20 years of whale watching on Knörrinn!
Knörrinn, the boat that started it all for North Sailing, is celebrating its 20th season as a whale watching boat.
In 1994, brothers Árni and Hörður Sigurbjarnarson decided to buy an old oak boat to save it from being scrapped. (or worse-old wooden boats sometimes ended up on the New Year’s Eve bonfire!) They decided to give the boat a new purpose, and also give Húsavík a new tourism opportunity. 
And so, the boat that they bought, Knörrinn, was refurbished over the winter and made into a passenger boat for whale watching tours. The first tour was in 1995, with a lot of anticipation and excitement for the future and a commitment to doing things well. 1,700 people took part in tours that first summer.
Before Knörrinn came to North Sailing, it already had an exciting history. On its maiden voyage in 1963, it survived a storm now know as the infamous “April weather”, a storm which saw several boats sunk and 16 lives lost. In 1968, Knörrinn hit an iceberg at full speed, but survived that adventure as well. Such a lucky boat deserved much better than being scrapped.
20 years and more than 2,000 tours on from that first whale watching cruise, Knörrinn is still going strong.
