Fjords and birds

13 July 2015

The last couple of days we have seen and done a lot. In short: first we went to Bergen, the next day we had a barbecue in the beautiful bay of Sørevågen. Yesterday we had a good sail, a lot of sail up, down, gybe, sails back up, tack, with speeds between 2 and 9 knots. Late at night the wind went down and we dropped anchor behind the island Hennøya.
After the bridge at Måløy we came closer to our goal: Ålesund. The Tall Ships’ Festival will be there, so the ships are slowly approaching. We have spotted the ‘Eendracht’, the ‘Gulden Leeuw’ and the ‘Cisna Branco’. On the AIS we see a lot more ships. This afternoon we sailed passed bird island Runde to spot the huge colony of Gannets, where hundreds of them sit on a cliff. And because the weather was very calm, we were able to get very close and with binoculars we could clearly see the youngsters in the nests. We also saw a couple of White-tailed eagles and thanks to Michael we discovered their nest. There were three babies waiting for their parents. Furthermore the water was full of Common murres and Puffins. A beautiful area of nature on the coast of Norway!
Meanwhile we sailed passed our goal, to spend the last days of this voyage in the Geirangerfjorden. This is a Unesco World Heritage Site, where we will be amazed by the high cliffs on both sides of the ship and the many waterfalls that come down from them. All books and Unesco say that this is one of the most beautiful places of Norway, so we got to see that with our own eyes!