Sandsfjorden / Sjøbuholsvågen



Sjøbuholsvågen, visitor's pier.



N 59.23'428 E 06.01'276: Sjøbuholsvågen. It would be too much to say that I've explored the quite outstretched waters of Sandsfjorden. I've visited the mouth of the fjord, though, and the beautiful cove of Sjøbuholsvågen, 3, 4 nautical miles to the north-east of the Island Foldøy. I also visited the small community Marvik, 2, 4 nautical miles further to the east. Another option if you need to bunker, is Vatlandsvågen, dead north of Sjøbuholsvågen. If you like to run deeper into the fjord, you'll reach the community of Sand in the municipality of Suldal (9 nautical miles from Sjøbuholsvågen). Sand is a nice town with great hiking and salmon fishing opportunities. Suldal is known for it's river running trough the valley, and a rich cultural heritage. The Ryfylke museum at Sand, is a good place to start your exploration. Sauda -10 nautical miles further on, at the head of Saudafjorden, is an old industrial town, but the capasity at the smelting plant is now strongly reduced. Sauda has a great slalom hill with a ski-tow. You'll find a guest marina in both Sand and Suldal. From Sandsfjorden, Hylsfjoden - surrounded by steep mountains - stretches 10 nautical miles to the east.

Norwegian/Norsk:
Sjøbuholsvågen. Jeg har ikke utforsket den langstrakte Sandsfjorden så nøye, men har vært en liten avstikker i de ytre delene, inkludert den vakre Sjøbuholsvågen som er verdt et besøk, 3,4 nautiske mil nord-øst av Foldøy. Jeg var også innom Marvik for bunkring, 2,4 nautiske lenger øst. En annen bunkringsmulighet er Vatlandsvågen rett nord for vågen - men der har jeg ikke vært. Om du fortsetter innover fjorden kommer du til Sand i Suldal kommune, omlag 9 nautiske fra Sjøbuholsvågen. Sand er et hyggelig tettsted og liksom "porten" til Suldal som bugner av ymse tradisjonskultur og aktiviteter, her er mange turmuligheter og selvfølgelig laksefiske i Suldalslågen for de som liker slikt. En kan visstnok også svømme med fiskene, men bare å følge lågen oppover dalen er en opplevelse. Den som vil sette seg litt inn i sakene, kan starte i Ryfylkemuseet i Sand. 10 nautiske lenger, innerst i Saudafjorden, ligger Sauda, en gammel industriby der driften ved smelteverket nå ikke er som i stordomsdagene. Sauda har en flott slalåmbakke med skitrekk ikke langt fra fjorden. Både Sand og Suldal har småbåthavner med gjesteplasser. Fra Sandsfjorden strekker også Hylsfjorden seg 10 nautiske mot øst, omgitt av stupbratte fjell.  

Marvik.

From Marvik.

On the Art of Sailing. Aphorisms by Hilaire Belloc

From On Sailing the Sea, p. 90.

Aphorisms from Hilaire Belloc’s, The Cruise of the Nona (1925)


 …for it is in the hours when he is alone at the helm, steering his boat along the shores, that a man broods most upon the past, and most deeply considers the nature of things. (Nona, xii)

…all that man does makes up a string of happenings and thinkings, disconnected and without shape, meaningless, and yet full; which is Life. (Nona, xii)

…I have always thought that a man does well to take every chance day he can at sea in the narrow seas. I mean, a landsman like me should do so. For he will find at sea the full model of human life: that is, if he sails on his own and in a little craft suitable to the little stature of one man. If he goes to sea in a large boat, run by other men and full of comforts, he can only do so being rich and his cruise will be the dull round of a rich man. But if he goes to sea in a small boat, dependent upon his own energy and skill, never achieving anything with that energy and skill save the perpetual repetition of calm and storm, danger undesired and somehow overcome, than he will be a poor man, and his voyage will be the parallel of the life of a poor man – discomfort, dread, strain, a life all moving. (Nona, xiii)

Indeed, I think that as we go on piling measurements upon measurements, and making one instrument after another more and more perfect to extend our knowledge of material things, the sea will always continue to escape us. For there is a Living Spirit who rules the sea and many attendant spirits about him. (Nona, 3)

For all my life I have made discoveries close at hand, and have found the Island of Britain to be infinite. But who in our times knows where to look for vision? (Nona, 30)

…I am full of nothing but the coming of the course and an eagerness for the line of the sea against the sky and the making of a further shore. (Nona, 37)

I say that the sea is in all things the teacher of men. (Nona, 47)

For time on the water is quite different from time on land. It is more continuous; it is more part of the breathing of the world; less mechanical and divided. (Nona, 56)

For it is true of the sea here as everywhere, that it is the symbol of life, and of our ceaseless duties, and of death. We must never expect long quiet in the business of our live, nor any long security in any passage of the sea. (Nona, 63)

Is all the universe to arrange itself simply to your convenience, as it does for the very rich – so long as they keep off the sea? Will you not be content with sailing unless just that wind plays which is exactly trimmed for your miserable barque, neither too strong, nor too light or too far forward so that you have to beat, nor so far aft that you fear a gybe, or pooping from a running sea? Will you never repose in the will of your Maker and take things as they come? Why, then, drift round Skomer like a fool? (Nona, 64)

And I knew very well that though I had three million pounds and some odd pence over I should never have a tidy boat. I could not sleep in such a thing. (Nona, 92)

No man living can understand the tides. And the mystery of the tides is as good a corrective as one could find to our deadening pride in exact measurements, and to the folly of attempting to base real knowledge upon mere calculation: our pretence to a universal science, and to a modern omniscience upon the Nature of Things. (Nona, 93)

No one can at sea forgo the human reason or doubt that things are things, or that true ideas are true. But the sea does teach one that the human reason, working from a number of known premises, must always be on its guard, lest the conclusion be upset in practice by the irruption of other premises, unknown or not considered. In plain words, the sea makes a man practical; and the practical man is, I suppose, as much the contrary of the pragmatist as the sociable man is the contrary of the socialist, or the peaceable man the contrary of the pacifist. (Nona, 98)

Aphorisms from Hilaire Belloc’s On Sailing the Sea (1951)

Go out some day and run before it in a gale. You will talk less and think more; I dislike the memory of your faces. I have written for your correction. Read less, good people, and sail more; and, above all, leave us in peace. (On Sailing, The North Sea, 101)

The common hour is serene or dull level enough, and though it impresses less, such routine of life forms the bulk of it; and indeed much of life is sleep. So with the sea. (On Sailing, The Silence of the Sea, 133)

…the sea makes characters and men, not books. (On Sailing, The Silence of the Sea, 134)

In good time the sea will recover all its heritage of Silence: the works of Man will have ceased, and the rattle of his mental contrivances. Then the Silence of the Sea will return. (On Sailing, The Silence of the Sea, 135)

But the whole point of weighting anchor is that he has chosen his weather and his tide, and that he is setting out. The ting is done. (On Sailing, On Weighting Anchor, 151)

One might think, save for experience, that waves and the behavior of a small vessel among them, would be much the same in any one of half a dozen types of weather, or less; that one would have for such and such a weight of wind, for or against the stream, such and such a sea. / But it is not so. ( On Sailing, Armada Weather, 170)

There is in this aspect of land from the sea I know not what of continual discovery and adventure, and therefore of youth, or, if you prefer a more mystical term, of resurrection. That which you thought you knew so well is quite transformed, and as you gaze you begin to think of the people inhabiting the firm earth beyond that line of sand as some unknown and happy people; or, if you remember their arrangements of wealth and poverty and their ambitious follies, they seem not tragic but comic to you, thus isolated as you are on the waters and free for it all. You think of landsmen as on a stage. And, again, the majesty of the Land itself takes its true place and properly lessens the mere interest in one’s fellows. Nowhere does England take on personality so strongly as from the sea. (On Sailing, Off Exmouth, 201)

But of all those sacramental sights the chief is the landfall from very far away. When a man after days at sea first hesitates whether some tenuous outline or level patch barely perceived, a vast way off, is land or cloud and then comes to the moment of certitude and knows it for land, all his mind changes; the ship becomes a different thing; the world, which has been formless and simple, takes on at once name and character. He is back among human things. (On Sailing, Off Exmouth, 203)

For the tide is of that kind; and the movement of the sea four times daily back and forth is a consequence, a reflection, and a part of the ceaseless pulse and rhythm which animates all things made and which links what seems not living to what certainly lives and feels and has power over all movement of its own. (On Sailing, The Tide, 225)

For it is with the headlands as with the harbours, if you have machinery aboard, your craft is gone. (On Sailing, Headlands, 245)

The Sailing Pilgrim - West Coast of Norway

The stone cross at Krossøy, Leiasund, Kvitsøy.

 The modern revival of pilgrimage is for sure among the most remarkable cultural phenomenon nowadays. In Norway most Pilgrim trails end up in Trondheim and The Nidaros Cathedral where the remains of  Norwegian King, Saint Olav, were kept until the reformation. Along the coast the pilgrims, of course, had to travel by boat, and now the pilgrim's fairway along the whole western coast of Norway, is rediscovered. Along this "trail" the modern yachter will have the opportunity to let go the anchor in harbours and out-ports and experience a multitude of cultural sites and monuments in the midst of the impressive and distinctive sea- and landscape of "Fjord Norway". Stavanger - with its medieval Cathedral - is a convenient place to start your pilgrimage. Your first leg, then, will lead you into the beautiful Ryfylke archipelago, towards Utstein Kloster - Utstein Monastery - the only restored medieval monastery in Norway. Then the stone cross at Kvitsøy might be worth a visit, followed by Avaldsnes (Karmøy) and Moster (Bømlo) and so on - all the way to Trondheim and Nidaros if you can only spare the time. You'll find some info. on the web, unfortunately for the time being mostly in Norwegian only. However, the medieval pilgrim didn't even take his iPad.

Confraternity of  St James, Norway 

Den sjøfarende pilegrim (No)

Stoppesteder/kulturminner langs kysten  cultural monuments (No)

Pilegrimsleden

The Art of Reading a Sea Voyage Journal

On Tryggve Andersen – Journal from a sea voyage (1923)

Cruising the South Coast, Sørlandet, 2011. From the island Merdø, off Arendal.

Pleasure reading doesn’t combine with pleasure sailing as smoothly as one could wish. Nor does writhing, by the way. The Norwegian author Tryggve Andersen (1866-1920) probably would have confirmed this after his sea voyage, 1902-1903, as a passenger on board the Norwegian barque "Jonas". The ship weighted anchor in Gothenburg and sailed directly to South Africa, then crossed the Atlantic to Barbados, then north to Wilmington, North Carolina, then crossed the North-Atlantic bound for London where the journal ends. My own experiences are different from this, though, and far more modest. Sailing – which for me means pleasure cruising – means to escape the city noise and the everyday duties and bustle. It means leaving the world to its own devices while cruising through fjords, straits and bays without more tasks than those strictly necessary to avoid peace of mind from turning into boredom. But little writing is done, actually. Often the crew require some attention – and at least; complete silence is too much to ask for in the long run. Or something else interferes, and at least one has to get out of berth, and this inevitably brings about all sorts of duties. And besides, the sailing takes its toll, and then, after letting go the anchor, you have to take five; you get so tired in sea ​​air, and suddenly the day is done. Reading is easier, but far-reaching studies are rare; most often reduced to a few minutes on deck if the sun shines, in the cockpit after mess, or a few minutes in the bunk before “fall of the curtain”. After a day in which many odd jobs have been done after all - like thinking life over, and ones place in universe – while the sunset glows and glows and glows in the north-western vault of heaven, a trough experience of the long-lasting northern summer evening. Many things require some time-space while we are still breathing and alive.

On board the ship, Tryggve Andersen read English novels, he tried to write a novel too, and he decided to keep a journal: "to take down in a hurry this and that". My own efforts in this genre have resulted in sadly unsystematic entries, some notes on positions and waves and wind, maybe, but only for the first couple of hours, half-hearted and really without any navigational or existential function. The explanation is technological. Today it's no longer possible to throw certainty overboard. In the sky satellites are soaring, tracking our true course on mother earth.  Our sea crossings are still linked to cosmos, but uncertainty is gone at least concerning time and space. We don’t ask anymore – like the old-timers did – where on earth we are and how on earth our port of call could possibly have moved. Tryggve Andersen was an idle passenger. Nevertheless his journal is kept in fits and starts. He had his reasons.

I didn’t have much knowledge of Tryggve Andersen – the author of I Cancelliraadens Dage (1897), but I came across his Journal from a sea voyage (1923) at some antiquarian bookshop. Later on I took the book along as maritime reading during my summer holiday coasting, 2011, from Stavanger in the southwest, towards the Norwegian South Coast, Sørlandet. The book was a forgotten work for the most part, but enticing just for that reason. At least the book followed me all the 400 nautical miles, a round-trip adventure, Jomfruland and the Kragerø archipelago being the turning point. But time passes quickly. The crew numbers three, my wife of course and two good friends. Both sailing and socialising requires some effort and attention, and reading in spare time turns out so-so. Amateurs we are, so we wind our way down the coast, without any watches set and consequently little time for me to turn in. And every night when the sea journal is opened, shutters are put up before my eyes just when I find where I left off. The real South Coast chapters; white wooden houses, islands and inlets, wee pass by with fits and starts in varying weather, but much faster than the journal are leafed trough. And actually, it doesn’t bother me much. Besides; Tryggve Andersen might be the one to blame? It becomes evident, I would say, that the journal is a kind of raw material, not completed and worked over. So, it isn’t false modesty when the author himself writes in his first notes that the journal is meant to be a rough draft for later articles, and a way to while away the time on board. It shows. The rhythm and the stile make me bored and the reading soon ends after days filled with non-literary pleasures. Even after weather-bound days with gale and deluge, in lee of the Paradise-islets west of Flekkerøya, the journal is half unread – and now with clear moisture damages, since my old vessel has some bad leaks as supplement to the overall increasing degree of humidity.