Day 15: Ísafjörður

Day 15 — Ísafjörður. I'm about two days behind on my posts. Like I said in an earlier post, it was inevitable we'd run into a storm after such an extraordinarily long stretch of good weather at sea.

And here's who was waiting for us: this was definitely Storm Floris, which is now in the news for reaching England. Two days ago it welcomed us to Iceland and threw every plan on board into chaos: tender boat transfers, guided tours booked long in advance, you name it.

Instead of going ashore to visit the town, we photographed the landscapes around the ship anchored in the middle of the bay, and the impressive gusts of wind that battered us all day.

Not complaining, it was still beautiful. We had a whale watching tour booked with a local company, but that got cancelled too because of the weather, and we got our money back, so… nothing to complain about.

In the end we did our whale watching with the ship itself, sailing out through the fjord, but apart from a few distant spouts we didn't see a single whale. We had to settle for "just" the scenery.

Since I couldn't capture the spectacle of the wind gusts in photos, I tried a few video clips too. I already knew from an old memory: when the water starts flying, that's Force 10 on the Beaufort scale. (Which runs from 0 — dead calm — to 12 — hurricane.)

When the wind blows from land out to sea, like here, the waves don't have room to build up yet and the sea stays relatively calm, even with water flying across it. It would be a whole different story if the wind were blowing from the sea toward land. The waves would be enormous.

The ship's instruments measured the strongest gusts at around 60 knots. It was an extraordinary chance to experience firsthand what a real Force 10 to 11 storm on the Beaufort scale feels like, in the safety of this massive ship under the command of an experienced captain.

On a ship like this, you burst out laughing when the wind snatches your hat off your head and you have to chase it across the deck. On a small boat… you're in survival mode, all you care about is staying alive, and losing your hat isn't funny anymore, it's serious business.

And that was just the introduction. Once we cleared the fjord and turned the corner south, toward Reykjavik, we came face to face with Lady Floris in her full glory, and sailed all night straight into the wind and waves, waves up to 6 meters high.

And even so, even though it took longer to fall asleep, and a few times we nearly bounced or got thrown out of bed, or both at once, whenever the ship's bow slammed into some wave more headstrong than its siblings… we still slept like babies all night.

Incredible how quickly you place your trust in the captain, or fate, or the gods, or technology, or whatever works for you, once you've reached the end of your own strength.