The beginning

We are a couple, living in Florø, on the westcoast of Norway. Astor has been sailing for years, and I, Laila, has been sailing since I met Astor 11 years ago.

I have been writing a blog in Norwegian, Lailasturblogg, since 2007, but now we have desided to make a blog only about sailing. Thinking about sailing longer than our archipelago we want to write in English. We have a beautiful archipelago on the westcoast of Norway and we have a lot of islands to visit all year around. Because of the Gulf stream coming from south we have mild winters, thats why we can sail even in the winther.

This year we have decided to use the boat more, also just staying in our harbour. If we always are sailing we don`t have time to do jobs in the boat. When we are staying for a weekend we can see new things to do and we have time to do it.

When we arrived here Friday, Astor put up a splashback between the dish and the sofa. We have been thinking about that for years. With a white sofa we need it. A local company made it for us.

We have a Jeanneau Sun Oddyssey 40, build year 2000. The boat was used as a charterboat in Caribbean in the beginning, before a Norwegian guy bought it and sailed the boat to Norway. We bought the boat in 2012 and sailed her from Stord to Florø. After that we have had a lot of amazing trips with the boat. If you want to see pictures from earlier trips you can check out my other blog, http://lailasturblogg.blogspot.com/

The weatherforcast for Sunday was not the best, but we had promised our new organplayer in our church to go sailing. He was born in Poland and has been living in Germany the last 18 years. He loves sailing, nice to meet someone with the same interest. The weather was better than the forcast so we went out around 11am. We had a plan to go to Domba, a small harbour in the middle of nowhere. This is on the island Hovden a bit further up north from our hometown Florø.

It was good sailingwind all the way, and while Astor and Michael was sailing I went downstairs to start preparing dinner, a delicious fish-soup

It took us a bit more than one hour to sail out there. No one else was there so it was so quiet. Some people are living on this island, but on the other side, so no people and no traffic. It is possible to walk to the lighthouse Kvanhovden, but that was not our plan for today.

Saturday we had the spring cleaning day, where people were encouraged to pick garbage from the coastline. I sent the guys over to the beach to pick garbage while I made the dinner ready.

In this harbour it is a small house for everyone to use. There are table and chairs inside, so we had our dinner in this house. This is a really popular place so it is not often you are here alone.

After dinner we went onboard again. Now the wind was gone and we had to go by engine.

On our way back home we stopped in another small harbour called Hillersøy. This is a small island with no people. It is free to stay in both harbours but you can give the organisation that is responsibility for the harbours some money to maintain the harbours. In Norway we use «Vipps», you can use your phone to pay. I will recommend everyone to do that. It doesn`t have to be much.

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At Hillersøy it is very nice to go with the family, with small kids. You can find crabs and other interesting things in the ocean. Here is also a small house you are allowed to use. Michael had some German cookies we eat here before turning back home.

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It was still not much wind but perfect for the genaker. We had the sunset in the west and it was amazing beeing at the sea. We also saw a group of eagles really close to the boat.

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It was late when we arrived our home harbour so we didn`t wanted to clean up right away. We went up to our house, had a shower and had a look at a tv-show, before we went back to the boat to sleep…

A beautiful day at sea, in march! And if that wasn`t enough, when we came back to the harbour we could see the Northern Light!!! I haven` t seen it since I was a kid, so that was amazing!

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