North Sailing News

Garðarshólmi is a project North-Sailing has been working on for years and aims to set up a non-profit educational centre, located in Húsavík, where settlement of Nordic men first started in Iceland. Garðarshólmi will be dedicated to the Swedish explorer Garðar Svavarsson and his travel companion Náttfari which sailed to Iceland in 870 AD.

For the past few days North Sailing has had a Swedish ‘Viking’ helping out with some important projects. The ‘Viking’ is called Leif Nilson and comes from Skärhamn which is a town in the west Swedish archipelago.

Every year, 13–15 year old students from the local school ‘Borgarholsskoli’, sail with North Sailing on the bay of Skjalfandi. The programme is different year from year, to make sure that each student gets to experience the bay in as many ways as possible. Each programme includes specialised guides, this year an expert on geography and geology.

For anyone that’s planning ahead for next year, the price and schedule for 2006 is ready.

Only being early October it feels a little early for Christmas but Húsavík sure looks like Father Christmas is just around the corner. This is exceptionally early for so much snow to settle and came as quite a surprise to many

The 2005 whale watching season in Húsavík is now at its end. The official schedule ended on the 20th September but after that, we sailed with a few special groups. As soon as the weather gets better the plan is to take a group of children from the local school of Húsavík across the bay on a ‘historic cruise’ that has become an annual event.

September has brought all types of weather and some days have been too windy to go out on our scheduled trips. Other days the weather has been extremely good for this time of year and there isn’t much that can compare to watching whales in the stunning autumn colours with the snow-capped mountains as a backdrop.

Early this morning Haukur arrived in Húsavik after a visit to Reykjavík. Onboard was a crew of 6 which, despite sometimes quite rough weather conditions, all enjoyed the trip.

A group of five British journalists visited Húsavík last Saturday. The trip was organized by the tour operator Discover the World and the Icelandic Tourist Board. The itinerary included some of the famous sites of the North, e.g. Lake Myvatn, Whale Watching, Whale Museum, but also some lesser know attractions e.g. berry picking, wine and snaps making, trout fishing (from a fish farm!), food and wine/snaps tasting and much more.

As from today North Sailings schedule changes to 1 tour per day at 13:30, and this will continue until the end of the season on the 20th September.

The autumn as started to settle here in the north with the beautiful autumn colours appearing and snow-capped mountains offering a magnificent backdrop to the whale watching tours.

Skjálfandi Bay seems to be a popular place for the humpbacks thouse days as they´re still around and have been seen in North Sailing tours both yesterday and today. In our 13:30 tour today the a humpback breched compleatly out of the water... an amazing sight for all nature lovers.

After a few days of windy weather North Sailing boats could finally sail out again yesterday and the bay seems to be full of life, much more so than normally at this time of the year. Today our trips spotted a humpback, a minke whale, dolphins and even saw the glimpse of harbour porpoises… a true whale feast at the end of August.

Even though the fin whale that our boats spotted on Friday didn’t stay with us for long, the humpbacks have returned had have been seen in many of North Sailing’s tours this weekend and today, to the enjoyment of our passengers.

Just now North Sailing crew onboard m/b Knörrinn spotted a fin whale on the bay to much joy of the 34 passengers sailing with Captain Hrólfur Þórhallsson.