Heimaey

I managed to take you with me for most of my journey, but yesterday we lost our Internet connection as we sailed into Icelandic waters. Heimay ( pronounced hay-my) is a small island off the south coast of Iceland, and Iceland's main fishing port. There's a fish meal processing plant on the side of the harbour, and the smell is enough to put you off fish for life!

The town and harbour were nearly lost in 1973 when a volcano erupted. By immense good luck, the fishing fleet were in harbour when the eruption started and evacuated the population with no loss of life although a lot of the houses were lost. When the lava continued to flow and threatened to block the mouth to the harbour, the Icelanders pumped sea water over the boiling lava to make it set faster and not flow so far, and hence saved their industry.

We sailed around the island in a rusty old tub to get a close view of the volcanoes, old and new, and the millions of sea birds - terns, skuas, kittywakes, fulmars and puffins! The photo is of the captain of our tub, who looked as if he had stepped out of an Icelandic saga. His party piece was to play his saxophone in a huge cave that the sea has eroded in the tufa, which has terrific acoustics!