Private yacht day trip!
If you want to treat your friends and family you can book a private yacht trip with us! Make the day your own, with your personal captain, guide, and crew. Today we went out on Axel Rose but we can also take our larger yacht, Amelia Rose.
by Lucky Byfleet
We frequently rent out our yachts, Axel Rose for smaller groups and Amelia Rose for larger parties, they come with a Captain and a deckhand, and professional tour guides, bar staff, and stewards as required or requested.
All of our tours are available privately, the most popular being the Island explorer cruise and romantic nighttime tours. The nighttime tours allow us to see the awesome natural phenomenon of the aurora borealis, also called the Northern Lights. For information about our public nighttime cruises please click here; Northern Lights cruises.
This is an example of how a private yacht rental around the islands off the coast of Reykjavik runs, but please ask us for more information here.
The great mountain of Esja ahead of us was covered with snow, providing a beautiful backdrop to our photos, and the cityscape of Reykjavik looked stunning back towards land. Drinks and light bites are available from our professional crew.
At first, we passed the island of Akurey, sometimes unappreciated as it is so small compared to Engey and Videy, however we love it, and often visit it in the summer to look for the seabirds who nest there, safe on its craggy shoreline, most especially the beloved puffins. Due to the steep drop off of the islands, even our big private yacht Amelia rose can get up nice and close, and Axel rose even closer!
As well as the birds on the islands and in the sky, the water around the islands teems with life. We often see beautiful animals like harbour porpoises, one of the most common place we see them is just inside this island of Akurey! They enjoy fishing ground there and we often see these delightful creatures hunting and playing there.
We also always look for larger cetaceans, like the white-beaked dolphins, or even whales. Minke whales love to come in amongst the islands regularly and even the great humpbacks will come all the way into the bay, right up to where we keep our boats! However, if you really want to see whales then why not have a look at our specific whale watching tours, we head out to sea, to a feeding ground that we know they often frequent! We always have a very high success rate thanks to the skill of our crew combined with the natural richness and underwater landscape of the waters here in Iceland.
We carried on on our island explorer tour, to the next island, called Engey, the second largest island in the bay. Despite being relatively large it isn’t inhabited, but as far back as the early 13th century there was a farming and fishing community living on it. Now the only building on it is a lighthouse, which is beautiful in its own right and makes for a beautiful focal point for any photos taken by our customers.
The next island we passed was Lundey, its name translates as Puffin Island. Like the name suggests it’s home in the summer months to a bustling colony of Atlantic Puffins, one of several in the bay.
In Iceland we have 60% of the world’s population nesting, and, despite not being our national bird which is the gyrfalcon, it is beloved by Icelanders and tourists alike for its bright, bold colours and clumsy antics! Despite the island being known for the puffins it is a haven for all sorts of sea birds.
The final island we pass close to on our Island Explorer Cruise is Videy. During the night, for set dates that can be found here on this website – Imagine Peace Tower – A great beacon is lit from this island, shining up into the sky above us. During the day however, from the boat, pieces of art, designed by Richard Serra, can be seen around the island.
Then the captain took us home, close along the coastline of our capital city, Reykjavik itself. We saw the famous Hofdi House where the meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbatsjov happened, effectively bringing an end to the Cold War, the Sun Voyager sculpture, and the dynamic cultural centre Harpa.
Once again we made it back safely after a lovely day out exploring the islands, this tour is great on a private yacht, a tour just for your family and friends, but it can also be taken normally. We keep the numbers of passengers low comparative to the boat size, so even if you don’t rent the yacht privately you get the luxury experience!
