Revie­w­ing 2017, May: Bear Island – Per­le­por­ten

In May, we star­ted the arc­tic sum­mer sea­son a.k.a. sai­ling sea­son on good old SV Anti­gua. We took off in Bodø in north Nor­way and spent a cou­ple of love­ly days in Lofo­ten and Ves­terå­len, befo­re we ven­tu­red north across the Barents Sea. I have to admit that I did not expect too much from this year’s visit to Bear Island (Bjørnøya), based on the wea­ther fore­cast that we had when we left Trom­sø. But it was so good that we ended up spen­ding two days rather than just one at Bear Island!

After a first landing, we made a record-brea­king Zodiac crui­se of seve­ral miles around the south tip of the island. Usual­ly a pret­ty rough place, but fri­end­ly today and always spec­ta­cu­lar with its immense num­bers of sea­birds, towe­ring cliffs, rock stacks and coas­tal caves. We mana­ged among­st others to do the stun­ning pas­sa­ge of Per­le­por­ten, a coas­tal cave that is said to be about 170 met­res long – yeah! And on the next day, we even got a sur­pri­se invi­ta­ti­on to visit the wea­ther sta­ti­on 🙂

Coas­tal sce­n­ery on Bear Island: pas­sa­ge of Per­le­por­ten.

Of cour­se we still had some gre­at days fur­ther north in Spits­ber­gen, but Bear Island is real­ly some­thing spe­cial and it did defi­ni­te­ly not dis­ap­point this time.

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