Day 94,95. Across the North Sea on a dinghy cruise

Northbound Northbound

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1 năm trước
Day 94 and 95 of my dinghy cruise from Ipswich to Norway via the west coast of Great Britain. The big one! From Bruray (Outer Skerries of Shetland), to Fedje (Small Norwegian island north of Bergen).
Having watched a series of gales blow across northern Scotland throughout August weather windows for crossing the North Sea were in short supply, but a couple of days looked acceptable. After blowing 35kt overnight it was forecast to moderate to 15kt for most of the day, and die to 5kt over the next night when I would be at sea.
I set off as soon as the wind had dropped to 20kt, with the expectation it would continue dropping. Instead it picked back up to over 30kt for over 4hr and only subsided to 15kt as darkness arrived. During the day we were capsized twice by large waves, and were swamped multiple times. The wind never dropped overnight as the forecast predicted so I couldn't get any sleep. After 37 hours straight of sailing we arrived to Fedje harbour having managed to average 5.5kt despite the capsizes and sailing the wrong way for a while when I got confused from the sleep depravation.