this series of photos of reflections of the inner harbor at night was taken was taken back in april before there were many boats in the water. these days most of the boats have been relaunched so perhaps one wind still night or even day i will take some shots to compare. for now i hope you enjoy these.
in another week or two both sides of this canal will be full of these beautiful and seaworthy open fishing/recreational boats. in norwegian we call them sjekter, more precisely this design is called stavernssjekter.
most of these wooden boats are varnished or oiled but the white painted ones require less preseasonal maintenance so they usually can be launched first.
there is a saying in norway that codfish tastes best if caught in a month with an r. oddly that excludes all the warmer months but includes all the colder ones.
recently there haven't been any fish to catch nonetheless these sjekter are among the first boats to go in the water in the spring and the last to be taken out in the autumn
here are many of the boats still in drydock covered with tarps. even though the boats appear to be uncomplicated it will take many hours of work before they are ready to go in the water.
in norway sea rescue operations are conducted by a private membership organization called redningsselskapet. notice the RS(+) on the small red house. they have bases along the coast, including one here in stavern. even though stavern is a very small town, being located at the mouth of oslofjord means this base is one of the busiest in the country. happily there are no emergencies at the moment so the main boat with the blue lights, called a redningsskøyte is at dock, during winter when there are no pressing engagements, the boat doubles as an icebreaker to keep a channel in and out of the harbor open.
