Tue
29 Sep
2015

Final­ly with Zodiacs into inner Hamil­ton­buk­ta, haven’t been the­re for a while! And things the­re have chan­ged, mea­ning the gla­ciers have retrea­ted con­sider­a­b­ly. I have to find some old pho­tos to compa­re. A lot of rocks now whe­re the­re used to be gla­ciers 10 years ago.

Hamil­ton­buk­ta 29th Sep­tem­ber 2015 – 1/2

This doesn’t mean that it is not nice any­mo­re. Quite the oppo­si­te, the gla­ciers are still stun­nin­gly beau­tiful. A lot of ice drif­ting in the bay. And on the­se small islands, you can still enjoy life in gene­ral and the beau­ty of the sce­n­ery. Very nice.

The next low pres­su­re was alre­a­dy on the way. We had deci­ded to make a quick jump down to Kongsfjord, esca­ping befo­re desas­ter would strike. A swift crui­se through Nord­ves­tøya­ne and Smee­ren­burg­fjord. Wat­ching the baro­me­ter was inte­res­t­ing. In 3 days, it had drop­ped by 54 hPa. A simi­lar drop on the finan­cial mar­kets would send shock­wa­ves around the glo­bes. But this was only the baro­me­ter.

Hamil­ton­buk­ta 29th Sep­tem­ber 2015 – 2/2

The­re was quite a bit of swell off the coast, swell from hell, that was not so gre­at, and some were not seen for a cou­ple of hours. But at least, final­ly the nor­t­hern wind came and up went the sails, making the move­ment more sta­ble and com­for­ta­ble. In the late evening, we rea­ched Kross­fjord and a reason­ab­ly well shel­te­red ancho­ra­ge.