Before we went to Norway I had planned to kayak Hjørundsfjorden. To be more exact my plan was to hike Slogen, then kayak from Øye and find a nice camping spot, stay overnight and then kayak the rest of the fjord, but what happened? Well.. Weather does not follow your plans! We could not do Slogen the day I had planned it and we ended up kayaking Eksund – Ulsteinvik instead, since it was supposed to be better weather there. Notice the “supposed” :D? There were no super conditions for kayaking in Eiksund either that day, but it was doable. On the positive side I did learn a lot that day.
Lessons learned:
- Do not only consider wind speed, but also wind direction. We had headwind the whole way, which made it very exhausting. Had I considered the wind direction we could have done the route other way around.
- Check your map often when kayaking between small islands. Me and Elias thought we knew the direction, but it is just way to easy to lose it between all the small islands and espesially when you also want to take the “shortest path”. Much like when hiking. So we ended up kayaking in wrong direction for one and a half hour. That together with the headwind probably resulted in us not making it the whole way to Ulsteinvik :(.
- Kayaking in rain is completely fine, it’s just a different kind of experience 🙂
- Kayaking close to each other is a challenge, when in big waves.
- On the sea the wind/weather can change within 15 minutes, so sometimes you need to turn around so that the waves do not hit you from the side.
- Make sure you seal the kayak covers properly during the breaks and while kayaking. Especially with big waves. Elias did not do this and so all the equipment in his kayak got wet. We did use waterproof bags , but his shoes were inside the kayak without a bag…
Eiksund is a village in Ulstein Municipality in Møre og Romsdal , Norway. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Hareidlandet.
The waves were the worst when kayaking towards Eika, so when I afterwards figured out that all this struggle and fear was for nothing I was a little angry at myself. But I on the bright side I got some experience with kayaking in medium to big waves (At least for me they were big 😛 ).
Yes I know, the water in the pictures looks perfectly still, but belive me it was not like this the whole time. I just did not dare to take out my camera in the big waves, it was more important to stay alive 😀
After struggling in the waves and realizing that we were on the wrong course, we decided to take a break at Kleppane. We had packed tea and coffee, lots of sandwiches and cookies with us.
From Kleppane on we checked the map frequently to not make any more mistakes. We found a nice place where to take the kayaks to the land, not too far from the road so that we could be picked up.
All in all we used 5 hours on this route, but that is included a 40 minutes break and heavy head wind. In other words, on a nice day there should be no problems to make it the whole way to Ulsteinvik, as long as you do not end up taking detours, that is 😀
Now I need to get ready for some serious hiking tomorrow. Last weekend we had actually planned to hike Aplspitze, but I was so tired that I did not even want to watch TV so we had to cancel our plans. I guess the first week back at work hit me like a wall and I just needed some rest after it.
Anyways, I hope for a nice hike tomorrow. Even thought it’s going to be a long and heavy one 🙂
