Ski and Paddle Norway 2009

Distance 21km | Time 5.5hrs | Ascent 0m | Descent 0m

After a much too late a night where I got into my sleeping bag and fell asleep with Rich still telling outdoor stories and talking, I still felt drowsy when I woke at 0700. I had to have another couple of hours sleep. At 0900 Rich made some great and powerful coffee and I had the breakfast from the shop. We chatted while I packed and then Rich helped me carry the bags to the kayak. I eventually launched at 1130.

It had clouded over a bit from the perfect blue skies of the early morning and there was just the slightest south east wind. Looking back to Askvoll I could see it was quite small for a town and was more of a large village. It was a busy port however with the express catamaran ferries coming from Bergen and then local ferries radiating out after its arrival.

I paddled out past a couple of islands which were nature reserves and then started to cross the open 7-8 km of Vilnesfjord. Vilnesfjord was really the outer portion of the 40 km long Dalsfjord which cut a deep slot inland from Askvoll. The tide was going out and there was quite a current flowing west from it. When I paddled over Vilnesfjord I found I was doing about 7 km as opposed to the usual 5.5 km per hour.

I made a line for the west end of the peninsula where there was a small hamlet of Eina. It was a relatively easy and quick crossing but towards the end the wind was up to a force three from the south and I had to put on my jacket for the splashes. At the end of this peninsula were a couple of medium sized islands called Lammetu and Lutelandet.

I entered the sounds between Lammetu and Lutelandet and it was a world of small channels and islets. Some islets were ice-scoured and bare yet others were covered in pine and spruce. The nearer the mainland the more forest there was. It was a lovely area to explore and I saw an otter here. I crossed under a simple suspension bridge connecting Lammetu to the mainland and then turned into the sound between Lammetu and Lutelandet, called Folsund, which was more bare ice scoured rock. The wind however was still increasing and it was almost a force four now.

At the west end of Folsund I had to leave the protection of the islands and venture out into Bufjorden. The obvious route was to the south down Krakhellesund, but Rich had advised against this as it could be a boring slog in a headwind and it was also the shipping lane. He suggested I head out to the islands of Solund where there were masses of channels and islets and much better nature. He was very knowledgeable so I believed him. However it meant crossing Bufjord.

As I set off on this 6-7 km crossing the wind was a force four with quite a few white caps. The wind had now also veered to a south south west and was pretty much against me. I could see the main channel down Krakhellesund to the south. It was a deep slot in grey mountains and the wind would have been squeezed up it. There were about three ships in Bufjord coming out of and going into this channel.

I set off keeping an eye out for these three ships and initially made good progress into the weather towards Leknessund on the other side. However about half way across the force four plus increased to a force five and then up to a six. The sea was now covered in breaking white caps and the near metre waves were steep as they piled towards me.

The kayak was slicing through some of the waves but generally was rising up and slapping down into the next. Spray was everywhere and was lifting off the whitecaps and forming streaks on the water. It was sometimes difficult to see. My progress ground almost to a halt and I was just making 2-3 km per hour. I could not build any momentum as the oncoming waves just knocked me back. Frequently a wave would run up the deck and green water hit me in the torso. I had to keep the paddle blades quite low to avoid them taking on a will of their own in the wind.

It took about an hour to complete the remaining 3 km of this otherwise simple crossing and it was not until I was only a few hundred km from Leknessund that the waves and then the wind eased. To the south the main channel and the rest of the island of Sula looked very dramatic and stark. That was not an idyllic landscape of green fertile soils and fjord but towering buttresses of bare grey rock over a dark fjord. It looked very Wagner.

Reasonably wet with spray I reached the quiet of Leknessund. It was idyllic and the hamlet fringed the quiet sheltered waters of the bay. About 20 herons took off when I paddled past an islet. There were some modern houses here and some traditional ones with old boatsheds lining the water. There was plenty of spruce forest on the land helping to shelter the hamlet.

There was no road here previously as the council deemed it too expensive to make. Then a resident of the hamlet won the lottery and gave the council an interest free loan to build the road which it did. The road is locally called ‘Millionaires Road’.

I paddled through the sound and under the narrow bridge which connected both sides of the sound and had lunch in the kayak here. The wind had dropped off again. As I ate a sailing boat moored up nearby. After the late lunch I set off again and paddled past the sailing boat round the point and into Hersviksund. The wind was back and it was powering up this sound. In half an hour I went a km and I was really looking to camp as paddling was futile.

With nowhere to camp and very little prospect of campspots ahead along this ice-scoured landscape I decided to turn back to Leknessund. I completed the returning km in well under 10 minutes. I paddled past the sailing boat and chatted briefly with them. They said they measured the wind at 16 metres per second which is a force seven but I don’t think it was so much.

I found a place to camp near the bridge where I ate an hour previously and had the tent up by 1730. By now it was raining too. I initially had a snooze and then at 2000 started to write. The wind continued to rattle the tent and the showers pelted it from time to time. I was done by 2200 and looked forward to an early night and with this forecast a possible lie in.

It had been a mixture of a day. The slow start was compensated by the rapid crossing of Vilnesfjord and the islands of Lammetu and Lutelandet were lovely. The crossing of Bufjord will be memorable and the decision to stop early and camp was for the best.

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