Hello from Reykjavik

After three weeks and a day I arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland on Wednesday 13 August. I have to admit, it was the longest and hardest sea voyage I have ever undertaken.

Had the winds followed their normal patterns I should have arrived here a week earlier in good health. But that was not to be.

After the first week of light winds and sunshine the party came to an end. The headwinds began. They blew with very little interruption for two weeks, defying wind pilots compiled on observations taken for over a hundred years over for that time and location.

I went over every possible cause and came up with only one reasonable explanation: I was cursed. The gods, for whatever reason, had decided to throw a wobbly in my life (not the first time I might add).

I must have sailed well over two thousand miles tacking back and forth, bashing against and wind and current to get here. Every day I would tell myself that it could not go on forever and tomorrow it would turn around. But that day never came (till yesterday when I was within a hundred miles of Iceland).

At times my spirits were in a dark hole. The cold and lack of sunshine didn't help. On a few occasions I almost packed it in, tucked my tail between my legs, and veered off to Scotland instead.

But there's something inside me, an awkward contrary creature perhaps, that fights all the harder when fate lines up against me. So I defied the gods (as usual) and slogged on.

Reykjavik is a very funny place. More later.