Iha! The summer holiday has finally begun!!

Thought you might want to read my log of this summer's last cruise. We write a log for every day and then give a copy to the passengers at the farewell party the last evening on board. This time it was my turn to write the log. I enjoyed it, needless to say:

Saturday 17th of August 2002

Our first day in the Arctic started with breakfast at 8 o’clock. We were sailing along the westernmost island in the Svalbard archipelago, Prins Karls Forland, which is a national park. During the morning we had a presentation of all the guides and our guest lecturer, Ian Gjertz. The captain also came and told us about safety issues on the ship. The sea was a bit rough so not everyone could make it to the meeting and not everyone was able to show up at the lifeboat drill either.

Just before lunch we rounded the northernmost point on Prins Karls Forland and sailing unusually close to the shore we could admire its huge birdcliffs. Sailing into Kongsfjorden (King’s Bay) we saw huge glaciers deboucing into the sea and the small settlement of Ny-Ålesund, where we docked after lunch and had a guided trip around the village. Ny-Ålesund is an old coal mining village but today mining has been replaced by scientific activity; the village is inhabited by scientists and their assistants only who do research on the fragile arctic environment. This is a multi-national town and probably all the nations represented on the ship also are represented in Ny-Ålesund. But it is not only scientists who make their home there, some Barnacle geese were seen close to town and a lot of arctic terns (the most dangerous animal on Svalbard!!) breed between the houses. The arctic fox is never far away from breeding birds and we were lucky enough to catch sight of three of them on our stroll through town. It is also slowly becoming evident that autumn is approaching here in the high Arctic; strong winds from the east were blowing while we were in town and made the guiding a bit of a chilly experience. Some of us even found out that on the next landings we’ll wear a whole lot more of warm clothes!

As the ship was sailing out of Kongsfjorden Ian Gjertz gave us a lecture on the birds of Svalbard, showing slides of the various sea- and land birds. This gave us all a good head start in bird-watching. Now we can tell a fulmar from a guillemot and an arctic tern from a kittiwake and we also know which rare birds to look out for. Maybe some of us will only been seen on deck from now on, bundled up in the warmest clothing with the binoculars in front of our eyes and the new thermos-cup full of warm coffee in the hand, spying out for the ivory gull and other winged rarities.

Happy hour in Eddy’s bar came and dinner went by and suddenly we were in Magdalenefjorden. This is one of the most visited places on Svalbard, renowned for the beauty of the landscape and the wealth of history to be experienced here. Håkan gave us a lecture about the fjord on the front deck. We then spent some time in front of the Waggonway glacier, it was in a very good mood and calved several times for us, while the kittiwakes flew around the ship and rocks came thundering down the steep mountain sides, loosened by the drizzling rain we had. On our way out the fjord we saw two polar bears on the coast, but they were too far away for most of us...

As night set in we headed for the north and the east, hoping to wake up tomorrow morning close to the northern entrance to Hinlopen Strait.


Sunday 18th of August 2002

We probably were all sound asleep when we crossed the 80°N at 4:40 AM and by breakfast time we were already crossing the Hinlopen Strait. Our first landing was scheduled in Kinnvika on Nordaustlandet, one of the most inaccessible islands in the world. After a short briefing about zodiacs we were ready to go ashore, looking forward to make a landing north of 80°N and to take a look at the many huts built by a Swedish-Swiss geophysical expedition during the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58. But, what happens??!! The first zodiac observes a polar bear on land and our landing is cancelled. However, we made a zodiac cruise where we all drove close to the shore and saw the polar bear where it was sleeping outside one of the cabins. Hauke Trinks, a German scientist who is overwintering in Kinnvika together with his “best friend” Marie, is obviously becoming a friend of the bear since he was walking outside of the cabins just a few meters from it (with a rifle on his back, so maybe not best friends...). The bear even woke up for us but wasn’t the show-off type and so went and hid behind the toilet shack.

After this unexpected bear-encounter we had lunch, during which we steamed south through the Hinlopen Strait. The wind was blowing quite a bit when we arrived at Alkefjellet, an enormous colony of Brünnich’s guillemots, but that didn’t stop us from going out on deck to take a look at the birds and the impressive dark dolerite rocks they are nesting on. Håkan, our on-deck guiding expert, told us a nice story about the life of his friend Charlie, a guillemot who lives in this bird cliff, and he was very happy to catch a sight of Charlie himself among all the thousands of guillemots flying around!

On we went towards the south and the east. Our guest lecturer Ian Gjertz was getting ready for a lecture about walruses when we encuntered drift-ice, much sooner than expected. Almost immediately after entering the ice a polar bear was spotted so obviously the lecture was postponed. This ice has come drifting with the strong easterly winds that have been blowing for the past few days. We all stood out on deck looking out for animals in the nice weather; the wind had ceased a little bit and the sun was shining between the clouds! Another polar bear was spotted and we tried to get closer, than the ship stopped and we hoped the bear would be curious and come to take a look at us. Maybe it was an old and tired bear who didn’t feel like walking too far, anyway it decided to do something else with his early evening than to come for a visit to us.

In the evening the nice weather had turned into fog. Ian Gjertz gave us a lecture with a slides show about polar bears and as midnight approaches we are still sailing through open pack ice. A constant cloud of kittiwakes, both young and adults, with the occasional fulmar, follows the ship to scoop up the fish we make available to them by breaking the ice. Tomorrow morning we plan to have left the fog behind and visit Edgeøya, the third biggest island in the Svalbard archipelago.


Monday 19th of August 2002

Today started somewhat early, or at 3 o’clock, when a polar bear was seen in the driftice just in front of the ship. This was a young polar bear and maybe a very sleepy one since it didn’t seem to notice the ship in the fog until we were about 50 m from it! Most young bears are quite curious and so was this one, staying close to the ship for quite a while before strolling off and disappearing into the fog. That of course gave us a perfect excuse for going to sleep again... zzzzz....

When the real morning came all driftice had disappeared and we were cruising to the east of Barentsøya, headed for Edgeøya. Stefano Poli gave a lecture about the rescue operation of the Nobile expedition in 1928 and showed us a video about a zodiac trip he made last summer with a friend, in the footsteps of the rescue mission.

Fog made our afternoon landing at Kapp Lee a very special one, lending an air of mystery to the place. At Kapp Lee one can find historical remains from many different periods, dating from the days of the Russian Pomori hunters in the 18th century up to the era of (Dutch) oil explorers in the 1960’s. We also saw some reindeer grazing in the hills and the skeletons of various animals. The fog slowly lifted so we could enjoy the view to the mountains, made of Triassic sediments and basalt sills. Autumn has come here like most other places on Svalbard and the tiny leaves of the polar willow, the smallest tree on Earth and one of only two tree species found on Svalbard, are in beautiful yellow and orange, giving color to the ground after the flowers have all withered.

On we sailed along the west coast of Edgeøya and after dinner made today’s second landing in Discobukta. This was definitely an exiting one!! The sea was a bit rough and the water off our landingsite is very shallow; this combined to make the waves quite big. Lucky us that Trine told us all to wear rubber boots for this landing, we really needed them as we ran from the zodiacs up to dry land trying to outrun the waves! In Discobukta there is an old trapper’s hut and a narrow canyon with tall cliff walls where thousands of kittiwakes nest. We walked to the canyon and into it, where the noise from the birds echoes between the cliff walls. Soon we spotted two foxes running around beneath the cliffs looking for food and we also noticed how much vegetation there is in the canyon: the guano from the birds is a great fertilizer. When we returned to the ship the zodiac part was at least as exciting as when we came ashore!

During the landing some of us started looking for the sun in the sky, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Wondering what had happened with it we started thinking: in Longyearbyen the last day with midnight sun is tomorrow. Here by Edgeøya we are actually further south, and thus the midnight sun probably has already shone for the last time here. From now on daylight will last about 20 minutes shorter every day... until there will be none left in late November, when the two month long polar night begins.

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You'll get the last three days later, don't want to choke you up with too much to read!

Talking about reading, I've stocked up for the winter on Arctic literature. Was at Longyearbyen museum today, it has a great selection of books about the Arctic and Svalbard. Bought four books, about the history of Svalbard and the lives of people here. One is called 'Isbjørnkongen' or 'The Polar Bear King', about this Norwegian trapper called Henri Rudi, who killed 713 polar bears during his many years in the Arctic!! It could be fun to spend a winter here as a trapper, to get close to the elements and be out in the wilderness a whole winter. Anyone interested in joining me??

Sometimes tourists are not very clever. And, for some odd reason, everyone gets very interested in shit when they are tourists. Reindeer shit, ptarmigan shit, fox shit, polar bear pooh. On Edgeøya, this middle-aged man pointed at a pile of dry shit: What animal is that? Oh, that's from a reindeer, I replied. And what about this, the same man asked, pointing to a nearby pile of slightly different looking shit. Well, that's also from a reindeer. But they look different, he said, not happy with my analysis. Well, does your's always look the same? I couldn't help asking back. It's very fortunate when such tourists have a slight sense of humor, as this one happened to have.
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