At 2 o’clock on a sunny Saturday we pushed off the pier at Seydisfjördur and had a nice sail out the fjord. As we still had credit left on our cell phone I phoned some of our closest friends in Iceland, thanked them and bid them farewell. As we left land behind and headed straight into the endless deep blue horizon, the swell of the waves began doing their magic and one by one our 4 children began to fall into that deep sleep which takes them hostage throughout passages. It felt strange leaving behind a place that we had grown so found of, a country that felt like home.
Too cold to be on deck we all stayed down bellow for the majority of this passage except for Captain Jay, who always spends most of his time on deck and only comes down bellow for short intervals while our trusty autopilot G-Ma drives. For the first 2 years sailing around the Caribbean we had no autopilot so Jay was a slave to the tiller and I would drive for a few hours in the mornings and evenings but after Caribe was born I had less free time to drive. After Messengers refit in Newport, RI knowing we were headed to Northern latitudes and therefore colder weather, we knew we needed an autopilot. We named our autopilot G-Ma (short for Grandma) after Jay’s mother who gave us the autopilot as a gift. Sometimes G-Ma can be a crazy driver and on this trip because of the conflict between the direction of the waves and the constant wind shifts it was especially hard for G-Ma to drive, therefore Jay had to slave himself to the tiller. For some unknown reason some of us got seasick on this passage, although conditions weren’t bad at all, perhaps because Messenger was moving in a funny way which our stomachs didn’t agree with or perhaps because it was colder than we had been used to in the weeks passed. You never really know the reasons for what makes you seasick sometimes and not others. I think all of us onboard except for our youngest child (Ártico 5 months old) and oldest child (Sol 10 years old) got seasick. In my experience baby’s never get seasick though most of the time they want to be attached to the booby. Once we arrived in port we laughed about it because usually Sol is the first to get seasick and Jay never does but on this trip even he threw up at least once. But after 24 hours we all started to get used to it and feel better. The passage was 265 nautical miles which toke 52 hours. On Monday afternoon while Jay toke a short nap and I was on watch I sighted land.
Once we got close to the islands Jay battled with the infamous currents that wrap around the Faroe Islands, at times the boat doesn’t move over the ocean floor and the GPS shows us at a stand still, though the water is rushing past us, the sails are up and it seams as if we are moving when in reality we are not. After 16 hours Jay successfully brought Messenger into port at Midvágur, a substantial village on the south coast of Vágar, one of 18 islands in the Faroes.
Flying the yellow quarantine flag, a requirement when entering a new country until you check in with customs and immigration.
