Fri
10 Jul
2015

Admit­ted­ly, it wasn’t real­ly high per­for­mance sai­ling yes­ter­day evening. But at least, we were moving under sail, even into the right direc­tion, rough­ly. That chan­ged today in the ear­ly mor­ning. We were still slow, but then going towards north Green­land. Also an inte­res­t­ing place, but not in our plan for the time being. But then the wind came, and we were hea­ding with up to 10 knots into Smee­ren­burg­fjord.

Pho­to Ver­le­gen­hu­ken – 09th Juli 2015

Ama­zin­gly, the wind died down at the right time, as we wan­ted to make a landing in the after­noon. Vir­go­ham­na, the arc­tic ver­si­on of Cape Cana­ve­ral, open air muse­um of aero­nau­ti­cal north pole expe­di­ti­ons.

Pho­to Vir­go­ham­na – 10th Juli 2015

Har­bour seals are not exact­ly ani­mals one would asso­cia­te with the high arc­tic. The ones here kind of got stuck here. Lef­to­vers from a time, seve­ral thousand years ago, when the cli­ma­te was a bit war­mer. They thri­ved and got well estab­lished. Then it coo­led down again, but they stay­ed. Pro­ba­b­ly not living the grea­test har­bour seal life any­mo­re, but they at least. An unu­su­al sight in Spits­ber­gen. Often, they don’t like peo­p­le get­ting near them on shore, but they don’t mind small boats too much, and so we could make a nice visit. Fun­ny how they are res­t­ing on stones. Doesn’t look too com­for­ta­ble …