Snow Dragon II: Iceland: 3 Miles From The Arctic Circle

We were intrigued by Raufarhoefn, the northernmost port on mainland Iceland, located just three miles south of the arctic circle. After tying up to the floating dock in the fishing harbour we headed over to the hotel for a drink. The chef said we were welcome to use the wifi but it was expensive. Krystina realized he was joking and replied, isn’t everything in Iceland? Then roamed the building to find enough internet signal to upload photos.

Snow Dragon Before The Fog, Raufarhoefn

It had been a clear afternoon when we arrived but within minutes of settling into the hotel bar, fog rolled in completely cloaking the town. The air was cold and damp as we walked back to Snow Dragon, hopeful the fog would clear by the time we finished dinner. A yacht in Raufarhoefn was an unusual sight and some of the local fisherman walked along the dock to get a closer look at Snow Dragon. They seemed happy with us just waving from the pilothouse while we ate our dinner.

Snow Dragon In Fog, Raufarhoefn

When the fog showed no sign of dissipating, we decided to go for a walk anyway and headed for the ruins that we saw when we first entered the harbour. On the way, the road took us through the nesting grounds of arctic terns. Though we never left the road and their chicks had already flown, they still felt we where a threat and dived at our heads threating to attack us. To deter them, we found a couple of sticks that we held above our heads to prevent them from getting too close. We kept our sticks for the walk back while we toured the ruins which turned out to be a modern henge that was still under construction.

Modern Henge, Raufarhoefn

The fog was still thick when we returned to Snow Dragon and we made hot chocolate while we debated sleeping for a few hours in hope of the fog clearing or moving on. In the end we decided to head out at 1.30 in the morning with virtually no visibility. Krystina backed Snow Dragon off the dock and carefully followed the range markers and used our incoming track on the plotter as a reference. While being careful not to let the fog completely disorientate her as the rocks on either side of the channel made brief, ghostly appearances.

The one comforting thing about navigating with limited visibility in Iceland is that all Icelandic vessels are required to run AIS, an automatic tracking system. This means that since we also have AIS, our system will pick up another vessels signal and display their position and course on our chartplotter. In addition to our radar, it greatly reduces our risk of running into another vessel.

At 6am the wind came up suddenly and cleared the fog. It was nice to be able to shut off the engine and sail even if the fluky wind made it difficult to settle on an ideal sail trim. We hoped to see whales as we passed Skjalfandafloi, outside of Husavik, but the wind had increased and the sea was rough making it impossible to tell the difference between a whale and the splash of a wave.

Flatey

The wind finally settled into a consistent pattern by the time we neared Flatey, an island that we are especially fond of from our previous visit. Though it was tempting to continue sailing we were also fairly certain the wind was going to disappear or go west fairly soon and decided to stop. There was more protection by anchoring in Flateyjardalur on the mainland side across from Flatey. While we were about to sit down for dinner, Krystina heard a boat approaching which turned out to be a zodiac full of men in survival suits and helmets. It turned out we had alarmed the coast guard by anchoring in an unusual location and turning our AIS off and they had sent the boat out to check on us.

View Of Flateyjardalur

The following morning we continued on to Siglifijordur and as we were crossing Eyjafjordur we finally spotted another whale. The lone humpback kept its distance and it wasn’t until we continued that we noticed a few other whales were feeding along the shore in the distance.