A Tale of Peril in Geirangerfjord
The massive car ferry passed us in the middle of the fjord. The ship was about two hundred and fifty feet long, maybe sixty feet wide, and left a wave in its wake about three feet high.
I’d managed waves almost this big in Geirangerfjord just the previous day in a kayak. Now Teresa and I were alone in a small, open-topped motorboat, about ten feet long. The fjord is usually so calm, boathouses rent out boats to tourists just on their say-so that they know what they are doing.
I was at the throttle in the rear, while Teresa sat at the bow as we zoomed along the fjord. I was pretty confident we could handle the situation with the looming ferry, even if I had not steered a motorboat in, well, decades.
But I have kayaked for the past 18 years, and I know the only danger for small craft getting swamped is if the waves hit from the side, which can tip you over. In a kayak, you aim straight for the wave and paddle fast. The momentum keeps you upright and moving as you bob up and down. You get a little wet, but don’t tip. No problem. It’s easier in a motorboat, I figured, because the bow is higher above the water, and you go can go faster.
When she saw the ferry, Teresa, urged me to get close to the shore, a note of panic in her voice. But that’s a bad strategy in this fjord. The shore is a sheer rock wall, and the waves would bounce right back at you — sometimes amplified as the incoming and bounce-back waves cross paths.
So, I held course for the ship’s wake and kicked up the throttle. No worries, sweetheart! We had already weathered the wakes of two smaller ships, so I was not scared. But I knew the sheer depth of the fjord kind of freaked out my beloved. The rock walls surrounding us were a kilometer up, and the green water beneath us was hundreds of meters deep. We had talked about how the massive scale of it all made us feel tiny and vulnerable. (In the photo above of Geirangerfjord, the small white speck directly above the bow of the ferry is a boat our size).
We hit the ship’s wake, and the bow of our boat went up….then tipped down fast into the trough behind it. Quick physics question: If a wave rises three feet, how high is the trough? Right! three feet. Quick math question, three plus three equals what? Right again! A six-foot drop! The bow dropped down, slammed into the water hard and popped up again onto the next wave like a rollercoaster. Like a rollercoaster with no safety bar, no seatbelt, nothing to grab on to.
As we crested that second wave, the boat pivoted like a see-saw, exactly like you get at the top of a rollercoaster. From the back of the boat, I saw Teresa, directly ahead of me, seem to slowly lift off her seat and roll backwards. What an optical illusion! In fact, she only appeared to be moving. In reality, she was staying relatively still, obedient to the laws of inertia while the boat was rolling forward over the wave. I was fascinated.
From my perspective, as the bow dropped, Teresa seemed to float in space and spin ever so slowly backwards. As she performed this graceful, space-ballet manouver, she stuck both her legs out directly in front of her in a “V” formation as if riding an upside down invisible horse. The back of the boat rose up to meet her as she completed her dismount, bottoms up, landing surprisingly gently with her neck and shoulders resting on my feet.
Her first words to me after this truly remarkable aerobatic routine were: “I can’t believe you are laughing at me!”
We were through the worst of the waves, and I could barely hold it together I was laughing so hard.
“From now on, I have to wear one of those helmet cameras,” I said, when I could speak again. “So I can capture your moves for posterity.”
“I almost died! I was airborne! I could have gone over! I was flying, and I didn’t know where I was going to come down! I literally blacked out for a few seconds. I had no idea what was happening. I could have gone over! And then you would have had to go in after me, so it would not have been a great day for you either!”
In fairness, I had neglected a key difference between kayaks and motorboats. You are locked in place in a kayak cockpit. You move with the boat. Not so with a our little shell. Teresa did not even have a handle to hold on to. Also, her sitting at the front put extra weight on the bow which caused it to drop harder into the trough. Had I known, I would have asked her to move to the back of the boat with me as we approached the waves — I belatedly found that advice online.
“I could have died,” she grumbled once more, resettling herself on the front seat, smoothing the last of her ruffled feathers.
What is truly remarkable about Teresa is that she does not stay in a bad mood for long. After a few minutes, we were back to enjoying the ride, and the magnificent views of Geirangerfjord, all the way home.
There’s one final, actual tale of peril I’d like to share about enchanting Geiranger: the village, and several others on the shores of the fjord, will inevitably be destroyed by a massive tsunami. A crack is widening on Åknesfjället, one of the mountains on the sides of the fjord. It runs 700 meters long, and in places 30 meters wide. Sooner or later, the whole mountainside will slide into the fjord — 150 million tons of rock. Experts predict a tsunami wave up to 80 meters high will follow.
When will it happen? 30 years from now or 100 — no one knows. Teams of geologists monitor the crack round the clock. They say they will be able to give people a 72 hours warning before the collapse. Because of this, residents say — to the tourists — that they live in the safest fjord in Norway. But still the school runs evacuation drills for the children. Life in the fjords is perilous. And not just when you are out for a ride in all that vastness on a tiny boat.
