Summer seas between Copenhagen and west coast of Norway: rough?
Replies: 3 - Last Post: Nov 24, 2012 3:36 AM Last Post By: BubbaK
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Summer seas between Copenhagen and west coast of Norway: rough?
Considering a cruise on a Silversea ship from Copenhagen to Flam, Bergen and a few other places, then back to Copenhagen. Ship, at 28k tons, is bigger than a ferry I believe, but considerably smaller than the last cruise we were on (over 100ktons). I imagine travel in the fjords would be tranquil, but since I am somewhat senstiive to rough seas, I wonder about a ship of this smaller size on the portion on the open sea north of Denmark. Any experiences? I've heard some bad reports of the ferries on this general route, but nothing about smaller cruise ships.1
Normally the Copenhagen - south of Norway will be calm in summer (June-August) - and along the Norwegian west coast too, although you ARE in the North Atlantic there.This said you are in a region of the world where the weather in unpredictable for more than a week and where the weather systems comes in 24-48 hours apart. But the big storms are normally in September-January
The ship you will be on may be smaller than the worst monster cruise ships in the Carribian but is pretty big IMHO. Here is a link the one of the 2 cruise-ferries sailing Oslo-Copenhagen every night http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Crown_of_Scandinavia (which only is unpleasant in real storms, unless you are not really able to travel by sea at all), and here http://www.hurtigruten.co.uk/Travel-planner/Ships/Hurtigrutens-Ships/ you can see the cruise-ferries that runs Bergen to ultimate north of Norway 365 days a year (one ship starting every day - "never" cancelled). Most are only half size of yours.
Another thing is that size is not as important than the various types of equipment that hold the ship stable in rough seas.
But all together I would guess you would have less that 5% risk of meeting anything that is like a real rough sea in June-mid August - even a good chance thet the sea will actually be like a mirror or tiny 1-2 meter waves.
2
To get things in perspective here, the route the ferry will take is in the North Sea, and so you do not get the sometimes huge swells that you get further west in the North Atlantic.The fishing fleet from Peterhead in the North Scotland, head for the North Sea and coast of Norway, and do see going further westward into the North Atlantic as very much a gamble in going there because of the size of the waves and the swell and the ships can suffer structural damage because of the pounding they take in fishing for extended periods.
While there can be no way that anybody can say what kind of weather you may encounter, the time of year and the route you take are you certainly more likely to run into storms in the winter in other places.
