Slow ferry with stops along the way

We get up in the morning and look out at the ferry port to judge just how long the line of cars waiting for the ferry is. There are only a limited number of ferries a day and if we miss the early ferry we will have to wait several hours to catch the second one. I guess one of the main attractions of staying at the old trading post of Forvik is we can judge the situation early in the morning and move the car to the front of the line just after we get up.

There aren’t a lot of cars waiting – actually there is no cars waiting so we wait for a bit and pack the car before breakfast. Then we drive the car to the line and take position three in line – a couple of cars did beat us while we packed the car – some of them were staying at Forvik as well.

After breakfast we go down to the ferry and wait for it to arrive. As we wait a huge truck with a long hanger arrives at the ferry port. A truck like this will pretty much take up half of the ferry so I guess it was a good thing we moved the car early and got a good spot in the line for the ferry.

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Just after the ferry arrive we drive onboard and more cars fill up half the ferry before the truck drives onboard. The truck blocks most of the rest of the ferry and there is still cars waiting. They keep filling the ferry best they can but one car doesn’t make it onboard – this is the first time we have left a car behind at a ferry port during this trip north. I guess the high season is picking up and we might better be prepared to miss a ferry or two on our trip further north. Unfortunately the ferries along our route north are few and far between so it will be pretty annoying to miss one.

We get onboard the ferry and start the trip across the area just next to the mainland. The trip today is an hour making it the longest ferry trip so far. The trip isn’t direct we sail for only a few minutes across the water to a small island just outside Forvik – here we drop one car off the ferry. You can only get on or off the ferry at this destination if you book in advance – so I guess it is a local who has called the ferry. At this island we actually pick up another car. The first car drove off the ferry front first but the new car has to reverse onto the ferry since this is apparently our direction of travel and the cars will be offloaded from this end at our destination. The driver seems to be used to this and just turn the car immediately and reverse onboard – and off we go.

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It is a nice sail across the ocean to our destination at Tjøtta. The sailing is very smooth – I guess it is helped by the fact we are protected by a series of islands along our trip. So the sail might be across the Atlantic Ocean – but it isn’t really across open ocean – hence we don’t have any significant waves along the trip. We arrive at Tjøtta which is another tiny settlement much like Forvik where we had spent the night. We don’t stay at the ferry terminal since there is pretty much nothing so we just drive off the ferry.