Not often that you get an anchorage with "Royal Appointments"! Well, here we are in (King) Olav's sound, and it looks like Olav (or was it his dad) autographed the rocky walls, along with some of his relatives.
We had got here rather by mistake. The Norwegian charts had shown an anchorage a mile or so away, but it had been a very poor one, too deep, with a current, and not protected to the east, so (having cut the motor some hours before), we pootled on with just the mainsail showing to the light southwesterly breeze. Mike and Trevor reached up and down in the gap between four islands while JK disappeared in the direction of the computer to come up with a better plan. Fortunately, it was just around the corner (well, several corners) and we could sail there without raising Perkins from his slumbers. But the entrance was a bit narrow - 20ft or so if we were lucky, and with a nasty rock just off-centre to make sure you knew your left from your right.
Of course, as we were in the narrowest part of the entrance, a motor boat decided to come out! Power certainly had to give way to sail on that occasion! Once in the pool between the 100ft high rocks, we had plenty of room to round up and lay the anchor out. I hope the Norwegian boats who were already there were suitably impressed! I know I thought it was pretty good!
After dinner the 3 lads went ashore for "an explore". We climbed (as usual) to the highest point, and were just in time to see the sun setting over the hills inshore of Mandal. There was a party going on in the sound around the corner, and we could look down 200ft or so onto a large modern yacht, squeezed into a tiny berth, with a dozen or so men singing to an accordion. A bit of "whooping" and waving of arms soon had them looking up at us, but they didn't beckon us down, which was just as well as we were miles away from any bottles that we would have needed to join the party.
The funny thing is, on arrival in the marina at Kristiansand, I fell into conversation with the owner of the large Beneteau parked across the pontoon from us. Yes, he had come in this morning also, just from 9 miles away, like us. And, yes, it was him and his friends that we had been waving to the night before in Ny Hellesund, around the corner from Olavssund. He suggested a nice modification to our route through the Kiel canal, which we must follow up, since it comes out near Heligoland (anyone remember that in the shipping bulletins of old?) where the booze is cheap and the sands not as bad as they are off Cuxhaven.
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