Arendal to Jomfruland to Stavern

Yesterday was a long day motoring mostly from Arendal to Jomfruland. Loosely translated, Jomfruland is "Virgin country" - just like I imagine the slightly more famous Virgin Islands but without the tax haven, gambling or raucous tourists. It's a beautiful national park, and it was pretty empty last night.

I steered up through the Tromøy sound leaving Arendal while Reidar continued to do small jobs on the boat, including attaching a GoPro to the mast. 


We took a time-lapse film of the whole trip and Reidar's brother set us up with a YouTube channel to share the videos. If you are all out of things to watch on Netflix, the first one is already here and elapses 10 hours of sailing and a one hour stop for lunch into 14 minutes.

The lunch stop wad Seilmakerfruens kro which is seriously one of the coziest, nicest pubs on one of the coziest, nicest islands I have ever visited. 

There was a group of Americans there at the same time, talking about how one of them had just been on a "high touch" vacation in Kruger National Park. I had never heard this expression, and neither had the woman he was talking to. He went on to explain that it was the ratio of servers to guests, and how he had developed a personal relationship with all of them and how it was not like those places where people are falling all over you and it's so obvious and how he wrote them all a personal note when he left a huge tip to each of them at the end and BLAH BLAH BLAH. And I thought:

- That is my worst case scenario for a vacation

- That is the exact opposite of the vacation I am on now

- What the hell are these people doing in the same place as me in this tiny part of Norway at all?

- Dude, DIAL IT BACK - you are giving all of us (Americans) a bad rap

- Dear Seilmakerfruens kro: Do not change a thing. You are doing everything right.

After lunch in Lyngør, we motored / sailed / motor-sailed through Risør and Portør en route to Jomfruland. We were pretty tired when we arrived, but Reidar hooked up the oven and we had our first homemade curry on board. Then we sat on deck and watched the sunset for hours. The sun sets very slowly in the summer in Norway, and the combination of the clouds and light was beautiful. We were listening to Norah Jones' "Come away with me" and I have to say: she really does beat Styx's "Come sail away."



It is hard for me to go to bed when the sky is so beautiful. When I finally did, I found that I could still see the remnants of the sunset from my little bedroom window. So I took a few pictures throughout the night. (I was being woken up frequently by the wind pounding the boat into the pier anyway.)

The forecast for the next couple of days is not good, so we decided to seek safe haven in Stavern. It happens to be Stavern Festival so the harbour is absolutely packed. Sam Smith is playing tonight and Ed Sheeran is here tomorrow. The sail over from Jomfruland was beautiful and I even squeezed in a nice  morning walk in the national park while Reidar was fixing more electronics.




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