I was on the water by seven.  I spent the first half of the day struggling with winds out of the left rear quarter which was only a problem until I managed to properly balance the boat.  With food and water supplies constantly changing, I have to move the water bladder around now and then or the boat drifts in side and cross-winds.  At any rate, the small rollers were packing a pretty good punch and wearing me out.  I stopped for a break at a light house on a beautiful headland.  I was hoping to stop and charge my phone, but a group of campers informed me there was no power at the site.  One problem I´ve been facing that I wasn´t prepared for is that my solar panel won´t charge an i-phone unless there is full and unobstructed sunlight.  All of my other devices charge fine on cloudy days.  Luckily, the sun suddenly came out and the wind stopped, so I decided to stop and have lunch and charge the phone.  After I got set up, a very nice Icelandic man stopped and struck up a conversation.  I was intrigued to find out he had spent all of his boyhood summers at a cottage in the area and that his grandfather was in fact the lighthouse keeper in those days.  He took me on a walking tour of the area, pointing out the dozens of ruins from a fishing village in the 30s and 40s.  It was quite pleasant to join in his boyhood memories.  He had not been back to this place since he was sixteen.  It made for a very nice diversion to the weather.

After my delightful lunch with the sun on my back, the winds suddenly picked up from the opposite direction.  This gave me a stiff headwind to paddle into, which, frankly, was much better than the rear quarter wind of the morning.  The wind was around six knots which is quite tolerable.  I pushed on for the rest of the day before settling into a campsite near a remote boat house on a headland inhabitated only by sheep and horses.  Just as I finished, a bank of fog rolled in, even as the sun continued to shine.  I couldn´t see more than a few hundred feet, but the sun was still shining.  21 miles today.

If you´re following my progress on the SPOT John link, you´ve probably noticed that I´m either a really really fast paddler or I have skipped some sections, like, for instance, the entire northwestern fjords (that giant piece that sticks out into the ocean on the left-hand side of the island).  The reason for these jumps are two-fold.  First, in both sections that I have skipped, the weather forecast was bleak to the point where everyone agreed the paddling was too dangerous to possibly be worth it.  I could have waited, but I´m more interested in paddling and exploring than I am in covering every inch of coastline.  It´s all been paddled before, and this is my adventure, I´ll do it whatever way seems the most fun!  The second reason, and the most important one is that I´ve learned a lot about kayaking since I got here.  One thing I learned is that I don´t have the skill level to paddle in everything Iceland has to offer in every type of weather.  I came here to challenge myself, not to get myself killed!  So, being wise enough to know when I can paddle and when I can´t, I skipped the really hard parts, even though I know some of those sections have some of the prettiest coastline in the country.  I don´t feel bad about it. I have an obligation to my wife and daughter to stay alive!  So I´m playing it a little safer than I would have when I was single, but for two very good reasons.

Finally, since I´m not going all the way around, I have re-evaluated how long I really want to be away from my family.  I´ve decided to meet them in New Hampshire for the second half of our summer break, because I really can´t wait to get my nearly two year-old daughter out on her first backpacking trip along the Appalachain trail that runs through our backyard and to take her canoeing on some of New Hampshire´s lakes and water-ways.  I somehow failed to realize how excited I am to start getting her involved in my adventures!  I´ve decided to fly to Boston on the 7th of July, effectively cutting my trip in half.  Does it seem like I´m quitting? Yes and no.  I´m not getting all the way around, which is what I planned, but I´m having a great adventure of my own making, which I think is most important.  I´m not a world-class kayaker.  I´m pretty much just a regular guy who loves to paddle, and somewhere along the way during this particular adventure, I found some new priorities.  Dalal and I are going to make a great paddling team.  As for further adventures, I promise there will be more.  Perhaps not as long, at least not for a while, but I have some ideas, and my wife almost never says no to my hair-brained schemes.  I´ll still be kayaking and canoeing for charity, and I´ll be out here until the 6th.  There is still plenty of adventure to be had!