After a solid night's sleep in the
living room shelter I continued up the fjord into a headwind.
I crossed Folla, the mouth of a large
fjord, at an angle. The distance was about four nautical miles, and
into a headwind and it took me about an hour and a half. The kayakers
from Namsos warned me that sometimes Fola was rough, with funky
currents and strong winds from strange places that made kayaking
unsafe. It wasn't, there was just the steady ever growing headwind.
I arrived at the peninsula I was aiming
for and cut under a bridge not much wider than my paddles beneath a
small village spread over a few low island hills. From there I left the
mainland and cut into an archipelago of tiny islands. Many had white
sandy beaches between rocky shores and grassy wildflower crests. The
grass and the wildflowers bowed south and waved to me with the wind.
To the west I saw the windmill
silhouette of another kayaker. It was out of my way, but I was
lonely. I blew my whistle. The paddler didn't hear me, so I changed
to a pursuit course. As I got closer other kayakers came into view
and I eventually met the group of five on a sandy beach with most of
them taking a snack break on the island.
It was a Norwegian single women's kayaking
group heading in the same direction I was for the next few weeks. They were happy to
have me along even though I didn't meet all of the qualifications
since we were going the same ways.
Wait, no, that's not it. It was a
mixed group from Trondheim on holiday. Their cars were parked nearby
and they were driving around to exciting day paddle spots. We
chatted for a while and then I set back out into the headwind.
The water between a couple of the
islands was too shallow, I didn't want to gorilla scoot
over the white sandy bottom and seaweed on account of the water being
cold so I hip thrust my way through. The bottom of the plastic kayak
had so many scratches in it that a light sanding might do it some
good anyways.
Despite all of my internal whining about
a second day of wind, I transitioned from the tiny island archipelago
into Rorvik's fjord without even realizing it. Rorvik is a town with a
guest marina and all the associated amenities. It was very likely I
would find a hot shower there. Besides me, however a small
fishing dock with a hose and boathouse offered nominal shelter. I was exhausted and Rorvik
was still a mile or two away.
I parked and looked around. The small
boathouse was unlocked, full of fishing gear, and reeked of fish. I
weighed a cold shower against another mile into the wind and a likely
hot shower.
Back in my boat I turned turned around
the corner of one last island, through intense multi directional
currents, and beheld across the channel Rorvik. It spread along the
coast in a way that refused to reveal the location of its guest
marina so I asked a man fishing with four small children in his tiny fishing boat.
He directed me to the marina and also
told me that if I wanted an amazing sea gull sighting all I had to do
was go around the island just to my north. Seagull crap stuck to my deck and I wondered what an amazing sea gull sighting looked
like.
I never found out since I cut straight
across the channel towards the marina. Strong currents whirl pooling
and eddying about rushed me one way than another in the wide channel.
I was totally unable to make rhyme or reason of them, but had a fun
time with the jostle.
In the marina I found a hot shower, an
invitation to spend the night on a couch, and the friendly sailors
from Kristiansund! It was the first time I'd ever met the same
friendly sailors twice and I was as happy to hear how their family
adventures had been since we last met as they were to hear about mine.
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