Håøya (Norway), May 3-5, 2026
What would you consider a normal distance to cover on the first few days of sailing around the world?
I was sincerely surprised by people having opinions on this. Surely, as there are not that many people who depart on multi-year circumnavigations, there isn’t a normal to compare to, right?
During the first few days, almost everyone we met asked where our next stop would be. A neutral enough question, I suppose. However, when we responded, we got the feeling that it was the wrong answer. When we said that we would take it slow out the fjord for the first week, people seemed surprised and sometimes straight up disappointed.
People’s reactions were in the lines of “So you’re not sailing right to Sweden, then?” or “Oh, so you haven’t actually left yet?” or “But I thought you said you departed?”. Some people, upon seeing us, even commented that we shouldn’t be there, and that we “should have made it to Denmark by now”.
I’m not sure where all these opinions come from. But to me, they seem to come from a place of hurry or urgency. As if for some reason, we need to make the absolute most of every day and sail as far as possible at all times. Like trying to max out a weekend or vacation, not because we want to enjoy it, but because we want something to talk about afterwards.
At some point, I got impatient, and asked Erik if maybe we should have covered more distance by now. “All we have is time, Maren,” he said. “So let’s not stress our way around the world”.
We stayed two nights at Håøya, an absolute gem in the inner Oslo fjord. The weather was beautifully sunny and the bay was almost windless. While we were there, we finished an incredible amount of small projects. We also went for walks on the islands, which was bursting of spring, birds singing and flowers blooming. The slow pace of the island felt like a hug to our somewhat frail nervous systems.