September 2022 Recap
In September, we dedicated ourselves to Base-Jumping and speedflying in Loen with a short window of desperately needed good weather. Before we knew it, we were back in storms battling our way south on our sailboat. We were warned about the North Sea in October and needed to get south before it was too late…
After months of summer storms in Norway, there were finally 2 weeks of desperately needed good weather! Being stuck in storms in such close quarters is not good for any relationship! Lol Even Journey was getting cabin fever!
We decided to use these two weeks at Loen, a wonderful city at the end of Nordfjord. The reason we chose this location was because they had a gondola to the top of a mountain that we could easily Wingsuit Base Jump, Paraglide, and Speedfly! After speaking with the admins of Loen Skylift, they graciously provided us with season passes to be able to jump & fly as much as we wanted over this 2 week period!
On September 2nd, Jamie celebrated his 40th birthday. The day included lots of bacon and wingsuit BASE Jumping, plus a naked fjord plunge.
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Over the 2 week period, Sandra ended her months-long break from flying and slowly became more confident in her speedflying launches and landings, something she’d struggled with her entire flying career.
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Over the 2 weeks, Jamie became much more confident in his wingsuit BASE starts (the initial jump from the cliff), which is one of the most important (and dangerous) parts of BASE Jumping
Our friend, Oliver even came out for a weekend of jumping and brought us heaps of American food & goodies since we hadn’t been back to America since 2019
Jamie also went on quite a few big hike & Jump missions with local BASE Jumpers, experiencing some of the most epic (and scary) Base jumps to date. Did we mention that Norwegians are ridiculously fast hikers? It’s like chasing a mountain goat up trails! Lol
One of the coolest parts of Loen is their Via Ferrata! Since we hadn’t done our record-setting paragliding flight, we had an adventure with some of the locals which entailed taking the Via Feratta up the mountain and paragliding down! (YouTube Video Below)
Jamie was able to coordinate a wingsuit flyby from one of the base jumpers, which was the closest we’d been to a wingsuiter while on the ground!
Loen is home to Hotel Alexandra, with a beautiful spa that we enjoyed one cold morning, along with the steam rooms, saunas, waterslide, and various pools
But all good things must come to an end, and mid month, a large storm came through. All of the pilots and BASE jumpers left, leaving us stranded on our boat waiting for a good window of weather to leave Loen. Winter is coming, and the North Sea is unforgiving in October, so it was time to start heading south for the winter.
After almost a week of waiting, we finally had a small window allowing us to leave. It was foggy in the fjord, as we avoided oncoming cruise ship traffic!
Unfortunately, we ended up battling a head wind from an oncoming storm, and had to stop early and hide in a small cove in the quiet village of Botnane.
There was a hiking trailhead right next to the marina, and Jamie decided to take the dogs for a hike the next morning after the rain stopped. Unfortunately, Guzel’s hunting instincts kicked in and she ran off chasing a deer. Jamie spent the next few hours trying to track her down through the mountains, worried as nighttime (and another huge storm) approached.
Luckily, he was able to find her! After posting about this incident, one of our amazing monthly supporters, Carla donated towards a GPS for her, which we are happy to report is on it’s way to us so we don’t encounter this problem again!
Once again, we waited out a high wind storm. The winds were so high, it was blowing out our diesel heater through the chimney, and we had to make a macgyver wind block out of our disco-beds!
We spent the next week slowly making our way south, timing our pushes with good windows of weather. We weren’t the same sailors we were before, and we had started to learn what weather to wait for to make sailing a more enjoyable experience.
We even did a somewhat open water crossing in high winds and beat another sailboat! The first boat with full sails out that we had ever beaten! A testament to how our sailing abilities had improved since we first learned how to sail a mere few months ago.
Because we were out of the fjord, and were sailing from 6 AM until 8 PM, we started to see beautiful sunrises and sunsets. We didn’t get these in the fjords due to the tall cliffs, and they were a welcome sight.
There is a part of southern Norway that has ‘dangerous waves’ which we were a little intimidated about. But there was one day that looked promising to make the push across them to a small set of islands that would provide shelter from another oncoming storm. We were happy to have amazing conditions the entire way.
We ended the month on the small island of Hidra with only one ‘dangerous waves’ section left, waiting for our next window of good weather.
About Captain Manicorn
A daring couple and their three rescue dogs keep adventure-lovers entertained as they travel by campervan and sailboat & document their challenging voyage to be the first man and woman to do air-sports in every country of the world
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