Advanced Spitzbergen 2018 with SY Arctica II

We had spent a lot of time in remo­te are­as fur­ther east and north, so the final leg of our jour­ney at the west coast of Spits­ber­gen was rather con­den­sed. But qua­li­ty is some­thing dif­fe­rent than quan­ti­ty. We may not have made a gre­at num­ber of landings any­mo­re, but the­re were some real gems among­st tho­se that we did! Often it is a mat­ter of being in the right place at the right time. This was the case here in Isfjell­buk­ta wit­hout any doubt. The wea­ther pro­vi­ded exact­ly what we nee­ded – com­ple­te­ly calm waters – and the timing was per­fect, as the bird sanc­tua­ries are legal­ly open again to be visi­ted from 16 August. So we went to explo­re Isøya­ne, name­ly Nord­re Isøya, a small but stun­nin­gly beau­tiful island clo­se to the lar­ge gla­ciers Tor­ellbrea­ne. Again, we could enjoy explo­ring some gre­at sce­n­ery that has hard­ly been seen by many tou­rists befo­re – we have done well with such places on this trip!

At Kapp Bor­then, we had a look at the wreck of a Ger­man figh­ter pla­ne from the Second World War, and then it was real­ly time to move on and get back into Isfjord, were we roun­ded the voya­ge off with a landing at the Rus­si­an ghost sett­le­ment of Coles­buk­ta and with some hiking near Lon­gye­ar­by­en. It was time to get into the har­bour befo­re the wea­ther would turn nasty, which it was about to do …

Map 5 – The west coast

Gal­lery 5: The west coast

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

To Gal­lery:  → Isfjord to Fair Haven  → Lief­defjord & Wood­fjord  → Nord­aus­t­land & Hin­lo­pen  → Storfjor­den  → the west coast

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