Dirona is on the move again. The 2009 Nordhavn 52 owned by James and Jennifer Hamilton just cruised up the Lysefjord in southwest Norway, one of the cruising world’s major – and hard to get to – attractions. A remnant of the ice age, Lysefjord (light fjord) is 26 miles long and is bordered by steep granite cliffs that often rise 1,300 feet above the water. Underwater, the depths start at 43 feet and then plummet to more than 1,000 feet as the fjord moves inland.
This summer the Hamiltons, a high-tech couple from Seattle who’ve been cruising since 2012, took Dirona from England to the Netherlands and then up to Norway. At the end of the summer they stayed in Bergen (pictured at top), Norway’s second-largest city and often considered one of the most beautiful in the world.
They played tourist there for a while, waiting for a weather window to cruise up to Lysefjord. Once underway, they passed a lot of ferries, not many recreational boats, and cruised under a number of super-modern suspension bridges that are some of the longest in the world.
At the end of September, they passed the little village of Lysebotn (pictured above, right), nestled beneath the mountains at the entrance to Lysefjord. Then they entered the narrow and dramatic inlet of Fantahola on the north side of Lysefjord.
On their blog, Hamilton wrote, “Waterfalls plunge down cliffs that extend over a thousand feet above and below the water surface. The walls are so sheer in both directions that you can bring a boat within touching distance of shore without getting a depth sounder reading, and most places all 500 feet of our anchor rode wouldn’t even touch bottom.” At one point they brought the boat into an inlet so tight that they could almost touch the granite walls on either side.
The Hamiltons already have one circumnavigation under their belts. Now they’re cruising the North Atlantic and the North Sea for a while before turning around and heading back home. For more:
