Explore Sailing Voyages in Iceland 🇮🇸

Whale watching trip

Overnight passage! Learned so much. First night watch in big seas / wind. Falcon is easy to helm. Did staggered 4 on/ 4 off.

Long day with big winds. Crazy time getting the anchor to set in 30 knots!

Learning all about Nordic Falcon. What a boat! Huge winches including a coffee grinder and running back stays - first experience with those. Lots of tacking and helming practice. Quite a range of experience in the crew. Great group of very supportive women!

Joined 59 North Women’s passage in Iceland. Day one, fuel up the boat and safety briefing.

August 23 No northern lights last night, too bright. Early morning 6:00am start. Nice north easterly, Sails up after breakfast and off we go. Good practice for downwind sailing. Stayed on the helm for most of the morning till lunch. Good session. Decided to catch up on some reading and maybe a nap, expecting a quite afternoon! Shortly afterwards, Jet utters the magic words “Orcas” 😀 Dash to the deck and lo behold we see 2 Orcas (an adult and a juvenile) they don’t stick around and move on sharpish. Few minutes later we see a group of them coming towards us. I count 1,2,3,4 fins appear side by side. 2 quite large dorsals. There were I think 5-6 in the group, they crossed us at a slow pace and were playing in the waves. Jonathan got some stunning photos, one of them breaching 😳 When I came back up after a quick nap, the crew surprised me with a blueberry birthday cake (that we picked up the previous evng in the hills)(they missed it by few days 😊) Saw 3 minky whales. That was nice. Wind dies as we were approaching the harbour. So engine on and to the harbour wall Walk to town waterfall and enjoy the church. The new church’s are really beautiful in Iceland, a reinterpretation of old architecture in glass and metal

Last day if the trip, heading back to Reykjavik. Nice breeze so we sailed most of the day. Gijs stayed at the helm, till we were clear of headlands and then Richard and I shared the helm for the rest of the day. First view of the city was a shock to the system, seeing large buildings and the dock after 3 weeks in wilderness was strange. Haven’t even docked yet and I am ready to come back to land of ice and rocks for next adventure

August 24 Trip almost ending. 7:39 start. Leaving the beautiful town of Olafsvik, on the northern edge of Snaefellsjokull Nationak park. Good north easterlies. Of the bat, all sails up and engine off. These waters here must have good food sources. Loads of birds. Whilst the sails were going up, we saw 3 dolphins. Not sure what type, but had biggish dorsal fins. They didn’t stop to play. I saw a sea gull or perhaps a Fulmar, pushing a large jelly fish and munching on it as it went along. Takeaway breakfast I guess 😁 Scratch that about the Dolphins, they did want to play after all. Just waiting for the sails to go up, I guess. We had a quite a few of them playing in the bow wave. Along the way, the plan is to go to a remote town of Akranes, which is not usually accessible unless the conditions are just right to drop anchor on the exposed shore. It has a very small settlement with handful of houses where everything including the bin are lashed down against the wind. We made it to the town and got a chance to explore the shoreline, see the local church abd talk to some resident locals.

Another night of Northern Lights. This time everyone else also got to see it. I was the only one lucky enough to see the classic moving ribbon view of the northern lights. By the time others got on deck only the diffused light version was visible. Jonathan got some stunning photos on his pro canera with long exposure. Well worth setting the alarm and getting up at 2:00am in the freezing morning.