Our new best friend in Norway, Terje, had that distinctive ‘I regret to inform you…’ look on his face. He had stopped by our boat at the guest pontoon in Ballstad to inform us he did not have the proper parts to inspect and re-certify our life=raft. Terje works for Ballstad Slip, the big shipyard operation that dominates this small fishing harbor on the south coast of the Lofoten peninsula. He runs the life=raft and safety inspection business, which, if it had to rely on pleasure boats like us for revenue, would have never opened their doors. But thankfully there are many more fishing boats here than sailboats, and they all have stringent requirements for life-rafts, safety flares, fire extinguishers and the like. We were super happy to find Terje, as our life-raft, requiring inflation and re-certification every three years, had hit its due date. We carefully planned our arrival at Ballstad so that we could leave the life-raft with him for the day, and then continue our progress southwest out to the dramatic tip of the Lofoten and onward down the mainland coast of Norway. We had just three weeks to make it down the long Norwegian coastline to Kristiansund before crossing over to the Shetlands.
Re-certifying a life-raft was not an optional activity for us. The upcoming ARC+ Rally required it, and even more, we required it for our own safety and comfort. Re-certifying can cost half the value of the life-raft, and with ours at 18 years old, Terje kindly warned me that even if he had the two missing parts he needed, it might be much more than the customary cost. We resolved to buy a new one, and leave ours with a local marine safety school for their student programs. The only problem was that only one of our kind of life-raft, made by Viking, existed in Norway and it was in Oslo. Terje told us he ‘hoped’ it would arrive in a week, despite the long land route it would take from the country’s capital. There we had it. We had a week to kill in the Lofoten.
