After a few weeks of the “get-to-know-you” process with Oso, our thoughts turned to getting out of Norway. Our time in the EU’s Schengen area is limited, and we’d either need to overstay our tourist visa or get to the UK to reset the clock. And with summer ending and the gales of autumn getting more frequent, getting across the notoriously rough North Sea with a good weather window for our first passage with Oso was paramount.
The North Sea can be a challenging place to sail for a few reasons. First, it’s shallow with an average depth of only a few hundred feet. That means that the wind-driven waves often turn into short, steep chop instead of the long-period swell of the deep ocean. Second, there are a lot of energy installations – this leads to plenty of fixed obstacles (at least the oil rigs and wind farms don’t move and have plenty of lights), but also a lot of traffic because of all of the boats servicing the installations. And third, just like the name suggests the sea is far enough north that it sees plenty of wind from storms rolling across the Atlantic.
Our goal was to sail from Stavanger to the Shetland Islands before cruising south through the Orkneys and then to mainland Scotland. But as always, our plans are at the mercy of the weather forecast, and this late in the season good weather doesn’t last long and forecasts are changeable. When we saw a weather window with moderate winds and calm seas, but with winds that would take us directly to Scotland instead of to the Shetlands, it was a pretty easy decision to change our destination.
In the end, we chose well – we close-reached in 15-20kts of wind from the south, and then buckled down for a couple of hours of rain as a small front passed through. And when the front passed, we close-reached in 15-20kts of wind from the north. Perfect conditions for a first passage in a new boat across what has a reputation as a stormy sea, and a short two nights later Oso pulled into Wick, Scotland, with happy new owners.
