Tue
17 Jul
2018

The wea­ther is real­ly on our side! The first thing is a pret­ty rare landing on Wal­denøya, a small and remo­te island, in a mir­ror-like sea today. Defi­ni­te­ly a place that does not see a lot of visi­tors! Wal­ter Well­man was stran­ded here for a cou­ple of weeks with his expe­di­ti­on in 1894. We sit on the rocks and enjoy the sun and the undis­tur­bed view to the north pole.

Wal­denøya

It is sun­ny and calm all the way up to Ros­søya, so we enjoy a Zodiac crui­se around this islet, Svalbard’s very nor­t­hern­most one. Fur­ther north, the­re is just water, liquid and solid, and the north pole. A rare sun­ny day in the­se lati­tu­des!

Ros­søya

An evening excur­si­on to Phippsøya does not yield wal­rus­ses, as we had been hoping for, but a polar bear. Which show­ed up on a pret­ty short noti­ce as we had just gone ashore. Alex, who was scou­ting the ter­rain, had the plea­su­re to dis­co­ver the bear, which had been slee­ping in a ter­rain depres­si­on, at a rather uncom­for­ta­ble distance, but it was not at all inte­res­ted in us and tur­ned its atten­ti­on to a rather rot­ten car­cass of a wal­rus. We went back into the boats and enjoy­ed the views in safe­ty for man and beast. A gre­at day on 80 degrees north!

Phippsøya

Tue
17 Jul
2018

A calm night at anchor, gre­at! Hiking over Blom­strand­hal­vøya is at least as gre­at. The coas­tal sce­n­ery is real­ly varied and inte­res­t­ing, espe­ci­al­ly if you know some of the hid­den places bey­ond Ny Lon­don.

Blom­strand

Then we set cour­se to the north. The wind is a bit less than expec­ted, but enough to fill the can­vas, so we enjoy a silent crossing under sail and a sky the colours of which are chan­ging back and forth bet­ween grey, sil­ver and even blue in places.

Anti­gua