June 26th - July 2nd. Finnsnes - Tromsø
In the around 36 nm between Finnsnes and Tromsø there are no marinas deep enough for even my quite little sailboat. In addition the pilot book described quite strong currents through the short stretch Ryastraumen. Thus I felt it difficult work a full day sail tor Tromsø and be capable to work a full day the next day. And if I wanted to get following currents with I was further limited. Thus I waited until Saturday with leaving Finnsnes. In the last minute I discovered that I had to make another supply run before the weekend som my departure became a little delayed.
As I left Gisundet between Senja and the mainland I saw buildings that looked military and fairly new. I couldn't recollect any such establishment from my own military service which partly was served around 50 km inland from there around the time the buildings seemed to date from. After some googling I found that this was Rødbergodden fort. I was in the army and we had little to do with the coastal artillery so it was not strange that I hadn't heard about it back then. Reading further about the fort I discovered that it was built in the 1950:ies and modernized several times the last that included the above ground buildings I first noticed just a couple of years before it was shut down in 1997. At the same time as Rødbergodden fort was built another fort on the Senja sound was also built - this was closed earlier. The forts protected the southern entrance to Tromsø and more importantly the, then secret, submarine base Olavsvern. The Americans and the British concluded already after WWII that it is virtually impossible to build forts that isn't fairly easy for an enemy to defeat and closed down all their forts. It might be excusable that Norway continued building new forts into the 50-ies. The modernization in the 1990-ies is more difficult to understand. The real scandal is the third fort in the area Malangen fort. It opened in 2001 at a cost of several 100 milion NOK and is said to be open for 105 minutes. They didn't even clean the dishes from the opening ceremony before closing it down and sealing it off.
Due to the delayed departure I missed the tide for the last part of the narrows and my speed dropped around 3 knots suddenly, but I was almost through and it didn't matter much for the total sail time and soon I had the landmarks Tromsdalen church (better known as the Arctic Cathedral) and Tromsø Bridge in my sights.
Tromsdalen Church is, despite its popular name, not a cathedral, i.e. main church of a diocese or prelature etc. However there are two cathedrals in Tromsø. Tromsø Cathedral for the lutheran diocese and the catholic Cathedral of our Lady both from 1861 (and somewhat strangely painted in the same colour scheme). The catholic cathedral is the northernmost christian cathedral in the world (by a couple of hundred meters)
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| Cathedral of our Lady, behind the residence of the catholic bishop - the ochre building furthest to the left is the old city hall. |
At some time during my stay there was some kind of major meet up of lifeboats in Tromsø. Normally only one lifeboat manned by volunteers is stationed in Tromsø in addition they seem to have several smaller boats of which at least one is for the youth arm of the Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue. But this day the professionally manned lifeboats from Skjervøy further north and Husøy further west was also there. (In the image above the Skjervøy lifeboat is not visible but rather the old lifeboat from Husøy)
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