D8 – Our first week has come to an end, only 29 to go

Our first week has come to an end, only 29 to go 🙂

First of all we would like to thank all of you that showed up see us leave Oslo. It was highly appreciated!! Then we also would thank all our old and new friends along the route that has hosted and fed us!! Thanks Sissel, Marius, Knut & Anita, Mats & Åsa!

(So if any of you wondered how we survive in the cold, we have followed the advice from «Klatremus» in «Hakkebakkeskogen», i.e. we have paid visits)

We started out with our company in -9C, ice and slush, but after a couple of hours, the ice was no major issue. The first few days we had nice tailwinds before it turned against us.

The temperature climbed to around 0 from Monday, almost spring 🙂 the key issue was to keep the fingers warm when we were onshore.

The winning kit of this first week was the Kokatat Stormcag, it is an eskimo design that we put on top of the drysuit and PFD. The idea is to keep a layer of warm air between the drysuit and cag. When we had our regular 30 min break after about two hours paddling, we did not have to do any changing of clothes, the cag kept us warm enough, even with wet wool underwear.

Our key focus this first week was to avoid stress on our body and make reasonable daylegs. Actually, the body feels pretty good!

We have scheduled with a day off per week for rehabilitation and maintenance, which we have done this Friday. We have shopped some few things in the nearby town Hamburgsund, and adjusted Erling’s skeg.

This evening our dinner was a bit delayed because we got a very welcome visit from Annika and Thomas, our very nice «neighbors» here at «Kustnara» hostel in Heestrand. They brought interesting and knowledgeable company …plus a nice bottle of red wine to share.

Tomorrow we are continuing South with the aim of reaching Copenhagen in time for Erling’s daughter Nora’s last day in her current job on the 23 March. Her workplace is at the seaside so we hope to paddle by for lunch. However, it’s a long way and the weather will decide.

All the best to our followers!