Key takeaways
- The boat accelerates hard out of the harbour and then the engine drops away at the fjord, and the contrast is most of the experience.
- A full flotation suit goes on before boarding. With it the cold is exhilarating; without it the same trip would be miserable.
- Spray comes over on a chop rather than continuously. Faces and hands get wet; the suit keeps everything under it dry.
- The operator excludes pregnant travellers, back problems, limited mobility and anyone prone to seasickness. Those are firm.
What the first two minutes feel like
The boat leaves the harbour at harbour speed, which is slow and deceptively ordinary, and then the skipper opens the throttle once there is water to do it in. The acceleration is the moment everyone remembers: a rigid inflatable gets up onto its hull and away far more quickly than something that size looks capable of.
After that the noise settles into a constant working roar and the boat stops feeling fast in the way a car feels fast. You are low, the water is going past very close, and the sensation is more like flying low than driving. People who arrive nervous have usually stopped being nervous by the time the harbour is out of sight.
The suit, and why it is the whole trick
Everyone is issued a full flotation suit before boarding, along with a life jacket and safety gear. It is a one-piece garment that seals at the wrists, ankles and neck, and it does two jobs: it keeps you warm and dry, and it floats you if the worst happens.
This is the single thing that makes an open boat in Norway a good idea. Without it, a ninety-minute run at speed in fifteen-degree air with spray coming over would be an endurance exercise. With it, the cold becomes something happening on the outside of a barrier, and the wind stops being a problem and starts being the point.
Wear your own warm layers underneath. The suit is windproof and water-resistant rather than heated, so what you put on first still decides how comfortable you are. A hat that will not blow off and something for your hands are the two things people wish they had brought.
A rigid inflatable at working speed, which is where the wind chill comes from
Wind chill, which is the real temperature
Alesund in August averages a daily high around twenty degrees. That number is close to irrelevant aboard. A boat moving at pace makes its own wind on top of whatever is blowing, and the felt temperature drops sharply once the throttle is open.
In practice a summer trip feels like a cool spring day, and a spring or autumn trip feels genuinely cold on the face and hands. None of it is unpleasant inside the suit. All of it is unpleasant if you turned up in a t-shirt because the forecast said twenty degrees.
The rule of thumb is to dress for the shore temperature minus a good deal, then put the suit over the top. Nobody has ever come off this boat wishing they had worn less, and a spare layer that turns out to be unnecessary takes up nothing but a little space in a bag.
How wet you actually get
Less than people expect, and it depends entirely on the water. On flat water in a sheltered fjord you may finish the trip almost dry. On a chop in the open sounds, spray comes over the bow and across the boat in bursts, and everyone gets a faceful.
The suit takes care of the rest. What gets wet is what is outside it: your face, your hands and your hair. A camera needs its own protection, which is why a strap and something to tuck it into are worth thinking about before you board rather than at forty knots.
1 h 45
One hour forty-five from the quay and back, most of it either at speed or sitting silent under a mountain wall.
Where to sit
Seating on a RIB is straddled or braced rather than lounged in, with a handhold in front of you. The motion is greatest at the bow and least towards the middle and stern, and the difference between the two ends is substantial when the boat is banging over a chop.
If you want the ride, sit forward. If you want the view with less impact, sit further back. If you have any doubt about your back at all, this is the part of the page to take seriously: the front of a fast RIB delivers real, repeated impact, and that is exactly why the operator excludes people with back problems.
The skipper will say where to sit if you ask, and asking is sensible rather than fussy. He is placing eight or ten people around a small boat with the conditions of that particular afternoon in mind, and he would far rather do it at the quay than halfway across a sound.
Can you hear anything
Under way at speed, not much. The commentary happens when the boat is stopped or idling, which is a deliberate rhythm rather than a shortcoming: the skipper runs to somewhere, cuts the engine, and then talks about what you are looking at while the boat sits in the quiet.
That silence is genuinely striking. Ninety seconds after a working engine, in a fjord with mountains on both sides and nothing else on the water, the quality of the quiet is something people mention more often than the speed.
How it compares to a fjord cruise
A large fjord cruiser is comfortable, sheltered, slow and distant. It has a cafe, a seat, a roof and a fixed line through the water. It is a good way to see a fjord and a bad way to feel one.
The RIB is the inverse on every axis. You are outside, in the weather, at water level, at speed, and close enough to rock that the scale of the mountains becomes physical rather than scenic. It is also much shorter, which for many visitors is the deciding factor rather than a drawback.
Neither is better. They are answers to different questions, and the honest way to choose is by which of those two descriptions sounds like your kind of afternoon.
