The sun came out in the afternoon yesterday and we took a long walk up the hill in Risor to the plumbers for a water tap to the galley. The old one was leaking more than we liked and is now replaced with a shining new one.

We left Risor after breakfast in a moderate to strong NE wind. Dead downwind as we sailed along the coast. We soon realise that the full main is a bit too much in the wind and take in a reef. The boat becomes more stable, and it is so much easier to jibe with the smaller mainsail. We also had the Jutland current propelling us along with its steady flow southwest wards along the coast.

It is nice to be back on this coast and in its lovely archipelago’s. We wind our way through beautiful places such as Lyngor (Lyngør) and quiet sounds between the islands. (You may note the green dot on the mainsail. This is how we mark the sail to know when the first reef is in, and more importantly, when the top batten is inside the mast.)

The coast has a lot of nice channels between the islands. However, the Norwegian way of marking them differs from what we are used to from other parts of Europe. It takes a while to get used to. Here, most hazards are marked with poles pointing to the side you should be on. Nowadays they are also have a stripe or point in red or green to adapt to the international system. The more modern version (lower picture) is more visible.

Even if the thermometer shows close to ten degrees, the wind is cold, and one has to dress for the occasion. In our case it is woollen underwear, fleece polo and boxers, fleece vest, neoprene insulated overall, cap and gloves.

Excellent for the cockpit whilst sailing but, one must be careful and shred the outer layers for something lighter before any kind of physical work such as docking or setting sails. The same goes for going below for more than to powder the noose as the overall is completely non breathing.

We have not seen any dolphins but, we had a couple of kite surfers playing around the boat for a while.

The sun came out in the afternoon and gave us a nice late afternoon in Lillesand. The town is one of many quaint white towns on the coast with wooden houses and churches in the old parts.