Sporty crossing of the North Sea

It was time for us to leave the Scotland and to cross the North Sea to Norway. The passage from Inverness to Stavanger is 345 nautical miles. There are alternative routes, where you do a first leg along the East coast of Scotland to place your starting point closer to Norway. However, since we had left the Caledonian canal, we had experience as series of very windy days. Now, they were finally calming down to a reasonable level before being too light for several days. So, we decided to go.

Leaving Inverness

Shortly after leaving Inverness, we passed under our first bridge. With a clearance of 29 meters, our mast of 21 meters had well enough space.

We then progressed through the shallow Inverness firth, passed the wavy channel between Fort Georges and Chanory Point and made our way through Moray firth. This erea is the home of a pod of dolphins which we saw briefly. Over the VHF, we said goodbye to Dophin Spirit who runs daily sight seeing tours and had been our neighbor in the Inverness marina.

Dodging oil platforms

The wind was stronger than expected while sailing through firth of Moray. They suddenly increased from 30 to 40 knots and Yan had to hand stir on a close reach for about 2 hours to release the autopilot. There were high waves that splashed over the deck. Silvia got seasick and during the first day, Yan took over most of the watches. While planning our route, we had identified the British and Norwegian oil platforms that we needed to avoid along the way. We reached the fist oil platform during the first night. There was a lot of activity in the vicinity of the platforms: cargo ships movements as well as helicopter flights that provided some distractions.

We also had the company of birds and were surprised that the flew out more than 100 nautical miles from land. The winds were now steady between 18 and 26 knots allowing us to make good progress. However, the sea state was still very confused making it unpleasant.

Reaching milestones

During the second night, we realised that we had made 2000 nautical miles with Fabule since the launch end of January 2022. An achievement that we would celebrate once arrived in Norway: Silvia was too queasy and Yan too tired. We also crossed the Greenwich Meridian (meridian 0). Therefore, our longitudes will increase toward East from now on. In addition, we reached 59 degrees North of latitude. This is the furthest north we will go this year. As a comparison, Kuujjuaq (Quebec), Churchill (Manitoba) or Skagway (Alaska) are situated at similar latitudes in north America. Finally, as we travelled during the summer solstice (June 21^st), the period of darkness was at its shortest. This is a huge bonus during a passage.

Foggy approach to Norway

On the third day, the chart plotter was telling us that we were approaching the Norwegian coast. However, we could not see anything because of the fog. The winds had reduced so much that we had started the motor.

With this reduced visibility in an completely unfamiliar environment, you appreciate the help of your instruments: radar and AIS to identify other boats in advance and evaluate how to best adjust to avoid collisions. Approaching the coast, the tankers were replaced by huge cruise ships.

Stavanger is about 16 nautical miles inside the coast and as soon as we left the open sea and progressed through the fjords, Silvia started to feel much better. We reached Stavanger and finally found a berth big enough for Fabule in Vagen, a harbor close to the center of the town. This was our longest passage so far and it had been sporty. It was time for a well-deserved night of sleep. Over night, we got new neighbors: 2 gigantic cruise ships were docked just behind us.

Stavanger is a lovely town where we will stay for a few days before starting our exploration of the coast of Norway.