I'm watching the same Biscay for the fifth day and can't really belive my eyes after all the horrorstories I have heard about this sea. Sverre a friend from Univ of Oslo is trying to bake rolls and bread, but don't dare to leave them out of sight, when a hungry captain is close by. hmm. It really smells delicious.
Biscaya is quite infamous for storms and bad weather than most other sailingareas in Europe. Therefore it was strange to experience seas not higher than 1 meter and day after day. It was good to see the sun after 45 days with fog and rain in the north atlantic. Usually, You don't use 45 days to sail from Norway to Biscay, but after hearing all these old stories about crazy norwegian vikings sailing to Greenland I was wondering if I could take the same route to Canada and then down to Vest India along the coast of America. But after visiting Shetland, Faeroes, Iceland we decided to sail south. Not a bad coice after all the fog and rain we had experienced. We really missed the sun. Greenland would not dissapear so I'll rather would sail up there when I'm homebound.
Strange, but our first galewarning did not come in the north sea but instead north of Ireland, between Stornoway and North-Ireland. So instead riding out the bad weather we decided to seek shelter behind a small island named Colonsay. An old scottish guy owns the island and the rest of the 150 inhabitants lives as farmers. They have one bar we visited regurlarly to hear the latest gossips and joined the thursday night dance at the public hall. Why they choose thursdays is to get around the rule about not drinking on sunday... It was not allowed to drink inside the building either, but what they did outside, no one cared.. Anyway It was quite fun and a bit exotic to dance scottish folkdance.
After some days we decided to sail again and ended up 2 days further south before the bad weather was back. Again we found shelter in a small village. This place; Wicklow is just some miles south of Dublin so we had some nice days in Dublin. Ireland is indeed quite green. Another crew was expected so we had to wait for some time before Kristine from Oslo showed up. Sverres 2 months holiday is soon over. So Omni left Ireland with 2 crew and an excited captain. I had read a lot about Biscay and was probably a bit afraid of what we could expect.. Instead of worrying about bad weather and too much wind, we have to use the engine. So now we are discussing where our landfalls should be. I bet we will end up in La Coruna.
Best regards, SY OMNI Jonny Birkelund