triple reefed with a reefed Yankee making 5 knots SOG.
At 21:00 Iceland came into veiw with its snow capped mountains. Early in the morning the wind died being in the lee of the land. We motored into Seydisfjordur against a strong spring tide. Our battery needed a charge, so I was quite happy with that.
We tied up at 06:00 GMT alongside the wharf. It was 7C so we put on the Eberspacher and opened a beer to celebrate. At 10:00 we were visited by customs who were very friendly and declined to step aboard, or indeed to look at our passports! We took down the yellow flag and went for a shower, swim and hot tub before enjoying a fantastic meal in the local bar.
At 23:00 we collapsed into bed with the heater blasting warm air through the boat. Zzzz
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