January is the middle of the Icelandic season. Depressions cross the North Atlantic without a break, and because the Reykjanes peninsula faces south, west and north-west, one of its breaks is almost always picking something up. Finding which one is the morning's work.
What makes January hard is the size of the window. The sun comes up around eleven and sets around four, and inside those five hours the wind, the tide and the state of the roads all have to agree. The sea is at 6°C, so a 5/4 or 6/5 with a hood, gloves and boots. The tide moves more than four and a half metres between low and high, which means the sandbank you looked at before lunch is not the one you paddle out to after it.
