Barents Sea & Bear Island – 26th and 27th May 2016

Thu
26 May
2016

26th and 27th May 2016 − We left Nor­way too soon behind as always. A day in Trom­sø, full of impres­si­ons, peo­p­le and a bit of a to-do-list, makes a day go by very quick­ly. Fugløya was, in the late evening of the same day, rather devo­id of birds, it did not do jus­ti­ce to its name at all. Who knows whe­re they were that night.

The Barents Sea: not real­ly calm and not real­ly wild. A bree­ze, good sai­ling wind, the engi­ne can have a day off. Lec­tures replace the wha­les, which are any­whe­re today but not whe­re we are.

Bear Island: not real­ly in good mood but not real­ly bad eit­her. Win­dy, grey, wet. But we did mana­ge to make a landing, in a small, hid­den bay on the sou­the­ast coast. This is as much as you can rea­li­sti­cal­ly expect on a nor­mal day up here. A stiff bree­ze, lively swell, low clouds, rain show­ers. This is not unhe­ard of at Bear Island. The only thing to do is to find a coast with as much shel­ter as pos­si­ble and to make the best of it. This is exact­ly what we did, and it was good.

But it wasn’t good enough to visit the sta­ti­on, unfort­u­na­te­ly. Just too much wind, waves and swell coming around the coast. A shame, we had been loo­king for­ward to the sta­ti­on, and the peo­p­le the­re were very fri­end­ly on the radio, alre­a­dy loo­king for­ward to the fresh news­pa­pers Bir­git had bought for them in Nor­way.

Gal­lery – Barents Sea & Bear Island – 26th and 27th May 2016

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

Fresh wind is again fil­ling the sails now as we are making our way north now, towards Horn­sund. Up and down the waves. Acti­vat­ing the brain to recy­cle the memo­re and the sto­mach to do prin­ci­pal­ly the same with recent meals, in some cases. So we are all loo­king for­ward to Spitsbergen’s shel­te­red bays now.

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