Longyearbyen, Isfjord

Mon
4 Aug
2014

Final pre­pa­ra­ti­ons. Pack­ing again, try­ing not to for­get any­thing. From sun­creme (always being opti­mi­stic!) to the ever-gro­wing pile of tech­ni­cal gear to a good sel­ec­tion of warm and wea­ther­pro­of clot­hing. Some last shop­ping, emai­ling and so on.

Arc­ti­ca II, a 60 feet yacht, is rea­dy to sail. A lot of space insi­de for a yacht, ever­y­thing will fall into place somehow. Even if not ever­y­bo­dy belie­ves it, initi­al­ly at least.

„Advan­ced Spits­ber­gen“ is start­ing. Here we go ☺ !

We take our time to stow ever­y­thing away, and Hein­rich, skip­per and boat owner, is taking care of some remai­ning small things. We get an updated ice chart and piz­za for tonight. The ice is still den­se around the north coast of Nord­aus­t­land. Unu­su­al, com­pared to the last few years, but won­derful. „Inac­ces­si­ble“ sounds good, but it means that you can actual­ly not alway get ever­y­whe­re. That’s what it means. Some­ti­mes peo­p­le love to go to inac­ces­si­ble places and then they are sur­pri­sed that it is not always pos­si­ble. Sur­pri­se, sur­pri­se.

May­be the ice will loo­sen up a litt­le bit over the days to come. To give it some time to do so, we deci­de to start sou­thwards, get­ting to the far north a litt­le bit later. After din­ner, we are start­ing, sai­ling to Trygg­ham­na to anchor the­re for the night, may­be a litt­le hike tomor­row, befo­re we set cour­se for Bell­sund.

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

On the icy road again ☺

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