Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

The sea kayakers dilemma - to paraphrase The Clash. 

To go or not to go, when the weather and sea conditions could be 'interesting', head bangingly hard work for precious little progress or whatever it is that sows that element of doubt. 

Like my dodgy wrist, how much do I push it, how much paddling is too much? Too much and we could be forced off the water for weeks. Too little and cabin fever would reach boiling point.

Frustratingly, as soon as we finally round the western most point of the Snæfellsness Peninsula, Öndverdarnes,  and reach the small village of Hellisandur, so the winds come around to the NE and pick up to 20kns plus. Plugging into a 20kn headwind isn't much fun at the best of times but in these temperatures the wind chill factor makes it really unpleasant.

As we sit here in Hellissandur drying thermals and having had a lovely hot shower, the first since Reykjavik, it's tempting to move on in the morning and plug away into the wind and at least try to make some progress. But then there's my wrist, still sore but not getting worse. I'm keeping it splinted ashore to rest it as much as possible. 

If it survived the day from Búdir to Hellissandur, the longest so far this trip both in distance and time without any major issues, (I was even able increase the feather on my paddle to 30° and it didn't notice), then just maybe it's less of a factor in the 'go or stay' dilemma. 

We'd left Bùdir at 3.30am Wednesday because of the forecast. It was a particularly uninviting day, grey, cold, 15 kn southerly wind, with poor visibility and a godawful sea once we closed in on the southwestern tip of the Snaefellsness Peninsular. The wind had been southwesterly between 20 and 40kns for the two days off the water at Bùdir and even though the sea had died down a bit the rebound even well offshore was the pits. The 1.5-3m swell also sowed seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether we would be able to land at a little cove and natural harbour called Dritvik. If we couldn't, it was a long long way on or back to the next known landing. I had discovered Dritvik while voyaging safe and sound at home on Google Earth, then the local kayakers Gudni and Gisli had mentioned it as the only landing place  along 40km of rocky exposed shore. The little harbour faced west with a line of rocks extending out to sea from its southern edge just far enough to take the force of the swell then a curl of lava forms an inner harbour, an amazing natural feature into which we thankfully glided. We both felt tired, cold and stressed and very glad to be ashore. It was 8am.

We certainly weren't the only ones to use the shelter of Dritvik. 

The oldest of these 8-oared fishing boats still in existence, "Bliki", in the Maritime Museum in Hellissandur. Built in 1826 of oak, 31 feet long.

Model of these boats at the museum. This was one of the sailing rigs used, others had a simple lug sail.

Dritvik has a bright orange emergency hut for shipwrecked seafarers, within an hour or so we'd pulled the kayak up out of the reach of the incoming tide, had a second breakfast and were curled up fast asleep on our thermarests on the floor of the hut.

 

Öndverdarnes is no place to be on an ebbing tide, particularly given the sea conditions we had - the south westerly flow around the headland hits the SW sea and creates mayhem. So after a morning's snooze, lunch and a bit of exploring we set off again just before 6pm not far off low tide, working on the theory that if the ebb is southerly then the flood will be northerly and we might have tide with us. The conditions had eased and the day had brightened, we were rested and well fed so the 16 or so kms to Ondverdanes didn't seem to take very long and we definitely had some tide helping us along for the last couple of kms.

Rounding the point with about 10 kms to go, the SW breeze picked up, both sails went up and with the flooding tide as well, we scrunched into the sand at Hellissandur at about 9.30pm.