9/22/26: Checking Off the Bucket List
Sep 30
2 min read
This morning, happily, we were still anchored in the fjord. Everyone was feeling much better after a full night's sleep, and now that we weren't so exhausted, everyone was very excited to head up the fjord to do some hiking and exploring. The area that offered the best exploring had no sure anchorages, so we were hoping to get there early and test the waters untill we found somewhere solid. As we got closer though we had another idea. The walls of the fjord were sheer rock, and if we could find a section flat enough, we could tie up to the cliff face as if it were a dock.
This is a practice the more experienced Pelagic veterans, such as Tor, Chuck, and Skip, speak of doing regularly, but that we had yet to do this trip. The area we wanted to explore had some of the biggest cliffs of the trip, easily over a thousand feet tall, so we knew if we pulled it off it would be quite the spectacle. Once we found a flat section of the cliff and secured our shorelines we slowly pulled ourselves in until we lay right up against the cliff face. The cliff dwarfed Pelagic, and being able to look up at it from the deck was a surreal experience. After appreciating our docking spot for a while, we went off for a hike up to the top of the cliffs to see a statue that overlooked the fjord. The weather on shore was beautiful and slightly disorienting because we had spent the last weeks bundled in layers of winter coats and rain jackets, and here we were on land in shorts and T-shirts just like we would be any other summer. We thought it wise not to stay on the cliff face overnight, so when we got back from our hike, we set off again to back towards the anchorage we stayed at last night. This gave us a chance to check off another bucket list item.
Chuck has been occasionally showing us photos of his previous trips on Pelagic, and one photo that always looks spectacular is the boat flying down a fjord in New Zealand with the spinnaker up. Now being in a fjord with the spinnaker still accessible from flying it two days ago, we decided we had to give it a go. The sun was setting behind the walls of the fjord by the time we got the spinnaker up, but the wind was perfect. Nathan buzzed around the boat like a mosquito snapping photos in the dinghy as everyone on board, especially Tor and I, did what we could to pose for the photos. We still had the spinnaker flying as the moon came up, and we only had to douse it once we were within half a mile of our anchorage. We anchored by moonlight, celebrated our bucket list day, and went to bed.
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