Howard Steen, at the Cruising Association two weeks ago, spoke about his voyages around Norway over the last 3 years. He did it in a fine craft of a Vancouver 27 called Martha Maria. The clubhouse at the Cruising Association was filled to ‘standing room only’ capacity to hear him.
Howard started sailing about 20 years ago, but since retiring bought in his own boat and has been sailing intensively solo or with friends around Norway ever since.
He has sailed from Oslo to Tromso above the Arctic Circle – and about 1000nm and 50+ sailing days per year.
Great Reasons to visit Norway according to Howard
- inspiring scenery – hills, mountains, glaciers
- midnight sun, northern lights
- 100,000+ km coast
- types of sailing is vaired – from open ocean to archipelago to pottering in fjords and along coast
- Norwegians are very hospitable
- English spoken almost everywhere
- history and culture for example, stave churches only exist in Norway, the Viking museum in Oslo
- multitude of empty and unspoiled harbours and anchorages
- usually can anchor in <10m water
- there are also busy harbours near busy cities if you want them
- excellent transportation connections: 16 primary and 29 regional airports, ferries, trains, fast ferries, buses…
- skiing and great system of mountain huts to stay in if you like hiking in the mountains
- nearly no insects!
- …aaaaaaaand he crossed the Arctic Circle!
Sailing in Norway
- fjord sailing depth can be >1000m deep
- need to know your mast height accurately in Norway because there are so many bridges between the islands
- need to use your engine a lot – only sailed about 30% of the time due to low winds
- used SIM card and a dongle for communication
- fuel is mostly by hose
- they have an excellent Coast Guard
- not allowed to discharge holding tanks within 300m of shores
Wintering in Norway
- the water is warmed by the Gulf Stream so you can leave the boat in the water over winter
- but you get snow on the boat so you need to cover it to protect the decks
- you need to get permission to overwinter from Customs
- he used a diesel heater and an electric fan heater to keep warm in the winter
- overwintering in a small harbour afloat was 500£ (Tromso was much more expensive)
Harbour fees
- only approx 100-150 krone/day (£10-15/day or $16-24/day)
- in a big city like Tromso they were 200-300 krone/day
(£22-33/day or $35-53/day) - often harbours were free to stay in in isolated harbours
Some info sources
- weather info at http://www.yr.no
- sea charts at http://www.kart.statkart.no
- cruising guides from the Cruising Assocation – free!
- RCC Pilotage – Norway Guide, edited by Judy Lomax
- Norway Cruising Guide – ebook, by Phylis Nickel and John Harries
We love it all! Norway’s on our list…
–Captain Cat
(transcribed by the Can Opener)
Destination Dreamin’
Previously: Cape Horn And North To Alaska
The Cruising Kitty 
Living in Norway, it was great to see our coast and fjords on you list of future possible destinations.
Howard Steen seems to have got it right about cruising in Norway. It really is great place for boating – the only thing which could have been better is temperatures more like those in equatorial parts of the world.
Our last boat was a classic Norwegian wooden boat, a “snekke” (try “snekke” at google, and look at the pictures). We never got far in this, but we had many fine days in between the islands in our neighborhood. Our next boat will be a sailboat, and we hope to experience a lot more of our beautiful coastline with this – maybe northern Norway one day, would love to see it again from the sea.
Greetings from Bergen at the west coast of Norway!
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