Fri
22 Jul
2016

We made it up to Sjuøya­ne, the Seven Islands, the nor­t­hern­most part of Spits­ber­gen! That is just around the cor­ner from the north pole. We could almost see it from a litt­le hill on Phippsøya, it was just hid­den behind a cloud. But we could see that bar­ren, very cha­rac­te­ristic high arc­tic land­scape all around us.

Gal­lery Sjuøya­ne – 22nd July 2016

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

Some­thing else that we could see was the ter­ri­ble pla­s­tic was­te, which is drif­ting into the remo­test cor­ners of the pla­net with sea curr­ents. At least, the­re are now two cubic-met­re bags less of it on Phippsøya.

Fri
22 Jul
2016

We did get wind, today in Wahl­enberg­fjord. This did not keep us from making a nice litt­le landing in a hid­den cor­ner some­whe­re in Pal­an­der­buk­ta.

In the after­noon, things got inte­res­t­ing. Nice sai­ling wind to move under sails into Wahl­enberg­fjord, until the incre­asing den­si­ty of ice­bergs and ber­gy bits from Bod­ley­breen forced us to maneou­vre more and more. We did nevert­hel­ess mana­ge to get into the inner­most bay, just to find a beau­tiful spe­ci­men of a strong polar bear wal­king around in a morai­ne the­re.

Not just one, a fema­le with a first-year cub ran up on the gla­cier and away from the strong one, most likely a male. Three polar bears are three good reasons for not going ashore, much to the reg­ret of the hiking group who were rea­dy to go ashore and start the hike across Nord­aus­t­land to Rijpfjord. It was not meant to hap­pen today.

The wind deli­ver­ed an impres­si­ve dis­play of force. To begin with, it cal­med com­ple­te­ly down, giving way to beau­tiful reflec­tions of the migh­ty gla­cier Bod­ley­breen and the ice­bergs on the water. But this was lite­ral­ly just the eye of the storm. Soon, the wind retur­ned with increased force from the oppo­si­te direc­tion. The ancho­red drag­ged hope­l­ess­ly and had to be lifted soo­nest.

Gal­lery Wahl­enberg­fjord – 22nd July 2016

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

Maneou­vring the ship out of the way while the anchor was still in the water gave Cap­tain Joa­chim gre­at fun on the bridge. Altog­e­ther it was a very impres­si­ve dis­play of both the beau­ty and the powers of natu­re in the arc­tic.