Friday, 19 July 2013

What No Boats? Part One

Iceland is spectacular, a north Atlantic island, with fjords, mountains, lakes, waterfalls and more mountains, but strangely enough we hardly saw any sailing. This is the fjord outside our house, 15 minutes drive from down town Reykjavik. With 24 hours of daylight there's plenty of time for a sail after work, but we didn't see a dinghy or sailing club the whole time we were there.


Now I can imagine the short summer season and the rather cold water might be a little off putting if you were sailing a Laser (Kyndill in Icelandic) or a Sunfish. Equally sailing along the exposed coast could be challenging and often dangerous with the changeable weather,  but imagine camp cruising a sturdy and comfortable dinghy across the lake in Pingvellir Nation park (below) absolute heaven.
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It seemed so strange, the Icelanders are generally an outdoor bunch, trailer tents and off road SUV's are almost ubiquitous but for some reason sailing doesn't seem to be popular. Of course we did drop by the main marina in Reykjavik, can you imagine a Solent marina this empty in July?


Finally we caught up with some traditional boats at the open air museum in Akranes, a fishing port about an hour from Reykjavik.


To be continued
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3 comments:

  1. JP19 July 2013 at 09:36

    Flash back to last summer! Not only is that marina not that big, we found several of yachts there were visitors like ourselves. If I remember right, upstairs of building to the right of the marina is the yacht club.

    There is sailing in Iceland and very soon now I'm off on one of their yachts.

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  2. Ian21 July 2013 at 03:38

    Hi, Been following your blog for several years and when I saw your Iceland post I forwarded it to good Icelandic friends (Kari & Aslaug on Lady Ann) who have been sailing in this part of the world (South East Asia) for a while now. They have suggested I send you a link to their old web site which shows their sailing around Iceland. All in Icelandic but the underlined words all link to pictures.
    http://www.simnet.is/aoa/paradis/paradis.htm

    Regards

    Ian

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  3. Anonymous28 July 2013 at 18:07

    Hi Max, that is the Brokey Saiing Club in the containerlike structures in the corner of the marina. Ian was berthed on the wall just next to it on his return from sailing to Greenland last August, before we made the passage back to Southampton. On a Wednesday night there was club racing in the pool on the other side of the wall and seven or eight boats went out from the finger berths in the marina. Race control was in the yellow tower.There was a super-yacht anchored there too and the club members were all agog to find out whose it was.
    Marion

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