The Journey Begins…

Watching the Danish news on Friday night, I learned that Saturday was going to be a busy travel day, because schools have just let out and it’s the start of summer vacation in earnest. The airport, trains, and roads were all expected to be quite crowded.

My decision to leave early suddenly seemed very wise, or, perhaps, my consideration of waiting until the morning of my ferry seemed quite foolish.

Either way, I was happy to be less than a half hour away from the ferry terminal as I received this information.

After waking, tearing down my bed, and having breakfast, I decided to drive to the terminal, despite knowing I’d arrive an hour before they opened the gates. I wondered if there would be a long line already or if I would be the first. It turned out that I was the first.

Mai first in line, if you can call two cars a line

I didn’t mind. I had plenty of activities and I’m spending most of my time in the car anyway. One car pulled up behind me almost immediately, so at least I didn’t feel entirely silly.

An hour later, they opened the gates and I drove to another line for another even longer wait. I took the time to walk about, continue working on various activities, and took a picture of the ferry arriving.

My position in line was very close to the ferry’s loading/unloading gate, so I was able to watch as many 18 wheeler trailers, huge campers, busses, and, after over an hour, eventually a large number of cars drove off. Emptying took about 90 minutes.

Once loading began, I was not among the first to drive on. I was in a line with the electric vehicles, and it seems they wanted us in the middle, so if any of our dangerous batteries exploded, we would damage as many other cars as possible. Or maybe we are heavier than other cars so they want us in the center. I don’t know, but they did require us to inform them of the fact that we were driving electric vehicles.

Das boat arrives, the last cars to board, synchronized windmills, and dinner

Nevertheless, I was not the last car to drive on board. I was, after all, the first in the electric car line, at least, and there were still many cars in other lines too. Once I had driven on, dropped my luggage off in my cabin, and searched the entire boat, I was still able to take a picture of the last few cars still boarding (you can just make them out to the left of the blue helipad above).

I prepaid for all my meals on the ferry and I’m quite pleased that I did. The food is good, prepaying is cheaper, and it was nice not to have to make any decisions on board. At lunch on the second day, I overheard that if you did not pre-book, you might not be able to find a table, at least at the restaurant where I ate, and it would have been a shame to miss it (see pictures below).

If you look closely above, you can see that I was reading a book about the joys of living life single rather than as half of a couple. Of course, I’ve tried both, and each has its advantages. I’m certainly quite happy to be taking this trip solo.

We’ve had calm seas on this trip. I did not pay for wifi in an attempt to enjoy my solitude without the aid of social media. I slept well, despite having allowed myself to be tempted by a glass of white wine with dinner. I don’t drink often, though I do enjoy the taste of wine. The reason I don’t drink often is that it often gives me a migraine, and this is still the case. Luckily, I brought some good pills with me and taking them at 5am has helped.

My view at breakfast, my drawing exercise for the day, Scotland, and lunch

I ate a nice breakfast at the buffet with a pleasant view of our trail through the water. Drew for an hour, which I’m trying to do most days. Currently I’m mostly using my own pictures of models as source material, but since I didn’t pay for wifi and I use my website to find my own pictures, I used some pictures by other photographers I had downloaded back in 2023 to use for drawing before I decided on my multi-year Calvin project.

I took a nap after drawing and that cleared up my remaining headache. In my cabin, I can see the ferry’s current location on the TV, and noticed we were sailing by some Scottish islands, so I went up and took a few pictures from the deck, then went to have lunch. As we were so close to Scotland, my phone welcomed me to the UK and I had some internet access for a little while.

Then I went for lunch, which were gourmet versions of Danish open faced sandwiches, which I have grown to love.

I spent a few hours in the afternoon writing the above. I still had a few hours to read, have dinner, pack my bags, and read again before 9pm, when I had to leave my cabin and they allowed us to put our baggage in the car.

I kept my camera and went up on deck afterwards, hoping to take a few pictures of the islands as we sailed in. I was quite happy that I had the presence of mind to put on a sweatshirt and coat, as it was very windy and cold!

Still, we had pretty nice weather and I enjoyed taking pictures for about an hour before returning to my car once we were at the dock. I took pictures mostly with my big camera, but here are a few iPhone pictures I also took.

After the wind and bright sun, I welcomed the calm of the harbor

Getting off the boat seemed quicker than getting on it. My camp site was less than a km away, but the Tesla navigation instructions wanted me to detour to the nearest supercharger first (in Iceland!).

I may not be able to use the Tesla’s navigation system in the Faroe Islands.

When I arrived to the camp site, they did not have my name on the list, despite my pre-paying for reservations back in March, and checking via email that using their electricity to plug in the Tesla would be OK. The woman remembered my email and said they had space, so just let me drive into a spot. I discovered a little later that I had booked for the day I got ON the ferry, and not the day I got OFF the ferry. Oops. Luckily, they are pretty relaxed (though I expect I will pay for my mistake).

I had been uncertain if plugging the Tesla into camp electricity would work. At first it did, and I noticed it was set to 6 Amps, but could be set as high as 13 Amps. The outlet had a little sticker where I saw 16 Amps, so I tried increasing from 6A to 13A in the car, and the power immediately stopped. After asking a few questions of the staff here, who had no idea, I just plugged into the outlet for the car beside me (luckily, they weren’t using it), and it worked at 6A.

I went to sleep with 56% on my battery and woke with 60%, which isn’t optimal, but without having it plugged in, I would have dropped to 40%, so this is definitely better.

Now I’ve had breakfast and will start to plan my day.