Audacious

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Espevaer, a small and closely knit community at the tip of a small island west of the island of Bomlo at the mouth of the Bomlafjord, has been the fishing center of Bomlo since the 17th century. A permanent population of less than 500 swelled to nearly 30,000 in spring when the herring fisheries were at their peak around the middle 1800s. Like every other village along the coast, Espevaer is as tidy as a pin. After a superb dinner of seafood stew, prepared by Arne, the captain, we strolled to a harborside kafe and joined the locals to watch the Norwegian's women's basketball team play in the Summer Olympics. Although the time was nearly 9 p.m. when we left the game, we had enough light to explore the village and take photos. This far north in the summer, total darkness never comes, only dusk. Not far from the kafe, we discovered a natural amphitheater, fenced and arranged with man-made seats to supplement the natural rock seating. The marquee advertised a production of "Hair" to begin early in August. This island may be remote, but it's not deprived.

Bomlo is one of dozens of islands, scatted like drunken sentries nearly the entire length of Norway, that guard her coast against fierce storms from the sea to the west. Some of the tiniest islands in this archipelago are home to one or two families, whose only connection to the rest of Norway is by boat. Many of them are clinker-built wood and are powered by tiny inboard engines. Most have hard-top or soft-top pilothouses because the season for open boats is short.

I could have cruised for months among the islands of the archipelago and the fjords that reach inland and not exhausted its variety of ports or beauty. Although the wind is flukey, the water is smooth. We spent most of the week inside, but on the leg south from Haugesund to Skudeneshavn, we ran outside of Karmoy to save time. What a hoot. The wind blew 20-25 knots, and the seas occasionally reached the height of the Swan's first set of spreaders. We sped toward our destination, a single reef in the main and a small triangle of genoa unrolled, on a beam reach. This was our best sailing day.

Haugesund is a large commercial city that rises steeply from the harbor, a narrow strip of water between the northern tip of Karmoy and the mainland. Here, we hiked to the Edda cinema center to see a big-screen film of a flight over Skudeneshavn. The Edda is the site of the Norwegian film festival, and the film was similar in presentation to those shown at IMAX theaters in the U.S. We spent the night in Skudenehavn. Arne roasted reindeer, and we toasted the cruise with Aquavit.

We set sail early the next morning, headed south for Stavanger, where I would catch a flight to Oslo, then to the U.S. Our goal was the head of Lysefjorden. As we tacked east into the fjord, the morning sun peaked around thick gray clouds, bathing the north shore in yellow-white light as the clouds kept the south shore in deep shadow. The contrast between the brilliant green of the shore, the blue patch of sky, and the gray of the shadows nearly stopped my heart. The farther we penetrated the fjord, the steeper and more barren the shores became. At one point, we paused beneath a flat-top, 1,900' cliff known as Pulpit. It's among the most popular tourist attractions in southwest Norway.

I jumped ship in Stavanger. The taxi we'd called from the boat was waiting to rush me to the airport--rush because we'd dawdled. Leaving Norway is not easy.