White Sand Arctic Beaches - SAILING NORWAY (MJ Sailing - Ep 125 Part 2)

Welcome to MJ Sailing. We're Matt and Jessica, a couple that left Michigan for the nomadic lifestyle seven years ago. Recently, we refitted an aluminum boat to sail to the Arctic and explore some of the more remote areas of the planet. Thanks for joining the adventure. In part one of this episode, we used our first day on the island of Vai to take a hike up a mountain where we were quickly lost in the clouds and learn a little bit about the abandoned fishing village of Mostat, once thriving with over 140 people, but now reserved to just a few summer homes. This is amazing, breathtaking, speechless. This is the prettiest thing I've ever seen, which I do Jessica. Of course. I can't even get this freaking cliff in. No, I know. This thing is massive. Damn, the GoPro would be good for this. Yeah. We have just found the perfect sandy beach. It is gorgeous. The water here is so clear. It's Caribbean turquoise. I know it's a little overcast right now and hard to see, but sandy bottoms and just these huge cliffs that are vertical. I left the GoPro back of the boat. We stopped there for a minute and I forgot to bring it because there's really no way without a good wide angle lens to show all of this. It's just so, so amazing. And it definitely does not seem like it belongs in the Arctic Circle. Still hard to believe that we're here. The Lofoten Islands are in a subtropical climate because the Gulf Stream kind of runs up here. So it brings like the warmer waters. They don't get as harsh of like temperatures or climates as other areas around here. So the waters are a little bit warmer. They have, I think, palm trees around here, which makes them very special and distinct. So very, very happy that we sailed up here. Definitely worth the trip. And I think we're going to do a little wandering. We even brought a beer to sit on the beach and have. I I'm trying to make my way over to the cave right now, which once we got closer, it did not look like a real cave. I know there's supposed to be a few on this island, one that even has 4,000 year old murals inside it, which would have been very cool to see. But this one just kind of looks like the face of it and like it closes up really soon. So going to get a little bit closer. But right now there's just these massive, massive boulders lining the beach, which is awesome. But the only bad news is we think we got here right at the tidal change going from low tide to high tide. So now the waves are starting to build up on the beach, which, you know, if we're in the Caribbean, it won't be a big deal just like wade in the water, get a little bit deeper and shove off. But in an Arctic climate, even a subtropical one, don't quite want to go wading through that water. So we might have to leave here a little sooner than we thought. So Matt is exploring right now by drone. I'm exploring a little bit by foot, but then unfortunately it will be time to get back to the boat. But then we get to go check out the town too. And it's supposed to be kind of like an authentic fishing village. So we're excited to see that too. It looks like this is about the extent of the cave, nothing too massive, nothing that you can really go inside and inspect. So just going to turn around from here, but getting here, not a bad vantage point for the rest of the beach. Fog starting to roll in, cannot see elements on the other side of the bay, but just a great looking spot. We brought a beer. I wish you could sit and drink it. I'll have to see what Matt feels about these waves starting to roll in because we definitely don't want a cold, wet ride back. I still can't get over how massive this beach is. And if we're able to stay another night or two and the weather was settled, it'd be so nice to bring the boat right up here, come on shore, have a bonfire, hopefully grill up a fish we had just caught. But it is not the case. We've got some really heavy weather rolling in in a few days and we want to be to a different island. So tomorrow we'll be off, but right now I'm going to soak it up. There has been a slight change to our plans today. We didn't make it into town like we thought we were. If you can see the fog behind me here, it has just started clearing up. It's about 7, 7 30 PM right now. So we figured that we just stay at anchor for one more night and then head in in the morning, just kind of check it out. And then we'll go to the next place, Rhine, Rhine. I'll learn how to pronounce it just like this place I'm supposed to. So I've got some pizza dough rising right now. Going to throw that in the oven and just enjoy another magical night here. This is absolutely amazing. Oh, and in case you were curious, this is what midnight looks like in the Arctic Circle in late July. Pretty freaking cool.