Lofoten - Bear Island - Spitsbergen

The tri­plog (Ger­man-Dut­ch/F­le­mish) is now available in 2 ver­si­ons. The con­tents are the same, but the file size is dif­fe­rent due to dif­fe­rent com­pres­si­on rates. On June 12 (after­noon), I have repla­ced both files with updated ver­si­ons. The old ones still had an old map of the rou­te in Nor­way.

Tri­plog: lar­ge file (21.3 MB, for high qua­li­ty prin­ting)
Tri­plog: smal­ler file (9.7 MB, still good qua­li­ty, but more com­pres­si­on, smal­ler file)

The sea­son start for SV Anti­gua in the Arc­tic went very well: start­ing with nice days in Lofo­ten, the scenic litt­le vil­la­ges Rei­ne and Nusfjord in the south to the beau­tiful island Skro­va and the well-known, impres­si­ve Troll­fjord fur­ther north. We left the wha­les near Ande­nes alo­ne due to the wea­ther, and a pre-sea­son Sun­day mor­ning wasn’t real­ly the right time for the muse­ums the­re eit­her … ins­tead, we had a love­ly, sun­ny day in Trom­sø to say good­bye to real civi­liza­ti­on and green land­scapes in north Nor­way. The last impres­si­on of Nor­way was the bird island of Fugløya, befo­re we sai­led out into the Barents Sea.

Here are the two group pho­tos (both are very simi­lar):
Foto 1 (click here)
Foto 2 (click here)

And a pho­to of the Sea eagle on Skro­va, whe­re I was lucky to be on the right place at the right time.

Gal­lery 01: Lofo­ten-Trom­sø-Fugløya

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

Bet­ween Nor­way and Bear Island (Bjørnøya), we mana­ged one of the lon­gest sai­ling distances Anti­gua has done in tho­se lati­tu­des so far. 7 knots wit­hout the engi­ne, but with sun and the occa­sio­nal dol­phin visit, that’s how we like it 🙂

Bear Island was defi­ni­te­ly a high­light also for tho­se who had been the­re befo­re, even more than once. The wild cliffs of the sou­the­as­tern coast, bet­ween Sør­ham­na and Stap­pen, seen from the Zodiac, that is real­ly impres­si­ve! Not to men­ti­on the coas­tal cave of Per­le­por­ten – it was calm enough for the pas­sa­ge, how often do you get that? (I have to post a video of this, but still need to put it tog­e­ther.) A walk up from Kval­ross­buk­ta to the cliffs abo­ve Sør­ham­na, whe­re “tåke­f­yrs­ten” (fog prin­ce) Theo­dor Ler­ner once had his king­dom and palace, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to walk from the­re to Rus­se­ham­na for tho­se who wan­ted. Still a lot of snow in the ter­rain, still quite wet.

While pas­sing nor­the­as­tern Bear Island, we got a Zodiac load of pla­s­tic trash off the island, the­re would cer­tain­ly be poten­ti­al for some real “Clean up Sval­bard” the­re – and a lot more, the­se trips are always too short.

Gal­lery 02: Bear Islandd

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

Spits­ber­gen hard­ly ever fails to make a deep impres­si­on on visi­tors, with its beau­ty and varia­ti­on in all aspects of arc­tic natu­re. Still a lot of snow now, during the rapid tran­si­ti­on from win­ter to sum­mer, many birds start bree­ding as soon as ele­va­ted parts are get­ting snow-free. Fine polar bear obser­va­tions and a visit to the wal­rus swim­ming club made a handful days in Spits­ber­gen an impres­si­ve­ly com­ple­te expe­ri­ence. So did a visit to Barents­burg, that is visual­ly rui­ning its­elf while try­ing to beco­me nicer … for some final arc­tic impres­si­ons from natu­re and not a Rus­si­an mining sett­le­ment, we went to Bore­buk­ta to round it off.

Gal­lery 03: Spits­ber­gen

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

← Back