Wood­fjord – 5th July 2015

Sun
5 Jul
2015

The lagoon in Mus­ham­na is a pie­ce of art by natu­re. A beau­tiful­ly cur­ved, nar­row gra­vel bar is sepa­ra­ting the lagoon from the fjord. The ent­rance is 10 met­res deep and hard­ly much wider. Ide­al to spend a shel­te­red night at anchor.

And to land in almost all kinds of wea­ther. Today it is com­ple­te­ly calm, not a pro­blem any­way. Still a lot of snow, but the land is invi­ting to walk around and explo­re.

But the landing came to an end after alre­a­dy a few minu­tes. The place was alre­a­dy occu­p­ied. This polar bear, which appeared out of nowhe­re just a few hundred met­res from us, it cle­ar­ly had the right of way.

What fol­lo­wed was quite incre­di­ble. We spent most of the day on board Anti­gua insi­de the lagoon, moving just a few hundred met­res here and the­re. The polar bear – a lady, equip­ped with a satel­li­te sen­der from the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te – wal­ked around and then laid down on the ice. A second bear came along and went over the ice to the fjord one, sca­ring it to death so it ran away so the water was splas­hing on the rot­ten ice.

Wood­fjord – 5th July 2015 – Pho­to Mus­ham­na

Later, a third bear came around the moun­tain in the south, an impres­si­ve male. He wal­ked past bear num­ber 2 on the ice of the lagoon, but they did not pay much atten­ti­on to each other. Mean­while, bear no 1 had dis­ap­peared to the south. Bears 2 and 3 wal­ked here and the­re over the ice and along the shore, much to our gre­at plea­su­re on board. So the sun­ny hours went quick­ly, one after the other.

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