For­lands­und – 15th July 2016

Fri
15 Jul
2016

Some­ti­mes being a bit late is good thing. It is easy to keep the rou­ti­ne, fal­ling asleep in Isfjord and waking up in Kongsfjord. This time, we had a cou­ple of important things to do befo­re we could take off from Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

As men­tio­ned, the­re were some advan­ta­ges in that. Nor­mal­ly, ever­y­bo­dy is just pas­sing by Daud­manns­od­den, but it is such a beau­tiful place. This time, we just drop­ped anchor the­re. The sea flat­calm around this expo­sed shore, whe­re it can get pret­ty wild in wes­ter­ly or sou­t­her­ly winds. They say this does hap­pen here some­ti­mes.

Love­ly coas­tal land­scape and wide tun­dra. Huge bea­ches, lots of drift­wood, wide series of old beach rid­ges, litt­le bays hid­den behind coas­tal rocks.

It went on like that. Ins­tead of hea­ding straight north, we went loo­king for wha­les in sou­thern For­lands­und. And – we were lucky. A Blue wha­le was slow­ly swim­ming around, fee­ding. Fol­lo­wing him careful­ly for a while, we hap­pen­ed to get clo­ser to the sou­thern tip of Prins Karls For­land, we we just took the oppor­tu­ni­ty and went ashore. We had sai­led past it 1000 times, and admi­red the stron­gly struc­tu­re coast­li­ne just as many times on the map. Now it was time to see it in rea­li­ty, which tur­ned out to be even nicer than on the map, which was no sur­pri­se.

Gal­lery For­lands­und – 15th July 2016

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

After lea­ving Prins Karls For­land, we saw even more wha­les, ano­ther Blue and one or two Hump­back wha­les. Yet ano­ther Blue wha­le was seen quite clo­se to the ship around mid­night, but the long day had alre­a­dy taken its toll and most peo­p­le did not see it any­mo­re.

Do you agree that spitsbergen-svalbard.com is a gre­at re­source for any arc­tic enthu­si­ast?

Ever­y­thing is available for free, no pay­wall, no regis­tra­ti­on, no paid adver­ti­sing, and all this in spi­te of con­stant cos­ts and effort. Plea­se help us to keep it that way, wit­hout pay­wall and paid ads, and sup­port us through Ste­ady!