Back to Oslo Day 13, Friday 16 July «with a bit more help from a some more friends”

Lyngør to Nevlunghavn. 63 km. Start 0925 arrive 0045. Average speed.., not too far from 7 km/hr.

After an excellent breakfast at Helene and Carl Andreas’ place and kayaks loaded with Helene’s freshly baked bread and our minds loaded with Carl Andreas detailed local advice on how to avoid the coastal current, we set off for Risør where we planned to resupply and pay a short visit to Karianne’s friends Kjersti’s and (Erling’s Equinor colleague) Bjarne at their new summer house.

We followed the plan except for the “short” in “short visit”. Neither the newly constructed extremely well thought trough and built summer house, not the lunch and certainly not the welcoming suggested a short visit…we ended up spending three very pleasant hours in the Risør area.

All very well and good, but Erling paddled on with a slightly worried expression. Sunday’s weather forecast for the two hour crossing across Langesundsbukta wasn’t the best, with winds increasing to almost gale force around mid day. It would be better to cross tonight and try to get around Tønsberg Tonne before the wind picked up Sunday. But by now it was early afternoon and that plan would involve a night crossing of the heavily trafficked Langesundsbukta. Not an optimal solution either.

While we were paddling on pondering that dilemma we were met by another kayak. With hat and sunglasses we didn’t recognise our friend Frode Stangebye before we heard his voice as he greeted us “God sommer!!”

Soon we were eating Danish pastry with Frode and his wife Trine. But now we made the visit to short to eat all the goodies Trine and Frode had brought. So we ended up with two Danish pastries in the boats as we paddled on.

Our original destination for the day had been Stråholmen and Karianne’s friend Berit who has a summer house there.

This is how we manage quick progress along this part of the coast: we visit Karianne’s friends summer house and eat all and anything edible.

Anyway, when we got to Stråholmen we had decided for a long break to get ready for the crossing, but no overnight stay. We would cross to Bramskjæra outside Nevlunghavn tonight not tomorrow.

After dinner with turkey, potato salad, chocolate cake, Oreo cake and Berit’s son Bendik’s excellent and strong coffee,we felt ready to go.

We started from Stråholmen 2315 and arrived at Bramskjæra in pitch darkness at about 0045. On our way across we had two ships going in, one coming in to drop of the pilot (?) and one coming out. We paddled with head torches and the VHF ready on channel 16.

We were happy to be across Langesundsbukta, and we set up camp quickly and quietly as to not disturb the paddler inhabiting the other five tents. Nevlunghavn and the skerries just outside is a very well known paddling destination. 0130 tents were up and light were out.

Sunday we aim for Bolærne. WP.