RSKE year 3 day 14. Monday 27 July.

Vågaholmen to Sjonøy. 43 km, 6.2 km/hr average speed. Start 2010 arrive 0400.

The wind shook the tents during the night, but no action necessary. We could just sleep on, and sleep on we did. Morning bath and coffee wasn’t until after 0830. Looking over the coffee cup toward Nordvernes we could see the fjord covered in white caps. No paddling anytime soon.

Reading the weather forecast it seemed that tomorrow and possibly Wednesday would be equally windy. Vågaholmen is a nice place, but maybe not the place to spend a whole holiday. Time to considered night paddling.

The wind is almost always lower during the night than during the day. And that is also today’s forecast. The wind should fall off at about 1900 and be OK till ca 0700 on Tuesday. So there is a window allowing us to cover some km.

A decision best taken after breakfast. We went to the waiting room/cafe and ordered “karbonadesmørbrød”. Over breakfast Stein made some investigations, didn’t he have an old friend from the Norwegian parachute association that had moved here?

Soon Jørn joined us at the table. He and his wife Kitt had moved up from Hemsedal and built a house here when Kitt took up the position the most senior administrator in the Rødøy municipality. (Rådmann). Soon we had an invitation and a plan: After work hours we would have dinner with Kitt and Jørn and then we will paddle off and see what we can do.

Decision made. We went to take down camp and pack the boats, so everything would be ready for a quick start. Then we went to wait some more in the waiting room. We read up on the news and concluded that we didn’t miss out on much.

To kill time some of us sampled what was a new culinary treat for us: Soft ice waffle. The waitress at the cafe looked a bit surprised when we wanted a knife and a fork to eat it….it was the best idea we could come up with. Maybe the locals have another trick, but unfortunately we didn’t see anyone else in action with the waffles. Another one of life’s mysteries that we will never know the answer to. And so the hours went, the wind persisted and the forecast rain arrived on time. Hard to believe we would be paddling today.

First things first. After work we were picked up and driven a couple of km to Kitt and Jørn’s house, a spectacularly located and built house with a westward view across Rødøyfjorden

A three course dinner was soon on the table, tasty and in expedition quantities. Kitt and Jørn are both outdoors people, they know what it takes to fuel up.

After dinner Kitt and Jørn drove us to the kayaks and at 2010 we thanked them again for their hospitality and paddled off to ward Rødøyfjorden.

Now the seas were calm and we made good speed. For the first hour the sun warmed and it was quite hot in the dry suit. But as the sun set it bacame more comfortable and soon after sunset the boats were covered in dew.

It was a nice paddle also because land was never far away and there was something to look at. That’s good after midnight when we got tired and it started to feel a bit like a slog.

At about 0100 we passed the arctic circle at Tonnes, so now we are officially in warmer climes.

At about 0230 we passed Klungervika on Lurøy, a stop recommended to us by Carl Dons, who had received great hospitality there when he rowed Brønnøysund to Vågaholmen last year. We concluded it was the wrong time of day to test that hospitality, besides we wanted to get to the southern part of Lurøy to be ready to catch any weather window to get across to Tomma.

And so it was that at 0400 we paddled into a small cove just at the southern tip of Lurøy. With a nice landing beach and a view due south to Tomma. Not that we stopped much to admire the view as the sun rose and painted Tomma in hues of pink. We just got the tents up and ourselves in a horizontal position. Lights out, sunrise or not.