It will soon be our third night om Leka. A beautiful island with lots of history. We generally do not like to sail in strong headwinds nor rain if it can be avoided. We have stayed put in the nice and quiet Skrei harbour on Leka as we have had both rainy and stormy weather for two days now with winds up to force 7 (moderate gale / styv kuling).

We left Sandnessjoen on a sunny and windless morning and motored south in the archipelago. There are a lot of fish farms along the coast, and we passed several of them during the day.

The wind picked up from the north around midday. A nice and gentle breeze allowed us to sail south the rest of the day. We chose a more western rout than on our way north, west of Brunnoysund and Torghatten.

This time we were able to see the hole in Torghatten as we passed to the SW of the island. We sailed for long periods with the main and our Code 0 wing and wing and arrived in Leka after a long day and some 64 nm.

Leka has one of Norway’s 22 protected farming landscapes with farms recorded 600 years ago and probably dating back to Viking days.

The harbour is very well protected by skerries, reefs and a breakwater. The bay inside must have been an excellent place for the Viking ships.

Herslaugshagen, the burial mound of King Herlaug, a local chieftain, lies just above the bay. It is a large ship burial, one of Norway’s largest mounds, likely to have included a ship larger than the famous ships unearthed south of Oslo (Osebergskeppet and Gokstadsskeppet) . A saga links the burial to the year 870 AD when Norway was unified by King Harald Harfagre (Harald Hårfagre).

The clouds lifted in late afternoon allowing us a long walk on the island. The saying “blown away” takes on a more literal meaning when you stand on the hill on a windy day like yesterday.

We have also had time to fix some things onboard. Yesterday was very grey in the morning so we set to work on our toilet.

The spare Eva had picked up is in principle a new toilet. It is the part between the toilet bowl and the outlet pipe to the vacuum unit and it includes all moving parts and sealings. We were very happy with the result.

Todays work was not expected. The freshwater pump started running during breakfast. We suspected a leak and eventually found one, close to the water heater in the stern, where a hose had come lose. Easily fixed but, it involved emptying everything in our large stern storage in order to reach it.