The Faroes are jewels – steep, misty, emerald-capped cliffs with wheeling seabirds, strong tide rips and tiny deep fishing harbours. A lovely stopover if ever I saw one.
We arrived at 5 am today out of a wet and very windy sea. Misty mountains, steep cliffs with dazzling grass toupees and hundreds of waterfalls. We’re cleared in at a small, secure fishing harbour rarely visited by foreign vessels and it is so nice to be here. Crew have been driven to the showers by the harbourmaster and I am asleep.
Faroe Landfall
crew ashore and skipper deeply asleep
The following day we sailed round to Torshavn, the capital. A local fisherman got out his tide tables – a volume the size of a bible – to work out for us the right time to depart. Such is the importance of tidal currents in these waters. He gave us a departure time of “7 minutes past 4 in the afternoon” and his recommendation was spot on – we roared down channel under poled out yankee with 6 knots of favourable current under us and were round the corner and up into Torshavn in no time.
A lovely photogenic town, with friendly folk fiercely proud of their independence.
To my great shame and embarrassment I drove the boat into the jetty with some force coming alongside from the fueling dock yesterday. The marina is very tight but that is no excuse. I misjudged the strength of the wind doing a right hand turn with no room to spare. Our prop is left-handed, so right turns are not tight. No damage, except to my self esteem, as there was a very attentive audience for the entire episode. First time this has happened to me in 40 years. I was tired and cocky about the boat’s manoeuverability in very tight quarters. There was a safer way of coming alongside but I didn’t think it necessary. My cheeks will burn for another week, I think.
A local diver kindly replaced our Maxprop anode, which had fallen off somewhere back there in the sea.