Hurtigruten; Tuesday, 29 January, 2013

…Sleep, unfortunately, was not something that was easy to come by as the boat pitched around in pretty rough seas, at one point almost ejecting me from my bed onto the floor.

Things must have calmed down eventually, as my alarm woke me at 7am. By then we should have been moored up in Måloy, but with the strong seas overnight we were running quite badly late and so instead of having an early breakfast watching the Norwegian coastline slip by, I had breakfast to the sight of the ship being loaded and unloaded in Måloy.

Thankfully, this proved to be a good thing, as shortly after leaving Måloy the ship entered open water, and it became pretty clear that this was far worse than that which we had encountered overnight. Those who had decided to take a late breakfast didn’t appear to be enjoying it that much.

Quite a few people had disappeared either to the sick bay or to various extremities of the ship by the time we finally left open-water and headed into the small port of Torvik. The ship was originally due to dock for 30 minutes, but running as late as it was, and with very little cargo to load and unload, we ended up departing after just 10 and headed up towards Ålesund, accompanied by an early lunch for those of us who had managed to keep breakfast down and felt up to it.

In Ålesund we went on a Hurtigruten arranged walking tour of the town centre, to take in the Art Nouveau buildings that characterise the town since it was rebuilt in 1904. Thankfully, the stop in Ålesund was quite long, so the ship was able to make up all the lost time by cutting short the visit length and leaving at its scheduled time to head on to the next short stop at Molde.

A pleasant and relaxing cruise across to Molde, but shortly after departure, and whilst dinner was in full swing, the ship entered open sea again. Whilst the rocking wasn’t as bad as in the morning, there were several people who decided not to complete dinner and head back to their cabins, or out onto deck.

About an hour after dinner we docked in Kristiansund, with an hours stop scheduled. However, as we would be docking again in daylight southbound, it was gone 10, and there was still about another 50 minutes of rough water left, I decided to turn in for the night and try to get to sleep before the heavy going started again.

Weather

Cloudy Sunny Intervals
AM PM
Mild (0-10C, 32-50F)
9ºC/48ºF