Rest day at Børge Ousland’s guesthouse in Manshausen.
We had a good nights sleep and an excellent breakfast before we started to look over kit and dry batch #2, including the wettest pieces, the tents.
We have a lot of tents. Altogether the camp can sleep seven, as follows: Arne has a double tent and a bivvy bag. That’s three. Stein has a double tent. That’s five. Erling and Karianne has a single tent each so that’s seven. This points to an element of this years stage of RSKE, not only is the expedition fully supported, it is also severely over supplied. We could surely cook for at least seven (four pots, two kettles, two frying pans, three stoves, nine liters of fuel….) the list of duplicates can be made longer. We never had time to fully coordinate packing. Ame’s visit to the post office in Finnsnes on day two helped, but clearly there is still room for improvement.
We have a plan. Arne will leave us in Bodø on Friday. His eldest son is getting married and he plans to attend. Sad for us, but hard to argue with the priority. So Arne’s wife Ingvild will meet us in Bodø on her way back from Lofoten. They have a minibus. That should do the trick. So we have spent some time sorting out stuff to send back with Arne.
Arne, Karianne and Stein also rowed across to Randi Skaug’s place less than a hundred meters away. Randi is a very experienced mountain climber and polar explorer and she has also paddled the entire Norwegian coast. Lot’s to talk about over a waffle lunch.
Finally we found time to go to Nordskott, get some supplies and also take a walk to the local graveyard. It may sound like a strange destination, but a lot of condensed history can be read or at least imagined from the tombstones. The graveyard at Sørskott was from about 1940. Fortunately none of the tragedies at sea we have seen further north had happened here.
We had dinner with a new friend Karsten Myhre who came up here with his shining wooden yacht. He and Stein both had their careers in the Army, have common friends and a lot to talk about.
After dinner we had a short nightcap on board m/s Irene, before we started to pack the boats.
We are a bit anxious about tomorrow. The forecast says 11 m/s northerly winds. Our destination is Kjerringøy. It’s a tail wind, and most of the distance will be in sheltered waters so waves should be OK. That is the assumption, tomorrow we will see. If one or more of us gets uncomfortable crossing Folda, it will be a short day and a long dinner. WP
The Russian - Scandinavian Kayak Expedition 2018 -2022 