#E11 - Surviving Iceland On A Boat In Winter

The Reykjavík Grapevine has been published out of downtown Reykjavík for more than 20 years, with its offices for most of that time next door to the "World Famous Hot Dog Stand." 

In this episode we are joined by Jay Thompson and Natasha González, known as the "Coconuts family," professional sailors and extreme adventurers who have repeatedly sailed to Iceland, often arriving in the dead of winter. They discuss their full-time life aboard their incredible 107-year-old, 40-ton solid oak vessel, Lola of Skagen, their recent winter journey from France via the British Isles, and how they run surf and ski charters in the remote Westfjords. They also share the story of their son, Artico, who was born in Ísafjörður, and detail the technical challenges of navigating Iceland's treacherous high-latitude waters using local knowledge and weather analysis.

Hosted by: Jón Trausti Sigurðarson & Bart Cameron

Episode Highlights

00:01:17 - Meet Lola: Detailing the guests' majestic, 107-year-old, 40-ton solid oak Danish fishing boat.

00:03:54 - Lola's amazing history as a hajkutter (shark cutter) that used a live well to transport fish to England.

00:06:00 - The WWII survival story: How Lola sank after hitting a mine in the Baltic and later reappeared.

00:07:00 - Why the Coconuts family chooses to spend the winter in Iceland, arriving in February, because they "don't really like it so much in summer."

00:09:56 - Taking adventurers on surf charters to remote, previously unsurfed waves in the Westfjords, including naming one "Lola's Right."

00:15:39 - The incredible story of their son, Artico (meaning Arctic in Spanish), who was born in an old house in Ísafjörður.

00:22:18 - Guiding a hardcore Norwegian group on a ski and dive expedition to the remote natural reserve of Hornstrandir.

00:31:43 - Professional sailor Jay Thompson explains the main difference when sailing Iceland's high latitudes, including quick weather changes and strong currents.

Follow Jay and Natasha's adventures on their website coconuts.is and learn more about their boat at lolaofskagen.com. You can also find them on social media at Coconuts Sail and Lola of Skagen.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Um hello and welcome to the drop in where uh we here at the regular grapevine talk to people who drop in at the office by now usually by request. Um today we have with us Jay Thompson and Natasha Gonzalez, who have been for the past dozens of years coming to Iceland on sailboats and often in the winter and spending a lot of time here, and have even uh had a kid in Iceland, and we'll talk about that. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

You're uh currently in Reykjavik.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Yeah, just arrived. Just arrived uh yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

And from where?

SPEAKER_03 0:53

From Issafjord.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

You came from Issafjord. Very good. And you've been there for how long now?

SPEAKER_03 0:58

We were there for two and a half months.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah, we arrived in February. You arrived in February. And do you live on the boat while you're out there? We do, yeah, full time. In the Westfields in winter? Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Yeah. Yeah. In general. Yeah. Yeah. We don't like living on land. Okay. Life is much nicer than the same thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:17

We should describe the boat though, because it's a majestic boat. It's right here in the Rykivick harbor.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

This is uh we should describe yeah, we should describe those boats and we should talk about like what prompted you to come here in the first place. The fact that you've been here on different boats. You're now it's your first trip on with a new boat, yes or a new old boat. And you know, I'd kind of talk about what you then do here while you know during those years while you're here. Uh start with this beautiful boat that's outside. Let's start with a boat.

SPEAKER_06 1:46

Because it was we're a day late kind of on the interview because we were texting uh and no, we weren't texting, we were emailing, sorry. Um and my son and I were looking out of this perfectly still, like haven't seen Reykjavik Harbor, the Fox of Flower Harbor, that's still for probably six months. And I said, this might affect. I think we have people coming on a sailboat for an interview, which is kind of the coolest way to arrive at any interview ever. But uh so as you said, like it's a working boat, so you just park next to all the other working boats in this converted fishing, not converted really, a fishing boat from the old days, 58 foot, solid oak, no uh winches, just block and tackle, as it was done uh like a hundred years ago essentially.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

Yeah, she'll be 107 years old this year. Uh she was built in 1919 in Skagen, the north of Denmark. Uh she's about 40 tons, and she was a fishing boat for 50 years and was converted in 1975 to a charter vessel. And she's been full on chartering since then. We've only been the proud guardians for the last year and three months. Before that, uh we we got her from uh Jean-Francois Garin, a French guy in uh France, and he chartered her and owned her for 31 years, and he was the one that did a major refit. And he wrote this book in 2019 for her 100th year anniversary. There's a picture of him and his wife in the back. She's from the Netherlands, Margot. And uh they did a great job with Lola. She is in immaculate condition, and yeah, we're very proud to be the new guardians of this ship because boats have such a long life, and all the owners that it has throughout its life, you know, just you know, basically are its guardians for a short amount of time. Um and uh and she was built really well. Jay can tell you more about how many there have been of her.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah, it's a it's a really uh it's a cool boat because uh the it used to have a live well on board, so it used to transport the fish live. So it would fish with a net with a seine Danish seine net around around Denmark, and then it would fill up the live well. It had a bunch of holes in the side of the boat that would allow the water to to flow back and forth, that would keep the fish alive. They would sail to England, they would sell the fish live uh in England for a really a good price, and so it was a really smart business idea, and uh they were basically the only people doing it. And so they built around two hundred of these boats from about n yeah, nineteen ten or so to about nineteen thirty. And now there's probably about ten that are still left, uh kind of in uh a shape of a boat, and there's probably three that are in the same condition as as Lola. That's incredible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

That's a very beautiful boat.

SPEAKER_03 4:49

Yeah, she is.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Do they like I I'm so I d I no I know so little about sailboats, but d does this shape of a boat have a name in a sense? Like they have a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Well, yeah, I mean the type of boat, yeah, they called it a hoikutter, which mean which meant a shark uh cutter. Okay. And uh which was basically just the kind of a name that they gave to them. But they're all similarly shaped and and size. So the smallest one would have been probably fifteen meters or so, maybe fifty feet, and then the bigger a biggest one would have been twenty meters, something around yeah, sixty-five or seventy feet or so.

SPEAKER_03 5:25

But they were I mean, uh it was such a good business. They were built maybe in like seven months only, and in the first year of owning it, they would pay off the boat because it did, I mean, it was just yeah, they just did such good money fishing with it.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

And for for like, you know, the price of fresh fish would have been.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

A lot higher. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really smart because of course England they had all the money and they had these super boats that were trawlers and but they nobody was selling the fish live. And so that was the Danish kind of She's a super strong boat and you know, a survival.

SPEAKER_03 6:02

I mean, she sank, she had a mine once and sank.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

In World War II, yeah. Oh my goodness. She had a mine in the Baltic. Really? And sunk. Yeah, we have basically the whole history of the boat except for four years. So we know that w the day that she sunk and then after that there's no trace of the boat until four years later it appears on the west coast of Denmark uh fishing again. So somebody somewhere within those four years, uh at the end of World War II, uh was able to refloat the boat and fix it and so out of two hundred boats, Lola was one of those boats that just happened to have all the right owners throughout her story to keep her going.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

You know, and she is in super good condition. I mean, we just sailed her. We left on Christmas from France. You know, we had been looking for, you know, a bigger boat than the one we lived on for 14 years, which was Messenger, which was the one that we were here living for nine months on her in Iceland uh 11 years ago. And we finally found her, or she found us, because that's the way it works with boats. Um and we wanted to go on a first adventure, you know, somewhere, you know, far, and we love winter. And in Brittany, France, where we're based, there's no real winter. And so we we said, let's go to Iceland to spend the winter. Uh, you know, because of our professions, you know, we don't really work much during winter, so it was like the perfect plan. So we got some friends on board and and and our two kids. Out of our four kids, there are two that have left the nest and two that are still with us. And uh, and we sailed up here. We we took our time. It took us like a month and a half. You know, we went to places that we hadn't been before when we left Iceland and kind of like sailed uh to France. Um, we kind of came a different route and and arrived uh February 8th to Issa Fjordur, our final destination, where we have a lot of friends and and where we wanted to work with the boat. We had a charter booked already, a surf charter and a um skiing charter.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Wow. So first question I have is when you take the long route uh to from Brittany to to the Westfords, does that mean you're kind of going in between the British Isles or Yeah, ba well basically yeah, we head it headed up this time uh between we headed up the Irish Sea and we wanted to go to somewhere in Ireland.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

I've never been to Ireland, I've sailed around Ireland a ton, but but never stopped there.

SPEAKER_03 8:36

So Jay's a professional sailor back in France. He races on race boats.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

So we often sail around places but never stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so uh yeah, we wanted to uh check out Ireland, so we went to Belfast and uh we were there for a bit, which was was nice to be able to go to the Titanic Museum and and check out that. But then we continued up uh in Scotland off the off the west coast there of the Hebrides Islands, which is a big archipelago.

SPEAKER_06 9:05

Yeah, familiar with the Isle of Lewis. We happen uh that's where my family is.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Excellent, yeah. It's a really cool place. I mean I've heard of course I've heard about it as a sailor for many years, but uh so we took our time going through there and stopped at many different islands and little villages along the way and checked out some pubs. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 9:23

Isle of Lewis will help you out there, but some of the other ones will. The Church of Church of Scotland can be a little bit rough on the pubs, but Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yeah, and then after that, uh we went up uh to Faroe Islands. Uh we have some friends that that are there as well, so it was really nice to go go visit them and spent a little bit of time there, about a week or so, and then after that we headed up to Iceland.

SPEAKER_06 9:43

This is with the with the and and did you take the surfing group with you on the initial trip or they met Well they met us.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

We actually we took a bunch of their stuff on board. They loaded up all their surfboards and wetsuits and everything, but no, they met us in in the West Fjords.

SPEAKER_06 9:56

So that sounds like an amazing vacation. Like I'm gonna go surfing in the West Fjords of Iceland and I'm gonna stay in the most sturdy boat kind of in the history of man. Like it sounds like an oak boat that has survived World War II being a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Well, the surfers of of these films called Lost in the Swell, which you can find on YouTube, all of their films are put on there. They always, for the last 20 years, they've been, you know, these three buddies just going off on different adventures, you know, doing surf trips, and one of them is a filmmaker, so they always make a film about their surf trip. And um I've worked with him, you know, professionally, because I'm kind of like in the sailing world as well, more in the communication and you know, filming the lives and presenting uh the race starts and stuff like this. And um, and so I I they they we had just seen their latest film, so I proposed to them, like, hey, why don't you guys come and look for surf up in the West Fjords? We're gonna be there on our boat. You guys are welcome. And so, you know, they took the ferry up there um and they loaded up all their surfboards and stuff on the boat before we left. So then they just came and joined us, and then we we took him to places that have never been surfed before in in the West Fjords. And there's there's one wave that they even named uh Lola, Lola's right. Oh that perhaps has never been surfed. There's still some research to be done, but it's most likely.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

But uh it's an I think uh the guy who kinda started surfing here who actually spends a lot of time in um in the Basque like part whatever you call the Basque part of southern France to surf with people he knows there. Yeah, but anyway, like this is interesting for me because like uh the route you're describing is basically like when when I when before airplanes uh and before um larger boats, this would be the route to Iceland back and forth. The uh the British Isles, the Hebrides, the Pharos, and it was just kind of like a a sea highway on the sands. Exactly, yeah. And and that's the natural way to get here on a smaller.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

I've always been really interested as well in this in this route because where we live in France is um is Brittany, where the the fishermen used to live and leave in February every year and they would sail up to to Iceland and uh to the to the East Fjords. There where uh they've been doing that for like four hundred years or so. So it's like an often traveled route.

SPEAKER_06 12:28

At least foreigners, right, because we know we know from archaeological evidence it's it's possibly because it funny you mentioned the Hybrides, because they have like old uh uh writing in uh what's close to an Icelandic language in on the sides of of little uh uh fishing huts kind of that are still still present and actually not preserved intentionally that well. They're there, but they're not meant to be there. Yeah. Uh so we know that that corridor has been used for a long time. So it's fantastic. So you're you're kind of the closest thing we can get to that kind of tourism. Or I guess you weren't bringing tourists from the on the whole trip, you were just at the end. But that's that's um just a fascinating uh uh life experience. So this is a very good thing.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

Or our crew were kind of tourist because they they they had never been to Iceland, and you know what a fantastic way to to come by sea, you know. I mean, yeah, the moment we were arriving, we our first place that we arrived was Siglufjord. And it's just beautiful there. Um of course there wasn't you know that much snow, um, but we were very happy to see winter arrive late in the West Fjords, and it really put on a show the whole month of March. So funny we had crazy like storms. I mean, uh I mean yeah, you'll see when you see this film the film of Lost in the Swell. I mean, we were hunkered down in the boat, you know, with 60 knots, you know, waiting for it to like stop these blizzards, and and then they would have like one day of sunshine and good waves, and they would go, you know, in the freezing cold water.

SPEAKER_06 14:04

Sorry, I just can't imagine this. Like it it was a rough march. We if you look at the Grapevines website, we have nothing but yellow warnings and you were on the boat. That's what we came for. Oh my god. Yeah, I guess I guess I think you're kind of harder people than I am. Uh I I wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

I think that is like uh yeah, I guess we could we can agree that people tend to not come here for the weather, but they also don't tend to come here in the winter on a boat. Right. You know, true this what I would say. And I guess nobody is like really looking for the Yeah, well one thing about us, you know, we're known as the Coconuts family.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

And for you know, readers and Icelanders that remember us from we were on RUV television on N1, you know, there were plenty of Morgumblad and everything. There were tons of articles and everything written about us. I mean, I can still find you know interviews about you know on us on on the websites and stuff. But you know, we we yeah, we do things very differently. We we like extremes and uh we really like it in Iceland in the winter. We we don't really like it so much in summer, you know, too much tourism, you know, just um yeah, so so now the snow is starting to melt, so it's time for us to sail south.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Back south, yeah. The uh the exact reverse of what our tourism market does, but we go, yeah. So the first you were here the for the first time twelve years ago on The Messenger. The Messenger. And uh what prompted that first trip and you also then told me that uh you did stop in Eastafrid briefly to give birth.

SPEAKER_06 15:44

Yeah, yeah, way more briefly than I would do because I believe you said arrived in October.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

Yeah, so actually we met Johan Balvinson in Panama in 2011.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, eleven eleven.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

Maybe which was the year we got married. So we were sailing around the world, we were nomadic with our two daughters, Sol and Luna, that means sun and moon in Spanish. Um I'm from Costa Rica, so that's where we met. Jay's from California, he set sail single-handedly from California down to Costa Rica. I jumped on board, became a permanent stowaway. We were kind of sailing around the world, and our plan eventually one day was to make our way to France. But we kind of wanted to live the nomadic life while we were young, you know, having our children on board and things like this. And we met an Icelander in Panama, Johan, who, you know, we told him, like, yeah, we're gonna eventually make our way up to the US and from New York, you know, make the normal transatlantic to France. And he's like, Oh, but Iceland is in the way. You should stop by. Yeah, it's on the way. So he planted that seed, and we started to get what we call the northern sickness, where everything pointed up to the north. And uh yeah, we decided uh we left Newport, Rhode Island in 2014, and we sailed up to Iceland, and we took our time and we arrived on October 17th of 2014, uh, right here into Harpa.

SPEAKER_06 17:15

So Harpa, so uh being a bit of a uh sailing dorker, but uh also again not having all the knowledge I wish I had entering this conversation. Um did you sail at the high latitudes then or did you go down and and then back up? You went you sailed across at the higher latitudes.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah, exactly. So we went up, we made our way up the coast the east coast of the United States, we went up to Newfoundland and and we ended up leaving from Labrador and then sailed from Labrador to to Iceland. So it took us 14 days. We arrived here. We left October 1st and arrived on the 14th or something like this.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

We kinda hovered um on the south of Greenland for a few days with absolutely no wind. It was really eerie and unusual.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Because we didn't have a motor in our boat, so when there was no wind, you didn't move anywhere. So I think we sat for about. Even on the messenger, you didn't have a motor. Do you have a motor now? We do, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

Now we we've finally grown up. But Jay's first two boats, the one I met him on in the Pacific, and then Messenger, which we lived aboard for 14 years. No motor. Had no motor. We were pure sailists. Yeah. Sailing, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

So the real Yeah, that's how we arrived here. We arrived here in uh in Reykjavik and uh we stayed for yeah in Reykjavik for five months, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Four months.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Yeah, just in front of Cafe Wagning. Wagning, just just here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

The girls went to Austerbaiskole. Nice Solen Luna. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:41

Oh, okay. Okay, so we're right up the hill. Okay, fantastic. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Yeah, and when when we arrived, we are you know, I was I'm always searching for work wherever wherever we go. That's how we just sustained our life. We would just work in all the different places uh where we would be. So I started looking around for for sailboats in in Iceland, which is there's not very many. And I came across uh this company, Aurora Artica, that was in in the West Fjords, and so I got in contact with Siggy Bupe, who's uh who started the company, and he told me, Yeah, well, we're gonna be taking the mast off, and I would love a I would love a hand if you want to come up here. And of course I went up to I flew up to the West Fjords and helped them for a couple weeks, and of course I fell in love with the town.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

It's we really like these kind of small little quaint town, and I didn't know a birth plan yet because we we you know, we gave birth at home, you know, Jay was the midwife, you know, like the last one, Caribe, the third daughter, which means Caribbean in in Spanish. She was born in Martinique on the boat. You know, it was winter, you know. I w I didn't want to give birth on the boat, you know, it was cold and dark. So I was looking for a birth plan, and you know, Jay called up and they basically housed them in the great grandmother's house, you know, who she had passed away four years prior, but the house was left exactly how she left it. You know, probably one of the oldest houses in Isafud. And and a lot of children apparently had been born in this house, you know, prior to the 1950s, before the hospital was built in town. Um and uh and he was like, you know, come up here, you know, you you were welcome, everybody, to come up here, and maybe you'll want to give birth in this house. And I walked into the house and I felt the energy of the place, and we asked the family, can we give birth in the house? And that's they were like, they didn't even bat an eye. They were like, Yeah, of course, it's gonna be the 25th child born in that house, you know. And so, yeah, Art Artico, which means Arctic in Spanish, uh, was born in Isafiordur.

SPEAKER_06 20:43

There's a lot of kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

On March 8th, um and so he just had his 11th birthday in the same house. You know, we went for cake. Oh my goodness. Because it's a house that now, you know, our good friend Huikur Sigurdson, um uh, you know, they've inherited the house and fixed it up, and him and his family live there. They have two kids, and their second child was a twenty-sixth child to be born in that house. We inspired them to give birth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:15

Well, I'll say, like your like your boat, the houses in Isaphir there, and I we have different uh impressions of Esafir there. I uh I'm I'm very affectionate towards Esafires. Oh, I have a lot of affection towards Eastaphir, actually. The houses in Eastaphir there all seem like most of them seem like they could survive a hundred years easily. Those are the places the houses, the buildings in Isaphir that I'd be comfortable spending last March in uh a boat.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Uh yeah, well this one, Albertus, is the only house that's remained within the same family throughout its history. Others have been sold to other families, but this one has remained within the same house. So it's it's very special and and Isafjordur is is very special to us. We have a a whole network of of family that are like our Icelandic family. Um so yeah, so we worked with Hui Kud. Uh his company is Nordur Bolin. He also uh manages Visit Westfjord's uh Instagram page, and he's a photographer and videographer and um you know a guide as well. I mean, he's skied in Hornstrander probably 300 times. Um so yeah, we did uh we had a Norwegian group uh that came, eight guys from Norway, and they were a great bunch. We took him uh for about four days to Hornstrander, and they were they they were hardcore. They were like swimming after skiing just in a bikini and with their Aperospritz just hanging out there wet for like 30 minutes, and I was just like, I would be shaking and purple. But they they even had ski diving equipment. They were like for four hours. They came back with buckets of mussels and crabs and yeah, they were hardcore, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

We love these you're hardcore.

SPEAKER_05 22:52

I don't know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Because there was there was just this like on the news, I think today or yesterday, one of our uh members of parliament was kayaking just here and he fell into like he and another guy fell into the ocean, and when they when they were finally rescued after I think thirty or forty minutes um in the ocean, their body temperature had dropped to like thirty-two. Yeah. But uh you have to first of all yeah, I guess you have to be you have to build tolerance for these things. Second of all, you have to be um aware of when things are going away. Sure. Because it's often hard to figure out uh yeah, it's it's the what I'm saying essentially is the ocean here is cold. But just to like for people who don't know the geography completely of Iceland, so Isafir is a town in the west fields of Iceland. And uh it's oddly enough, like the the the place where Isafir is in is not basically the fjord called Isafir. It's that fjord is f way further south, and it's just like this sort of I don't know what you call it, it's like a bay full of small fjords that is kinda if you know what I mean, that goes sort of with north to south, with Isafir being a second town basically, after Bolingwijk. And then across there is from there to the east is an area of the West Fjords called Horstrandir, which you're talking about, which is a natural reserve. Which is a natural reserve now, and nobody's lived there since I believe the fifties. Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

There's no roads, there's no helicopters landing. The only way to reach this place is by boat.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

It's by boat, and well you can walk. You can take a very long walk. Yeah, yeah. You can walk, yeah. In the summer, right now, in summer, yeah, in summer. Or ski, I guess. Um but otherwise like I think they have about maybe half a mile of road there that somebody very optimistic built in the fifties, but never s never uh got around to finishing. And very few numbers of houses left there, etc. So it's uh it's a wonderful place to visit. And it's a place that people tend to stay away from in the winter. Um first of all, because you have to get there by sea. Second of all, where are you gonna stay in a storm? But you just you just do it almost out of spite. You just take people there and and just do it like it's nobody's business. That's kind of a great thing.

SPEAKER_03 25:10

Yeah, well nowadays, I mean, we you look at the weather and you go and it's safe, and you know, there's there's places where you can, you know, tuck into if there's a little, you know, storm coming. I mean, usually they'll last like, you know, just one night and pass by. And uh we did drag anchor though with the Norwegians there. There was one night that was pretty windy.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yeah, but that's what's amazing to to think about really is like, yeah, I mean I guess now it's not as as common, but back then it would have been just regular sort of regular business and they would have had any access to weather files and weather reports like we do now, which makes things a whole lot easier, which is I am always amazed like when we sail, we sail up to Iceland in the middle of winter, and i if you if you really you know pay attention to the weather and you and you study it and then you can go the whole way without getting really too f too beat up. And uh but they used to do that in winter and people sail around and were go fishing. Yeah, they would had to go out and you know catch whales and with rowboats and they wouldn't had any weather information.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

It would have been definitely a different a different story, but yeah, and and kind of like Norway, places like this one, you wouldn't necessarily like you would usually take a boat between fjords to meet other people. You wouldn't necessarily walk. Yeah. So it was kind of a that kind of a society. It's possible the other way, but the boats would be at the end of the year.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

But yeah, just the easier form of transport.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

Yeah, definitely. Uh but yeah, it's just fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

But we're not the first. I mean, Aurora Artica has been doing this for you know, I mean Sigebupe with now his new bow beer, you know, has been doing this for a long time. They go to Greenland, you know, in the summer to do charters there.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Um They used to go to Jan Mayen, I remember. They used to go to Yan Mayen, yeah. Before that became bureaucratically too complex or something. I'm not sure what it was. Something like that. I think the Norwegians don't want you to go there. Or something. But yeah, they used to sail directly from Isavir to Jan Mayen 10, 15 years ago. So yeah, you're not the only ones. But you know, even if you're in if you come to any of the uh small towns of of Iceland in the winter, very seldomly will you see a sailboat anywhere. Like it's uh it's uh quite uncommon, like in in contrast to the whole of the rest of Scandinavia where it's just full. It's like a forest of sailboats. Yeah, definitely. Sailboats everywhere. So it's uh it's uh it's it's it's not a common pastime that people do here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Well, Jay um with Jens Peter Jensen, who had a boat called Xena at the time, um he sailed around Iceland twice with him to promote sailing in Iceland, uh once counterclockwise and once clockwise, and then they also participated in this Viking race from the Viking race race. From the Faroe Island to to Faroe Islands to Iceland. You guys won, I believe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Yeah, how long did that take? Uh I don't I don't really remember. I think it was yeah, maybe say uh maybe three or four days from from uh Faroes to to Reykjavik. So we had quite uh quite hard conditions, but we the crew was all fairly inexperienced Icelanders on board, and which was really uh fun because actually the Icelanders are quite hardy and in spirit, so even though they haven't had much experience in sailing, they kind of have that the old sea is definitely within them. Yeah. I mean they were just like you know uh chewing tobacco and drinking coffee the whole time and they were just as hardy as can be, but they had a blast. We had a great we had a really good time.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

So yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's uh and like so.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

It's in you guys, it's in you guys.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

So it's just so like you know, you're you're here for the sixth or seventh time now in in in just over a decade. Uh and then you you're I'm assuming you're gonna be back at some point and again doing a similar thing. Yeah. So you do you like do you wait for somebody who's insane enough, sorry, crazy enough, adventurous enough to to to want to like head out here to do surfing or do skiing by boat?

SPEAKER_03 29:18

Yeah, I mean with with Lola, we kind of want to hit this niche of like extreme adventures that kind of contact us with crazy ideas, you know, that want to like charter the boat for, you know, I don't know, something somewhere around the world, somewhere where we can sail to. And yeah, I mean Iceland is always a place that just keeps on calling us back and we keep on coming back. So it would be great to be able to come here every winter and do um charters, you know, in the north, although it's a long way from France, and we do have work there during, you know, the summers and spring and fall. So um I don't know if if we'll be able to to do that every winter, but but we'll see.

SPEAKER_06 30:05

Aaron Powell But if you're that client who wants to do that, having the person who wins the races around Iceland and from might be the good good person to have as your captain. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Is there a key I'm sorry, uh sailing nerd question maybe, but is there a key difference in the way you sail around Iceland as to compared to the way you're sailing other conventional race courses? I mean, uh you I'm you're a professional sailor and you sail competitions that are typically in the Mediterranean, I would assume.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

No, they're mainly well, we do long distance sailing, so we do all offshore. So we do a lot of Atlantic, yeah, transatlantic.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:43

Around uh around uh Ireland, around England and his dream is to do the Vendeglow, which is the single race, single-handed, uh without assistance around the world on the big Emocha boats. So that's kind of like what where we've been. But I think that like to answer the question.

SPEAKER_06 31:00

And that's a little quite a journey though. How long is it single-hand around for the Vandeglow?

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Right now the record is 70 days.

SPEAKER_06 31:08

Oh see so the book I'd read about sailing around in a converted fishing boat. I mean, I remember that is like you can get it in paperback, it's a really good read, but I think he does it in like two years. So things have changed. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Robert Knox Johnson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Golden Globe back in the day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:27

The Golden Globe still exists.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Now the race does, yeah, yeah, it restarted. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 31:32

Okay. Yeah, and I remember reading, sorry, I don't want to get too boring with this, but uh so sorry, what is the main difference between these these higher uh latitudes and the lower ones for your sailing experience?

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, well here the main thing is that of course, like the weather changes quite quite quickly and it's often on or off. So you either have really no not much wind at all, which is which is you know has challenges, and then or you have a lot of wind. Yeah. So uh that kind of trying to find that balance is is always uh difficult. Uh here as well, there's there's quite a bit of current actually, uh especially um on the different capes as you as you go around Iceland. Um so you will have a lot of current and and you need to make sure the current doesn't go against the wind, because when that happens it gets quite nasty. All the fishermen have quite a bit of stories around here about that sort of thing. So but like everywhere, I mean um you have to just really try to study the local effects, which are really important. Every different place has these these local effects because of the temperature of the water and the how the land mass is and these sort of things. So you try to get a good understanding of that with the currents, and then you're able to be able to yeah, navigate safely after that.

SPEAKER_06 32:45

How do you study that?

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Like do you talk to the locals or Yeah, well there's a lot of talking to locals because the fishermen have a ton of ton of you know experience that isn't on the internet, you know. Yeah. And then after that is just studying different weather files. So we look at all different uh weather models. There's plenty of weather models. Even Iceland has their own weather model, which is actually quite good, by the way. And um yeah, you compare the different models and try to understand in advance like what's happening. So under certain scenarios, okay, the pressure is like this, the temperature is like this, okay. Why did that happen there? And you try to understand these little local effects so that then in the future when you see the same thing, you can you can you can understand what's going to happen.

SPEAKER_06 33:28

Yeah, it's funny you were you were sailing and you just you s station your boat, which uses block and tackle, so you can't reefing the sails and stuff seems like a an obstacle that is almost overwhelming in on a boat of that kind. But you were you were at the exact location that we're celebrating today, uh where three Bosque whaling vessels crashed, and the the Basque people therefore, for some reason, and this is uh unfortunate in 1615 in Icelandic history, uh those uh Bosque whalers raided needed some help with uh food. And when they stole food, uh bounty was essentially a bounty was called on their head and they were massacred. They were massacred, and there was a decree that you can murder Bosque people in the Westfjords, which was repealed finally 11 years ago today. So I think the the currents and the and uh the local knowledge was essential, even though Bosques Bosque have been going to the Westfords. Probably before written history, um uh it it caught them off guard. Probably still I think people Bosque traditionally have the best some of the best maritime knowledge in history. But anyway, so you you you managed it better than they did, and you therefore you did not get cream.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

These things these things are highly localized. I mean, if you talk to somebody, um well, I already very few people left who did farming or fishing in Iceland before we had like regular weather reports. But I grew up with some of these people and they could explain, like, you know, in the area they grew up or or farmed their entire lives, they could explain what the v weather progression would be just by looking at things or just you know, by the you know, the pressure they felt in the air or the the uh humidity or whatever. It's a very interesting, uh more or less lost uh uh skill set because you just don't need to have it anymore. But the the other thing, like with the fishermen in in and around the Westfields, they have like they have these sort of currents, strong currents that are so strong they're almost like a a river sort of in the ocean. And uh I don't know if I should throw in an anecdote, this is not I'm not being interviewed here. But these can be quite like uh risky. Because uh I don't know, I think it was last year a former member of parliament um drowned just outside of Patrick's Villa on a on a boat. Um and this prompted my father to say, because he used to live out there and do fishing, I'm sure it was the and then he named the the current. And it probably was, and then he told me experience about like getting stuck in that current and almost uh you know, the the boat almost went under. And he was just looking around thinking, like, can I make it? But yeah, point being, I mean it's uh uh like a very treacherous weather, uh a lot of different elements in play. So I have like I think people have to respect sort of the level of almost academic research that goes into like trying to understand what you're dealing with here if you're traveling here in winter and and sailing. It's an incredibly it must be an incredibly complex thing.

SPEAKER_06 36:43

Yeah, it's great to talk to experts because like the locations you're talking about are places we've had tourist fatalities and and MP fatalities. Yes. So we Hornstrander, for example, we had the the tourist who luckily was saved, but it was a close call, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Oh yeah, yeah. And I mean I've known people hiking them in the summer who's who who've like very experienced who've had to like uh just well withdraw into the like they have these plastic shelters there. Yeah, yeah. Because the weather's so incredibly bad, even in July sometimes that uh you just you can't even pitch tent.

SPEAKER_06 37:17

So it's anyway. Anyway, but this has a ma had been an amazing interview. We were thought it'd be brief, but we didn't even touch, scratch the surface. But it's Jay Thompson and Natasha Gonzalez, and and we I when I when we were interacting, there's a coconuts family. Um so how do we follow you and see what's going on next?

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Well, we have our website, coconuts.is. Yeah. Suffix there. And uh we started a new website for Lola, Lolaofskagen.com. Um haven't really had time to develop that one as much. But um yeah, more like our professional kind of like sailing, you know, careers on coconuts.is and kind of like our travels and stuff. But you know, on social media, I mean, you know, Instagram, Facebook, we have um Lola of Skaggin, and we have Coconuts Sail. And then Jay has his own Jay Thompson Skipper, and I have my own Natasha Multimedia. So perfect, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 38:15

Very good. So yeah, we'll follow that, and we also probably need to look into following uh this isaphir, there's sailing group that that employed you at one time and still interact with, right? Um we'll put that in the links though on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

Yeah, we'll put that in the links and well I've talked to those people actually very easily, but that's a whole other story. Uh thanks very much for dropping in. Uh thank you everybody for listening or or watching. Uh safe sailing. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us and keep up with the good work. Nice to meet you guys. I hope to see you guys back in Iceland soon with I don't know, a boat of crazy Norwegians or whatever the hell. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

See you guys.