More Pictures A few pictures of the boat, private beaches, the woodshop, and some crazy looking hooligan.
Typically, on our sailing excursions, we end up calling something like this home for the night. And yes, most of the islands we hit do look like golf courses.

And this is what Karin looks like on the boat. Cute life jacket and inexpensive hat. The sail you see was responsible for knocking that hat off twice during a turn. Twice, in the same day.

This time we actually used a dock. Usually we tie up to rocks, but here we just cruised up to this dock, nobody seemed to mind. We tied the sail to the end of the boat and hung it low to make our shelter. Yes, that's where we slept. Well, we went off into the above pictured tent, but many slept on the boat.

The above mentioned rocks. This is more typical of our docking, just tie up to some large rock. In this case, we had our own private beach where we had a fire and cooked the fish we caught the night before. And this island also looks like a golf course. Some where I mentioned how getting out of the boat and onto land isn't always easy. This would be that picture that is worth a thousand words. It's minor rock climbing to get out.

Karin working in the wood shop. She's running the lathe and grinding a block of birch into a pretty bowl. The guy behind is Inar, the woodshop teacher, and he really is that big. Friggin huge man. And Karin has gotten pretty good at working this machine, I think she's made 2 or 3 bowls so far, and was talking about completing the set of 6.

Here's one of the ruffians I met. Needs a shave. And shower. I mean with a little cleaning up he'd have to carry a stick to keep the women at bay. It's sad to see a fellow human in such condition.

Hurtigrute 2 Day Cruise Christmas vacation has arrived, and I'm on my way north, to Harstad. My chosen method of travel is by boat, like I don't get enough of that.
This boat arrives at Trondheim at 8 and departs at noon. It goes all the way up the coast of Norway, and I mean all the way, taking 12 days to complete a round trip. My travels will only take 2 me days.
I was impressed by the size of this thing. It was once the 'mail boat', started in the 1800s to move stuff around, it was the country's only highway. In the last 10 years or so, it's become popular with the tourists, and the Norwegians have accommodated. This ship was huge: 700 passenger capacity, 11 thousand tonnes, and 120 meters long. And decked out for cruising with 3 restaurants, 2 bars and several lounges. I was traveling in style.
I chatted with one of the staff at the reception desk who, as most do, speaks perfect English. I was after some inside info in case my parents decided to do the typical tourists thing in the summer.

me: 'Yea, that room I have seems a bit noisy... back there in 380..
     um...sometimes the bed shakes'
him: 'Ha Ha! YES! That's right over the engine, can get quite noisy!
    Especially when we need extra power to fight the wind! We had
    very much wind last night!'
me: 'Yea... that fits with my experience... where are the good rooms?'
him: 'Class J, Obstructed View on deck 6. Slightly more
     expensive then your room, but very quite!'

So I'm learning a lot about big boats here. Like they rock. Despite their size relative to any imaginable wave, sea sickness is a problem. Even I, a seasoned old salt, begins to feel a bit queasy near the end of our first leg, the part that has 'much wind'. The biggest effect the size of the boat seams to have is the frequency of the rocking. On a boat this large, it rocks very slowly. But not so slow that it's easy to walk when the boat really gets going, and we travel like this for 5 hours. Not overly pleasant. But I was warm and dry and getting seasick, and that was SO very much better then being cold and wet and getting sea sick. I was traveling in style!
The second day of the trip is much nicer. With almost no bad sea and little wind, I slept well. Until getting up at 6am to get off the boat. That was not so good. But much better then other cities to which the boat arrives to at 3am. Everyday. 3am. If you live in one of these places you have to deal with your best transportation device working at 3am. Ug. So 6 isn't so bad.
The food is good. I have 3 eateries to choose from, one is way to expensive, the other is a buffet open when I'm not hungry, and the other is a 24 hour Frozen Dinner In The Oven joint. I ate there several times, and breakfast at the buffet. I set 2 alarms to ensure I make that breakfast, and boy, is it worth it. Fired egg sandwiches! bacon! toast and jam! OJ! coffee! cereal! I eat for an entire hour. So good to taste non school food. (school food is good, mind you, but it's always the same food).
Traveling this way gives a good feel of what Norway is. A bunch of small coastal villages. The Perpetual Night is upon us up this north, and watching the islands isn't so interesting after a while, but watching the light houses is neat now that I know how they work. Always exciting is how fast the captain weaves this huge boat between so many islands so fast. I'd never dream of doing some of these stunts if I was driving. Which is, maybe, why I'm not driving... I mean we get close to some of these rocks, and we don't slow down, the boat just veers at the last second. Ah, what fun. I think I'm looking forward to this journey on our small wooden boat, we take 2 weeks up and 2 back instead of 2 days, so we get to see much more detail of the coast, and I'll get to drive around these island right, dammit.

Capsized into 4 degree water The only thing different during today’s sunless breakfast is the extra wool. Nearly half the school is a bit more bundled up; both the Nature Life and Sailing groups are to partake in today’s tipping the boat event. In the hall, somebody even wishes me luck.
The day's events are to go something like this...
Get our butts out into a nice warm 5 degree day... with some nasty wind and capsize a boat and then swim to shore. Now, the advertised point of this exercise was to experience capsizing a small boat and then getting it to work again. And the reason we do this in December is to get a taste of hypothermia. We're wearing standard issue sailing clothes, something you'd wear outside on a cold day. NO wetsuit. The swim back takes a few minutes, and most people get to see the beginning effects of extreme heat loss. The process goes like this: Get a lift out to the boat, which is tied to a buoy in the middle of the marina. Flip the boat. Stand on it. Flip it back. Get in and bail out the water. Jump out of this now perfectly good boat and swim 50 meters to shore. Get onto shore and change into dry clothes. Shiver for an hour. Get warm feet in 2 hours.
So, the pictures:
We started off quite well and dry playing around with the boat. It's not every day you're suppose to rock the boat and we enjoy our opportunity.
After some minutes of mucking about, we get serious. These boats are really hard to tip, and ours was even half full of water, the only thing that worked was pulling on one side while standing on the other.
Oystain and I even cobbled together a pretty nifty plan to tip the boat and not get wet: If we grab the edge of the boat, and pull our butts up before the boat sinks, we'd stay dry. We do pretty good.
Some celebrating on the top of the boat over out staying dry, I was wet up to my stomach, Oystain was wet a bit further up. The damn thing never stays still, rocking back and forth making us look like drunk log rollers.
We do enjoy our time standing on the back side of the boat, it's not something I get to do too often, and I didn't really want to rush into the icy water. And these pictures don't show it, but the wind is nearly make-you-take-a-step strong, making this balancing act even more perilous. And the wind didn't really help with the cold either.
The process of bailing out the water is interesting, the boat can't handle the weight of 2 people standing up, it sinks and the water you just bailed out flows back in. So, you have to lay in the boat in the water, floating on your back, as you bail the first 90 liters or so. Then you can stand up and bail the rest. It's pretty cold, but the bailing gets you warm. Speaking of cold, we did get a taste of it for a few seconds while we turned the boat back over. We did our log rolling impression again as our enthusiasm to get into the boat had us pulling on the edge pretty hard. So hard the boat turned over, and then kept turning as we tried to climb in getting us back to where we started. We did this silly bit for 4 complete revolutions. And we were in the water during all of this. And this water has quite an effect, the first few seconds are pretty ok, but very soon you start hyperventilating. And that doesn't really stop, even though I was conscious of it, I couldn't really control it. Climbing into the boat and standing up makes things much better after the water drains out my clothes. Wool is truly amazing stuff, after the water drained out the cold and the wind didn't get through. Perhaps I was numb. The bailing does get the warmth back, but it's quickly dispatched by the jump into the water for the swim. I climbed out of the boat after Oystain, and started swimming. The row boat in front is our sailing teacher keeping a close eye and a close boat in case something bad happened. Kinda funny, he didn't stop rowing the whole time. He'd row and row and stay still. The wind was that bad.
The swim sucks.
The swim back is pretty bad, the stuff up to now was the boat tipping exercise, and now I enter the cold part of the exercise. The water was choppy from all the wind, and it felt like swimming around in the ocean. Only this time it's fully dressed with big steel toed boots. Fortunately the breast stroke works well wearing boots in choppy waters, and surfing and such had given me a good stroke. I finished in 1 and a half minutes or so, and the usual seemed to be closer to 3, so I got a light dose of cold. The cold I did get was pretty noticeable, in addition to the hyperventilating, other parts of my body started to stop working and my mind began to slow. The actual swim is just like in the pool trying to do one lap, I almost ran out of gas before getting there. So this was pretty standard and unexciting for me. The effects of the cold are much more interesting. During the swim, muscles move slower and I feel much weaker then I should for the work I've done. Damn good thing I have a life jacket. Walking out of the water was quite interesting, my rubber boots were filled with water and weighed nearly 10 pounds extra, and my legs weren't working right either, so walking took some extra effort and I almost fell down taking my first few steps on dry land. I didn't really notice this too much, in fact I didn't really notice anything too much. I watched the video of the event, and I remember standing there with people talking to me, but watching the video showed me what the people were saying. I don't have any memory of these meanings. That was an odd experience, watching me somewhere that I don't really remember. I changed into dry clothes and shivered for an hour. I even ran around for several minutes, which was an odd thing to do with completely numb feet. I warmed up soon after getting back to school, and my feet came back a full 2 hours after getting out, and some how I didn't get sick.

Ice Skating The outside temperature manages to hover around freezing, sometimes above, mostly a bit below, which has an interesting effect. The 5 or 10 feet of snow this region gets during a winter never really shows, most of it melts during these warm spells, leaving only a foot or so visible at any one time.
We just recently had a run of warmth with 33 degree days and some rain, which melted most of the snow, including it on the lakes. Which were still frozen. Which means we could ice skate!
This excursion took almost all day, we started at 10 in the morning, and headed home before 3. That's all the sun we get these days. The 15 minute drive took us to one of the more spectacular view's I've witnessed. A giant frozen lake tucked into the snow sprinkled forest, extending in both directions almost like a river. Sunk into the flat white ice were several islands, some with houses. Some of these houses had boat ramps and docks, which I could now walk up to. One place even had a diving board over the ice, which made us wonder how deep the water we were standing on was. This scenery was by far the best part of the trip, it would be hard for anything to top it. And there were no skates that fit me. Bummer. I was looking forward to cruising around the islands, to getting some speed and not have to turn left and avoid some kid. Those ice rinks at home are just to small for any real skating.
Half way through out day, we packed up the stuff, and moved camp. I rode a mountain bike with studded tires through the snow, that stuff is more slippery then you'd think... but all was good when we got to where we were going. A fire was started, and so was a hockey game. I ate lunch, and warmed my butt by the fire before heading out to explore this winter wonderland. My wondering took me out of ear shot of most of the noise of the group, and I heard something for the first time. The sound of snow falling. The area was that quiet, no wind, no animals, not water, nothing. Just the sound of snow fall.
Øystain and I took another walk around another island. Vegard, on quiet skates, came up behind and slid a bowling ball sized ice cube at us from behind... he's not always serious.. he made some comment about working on his curling. By this time the snow had fallen for a few hours, and a nice white dusting had covered everything, the ice included. This set the stage for some fun. One of those giant ice cubes met it's end by being thrown up in the air. When it hit the ice it shattered and each piece of shrapnel that shot off left a trail in the snow. It was like those films from electron colliders smashing sub-atomic particles to bits, showing the path the various bits took. An explosion frozen in the snow. OK, so I'm easily amused.
The trip back was nothing too exciting, but dinner was pretty good, somehow just our table ended up with 2 different meat dishes. And both were very good. AND we had ice cream. AND an hour later we ate pan cakes and coffee. I'm pretty sure I ate too much AND I didn't complain about it.

Our day in the City Trondheim. Folkehøgskole day, or something. Apparently there were 'all' the Folkehøgskoles from the area attending this 'event'. I may have seen one other school. But there I go not starting at the beginning.
We woke up about 9, and hop off the boat into the center of town. I love that. The rest of the school is just unloading the cars as we walk up, somehow that worked out, and we start setting up camp. We have half a block along the Walking-Street to setup banners and booths and other assorted Lets Show off the School type stuff, including pancakes. Which is kinda odd, we give out pancakes to entice the public into talking with somebody and learning about the school. What was really different was the open fire we cooked them on. Camp fire. No stove, just a large metal disk with firewood on it, on fire. Kinda cool. And nice and warm in the below freezing weather, it really helped to huddle around when you weren't playing games.
One of the events we were to attend is singing. I, and several others, opt instead for Burger King. 15 bucks later I had my lunch, and it's not really different then US Burger Kings, just more expensive.
The boat drive back to Trondheim was fantastic. Sitting on the deck of the boat in the cold wind discussing societal differences between Norway and the US. Good times. Leaving a city by boat at night is the best way to go, watching the lights fade away into the darkness behind is an amazing sight.

Night driving! Another harrowing adventure on the high seas.
This time we were not sailing, we had a motor. That was good. having to be concerned with getting the wind to move the boat would be quite distracting to the goal of this trip: night navigation.
The craft for our journey into the inky blackness of the Nordic night was a 50 foot fishing boat. Built in the 1930's. And it has an inside, in fact it has 2 insides! The wheel house sits in the middle of the boat; it has an actual wheel, with wooden handles sticking out the sides and everything, and a few small rooms extend behind this wheel which became our Navigation Rooms. The working space here was minimal. if you pack it in, you could squeeze 3 people in the wheel house, and maybe 4 in the Navigation Rooms, breathing would be difficult like this, and all 7 would have to get out to let the guy in the back out. We had 3 inside most of the time, and that was about right.
The rest of the people, 7 minus 3 is....um....4, yea, the other 4 would usually endure the driving of the first 3 in the front of the boat, down under the deck in the 'living quarters'. Here again, space was limited. There were 3 bunks, each about the size of me, the one I had was a bit smaller. And I mean the size of me. I could place my feet flat on one end, and my head hit the other, it was wider then my shoulders, but not my much, and when I turned over, my shoulder hit the ceiling. It was a bit claustrophobic. Think 'US Submarine' and your getting close. We had 3 of those in the wall, a small table and enough room to seat 7. And when 7 were seated the room was completely full. Totally full. Nobody else would fit, unless they sat on the ladder, but that's cheating.
Øystain and I were up first. Part of our 'homework' before embarking on this journey was to make a plan. And did we ever make a plan. We had our nav points picked, our headings measured, and our Time Till Next Turn calculated down to the second. We were so ready.
We took over the helm just after we cleared the harbor, and headed for our first light house. That was easy. Steering was not so easy, but I was sure it would get easy with some practice. Then we hit upon our first nav point change, and we couldn't find the next lighthouse. It was only about 10 miles away, and we figured we could easily see it. We learn something here. So we go to our Plan B: Aim North and Miss the Land. That goes pretty well. Soon, our missing lighthouse did show up, and we jump back on to our Plan A, and steer a straight line for it, keeping the light between red and white. That doesn't really work either. Steering is much more difficult then it looks. This boat drives like a Cadillac; keeping it on a straight enough course to stay on this red-white line as we bounce through the waves is nearly impossible. And we had this lighthouse in front of us. I try to imagine what it would be like on the last 2/3Rd's of our trip where our wonderfully laid out plan calls for steering a straight line for 15 miles guided by a lighthouse behind us. Yea, I start looking for a plan D.
The other guys take over soon after these Navigational Revelations, and Øystain and I retire to the comfy confine of our cabin. I sit down and toss my feet up on the wall, and remark, 'This ain't a bad way to travel.'. Øystain's laughter broke me out of my deeply reflective state, 'Would you have said that 4 months ago?' waving an arm across the old, cramped, decrepit and slightly smelly cabin. Perhaps this school has had an effect on my outlook....
We nearly make our destination a bit after midnight, and stop for the night at harbor. The next morning Øystain goes shopping to find some potato chips to go with with the Coke we got at the last gas station.. that would have been perfect navigation food.. and the rest of us go out for a walk heading for the same store..and go the wrong way. It was very nice walk through the 'town' that calls this island home. It really is a different world out here, people live on this little island, with one store. We've seen islands with no store.
Our work at the Sheep Island takes us a few hours, including 20 minutes to shoo off the sheep. Our mission on this journey was to deliver a new male sheep, to keep the genetic pool stirred up. We tossed him off the boat, literally. I and literally mean literally. Not how most people say 'literally' but mean 'figuratively' but think that saying 'literally' makes the point stronger. 2 people grab him by the fur, and one guy on the shore takes his rope, and they toss him over the side of the boat, and onto the rocky shore. I am surprised how cat-like a sheep can be, he lands with no problems. But I don't think anyone told him about his fate. He then stands around baying at us...do sheep bay?..whatever sheep do, he's doing it. Seems like he was pissed at being tossed around like that, I think he took it personally. If only he had known we had taken him to an island resort that was filled with a herd of beautiful women, I think he would have had a different tone to his voice.
While waiting until darkness fell, we did some test driving. And we didn't have much time, darkness 'round these parts creaps in 'round 3:30. Tossing a buoy in the water gave us a marker to aim for, and we tried to bring the boat up and stop just touching it. Remember the Cadillac analogy? Think Cadillac on ice. This thing is much harder to move around. Actually moving is OK, it's stopping motion in this frictionless world once it starts that's tough. Damn Issac Newton and his Laws. I actually got the hang of it after the second run, my first pass was bad enough to not tell anymore about, and the second one is great, I manag to stop with the buoy in the right place, but the boat had this rotation thing going that I didn't really know how to get rid off...I mean, I was there and the buoy wasn't moving from the boat, but the world kept drifting right on me. Good thing we were practicing on a buoy and not a dock.
A quick mutiny resulted in us not going back to the school, but instead going straight into Trondheim. The other students were getting up at 6:30am to take a bus to get to the City for a Folkehøgskole Day in the city. We got up at nine, ate and fell out of the boat and we were there. I love that. The trip in was also notable. Waves. Wind. Pirates. Well, OK, no Pirates. The waves were big enough to get our boat to bounce at we did our 7 knots, throwing the bow of the boat (with the living quarters) first up over the wave, then down the backside and into the face of the next wave jarring the ship with the impact and throwing water over the bow covering our windows. It's really quite a sight when you're driving. We slow down when that happens, 'cause the boat is wooden and from the 30s. This section was plagued with the worst conditions we had. Not that 'plagued' or 'worst' are really good words here, it wasn't all that bad, no Perfect Storm. But a few of us began to get queasy stomaches from all the up and down and side to side. Incidentally, the cabin with the bunks is located in the front of the boat, which is why it's so narrow, and why it's called 'The Elevator' by some Danish folk. This is the part the goes the most up and down when you start hitting waves. I can atest to the acuracy of that name.
Øystain and I got to drive us the last have of the way into the City, so we got our fair share of the waves breaking over the bow...ok not really 'breaking' over the bow..more like sea spray... but it was enough to cover the windows and make looking hard. And as hard as driving was on the flat, it was 10 times that now. Imagine that Cadillac on ice, now make that ice wavy with 3 foot hills. Now imaging steering one way, and sliding down the face of a hill another direction. Over-steer was the word for the day. Under Damped Feedback is also good. Positive Feedback and Exponentially Growing Oscillation are also very descriptive of my driving.
Driving the waves was very good, and I now know that I don't want to be a fisherman. 'But you already have a career' I often hear when sharing these kinds of realizations. Thats not that point, the point it that 'I don't want to be a fisherman' irrespective of what career I have or don't have. Driving for a few hours in mild weather is kind of fun, but for a living in the storms.. not for me.
Our journey was coming to an end. We had made it There and Back Again (maybe I should right a book ?) and the rough water was behind us. The radar said no trouble. Radar ? Yes, we had one. Didn't use use it until we were done navigating and just going to Trondheim. It's cool, I may get one for my car. As we pull away from the rough waters, the lights of the city begin to become visible in the night sky. Approaching cities from the water is the best. As we motor in, the light grows in intensity and then the lights begin to separate out and we seethe outline of the city, and then the roads become visible, and soon we can see the major landmarks and building. It is spectacular. The city is on a hill, and it's lit up with the inviting glow of orange street lights. It's very scenic and romantic, despite the wording of that last sentence. There is a marina within the city that we all have seen, the bus/train station is a rocks throw from it. And now we sail into it, at night. We had a bridge open for us! I've never had that happen before, and we motored into the peacefully and serene waters of the city. It was about 10pm, and everything was quite, extra quite for us after the noisy and jarring boat ride. This short 10 minute marina trip into Trondheim is one of my more beautifully memories I have. You'll just have to trust me, words will not do it justice.
Then we tied up, cleaned up, and headed for Pizza. Very good stuff. And really quite good times hanging out with the sailing group off of a boat. We retired or our bunks soon after, and I slept well.