11/08/2009, S/Y Best Explorer - Svalbard tour 2009
Sunday, 9 August. Short tour today but equally exciting. Liliehöökbreen at the very northern end of Krossfjord has an impressive front. The cloud ceiling just below the top of the mountains of Haakon VII's peninsula on the east added a magical note to the mirror surface of the sea. We stopped at a safe distance from the front, in the middle of the brush ice and admired the scenery, listening to the sounds of this giant. No matter how many glaciers you see it is always worth stopping and concentrate on the magic of the moment when in front of one. The atmosphere was so motionless that we had even time to take a lunch break on the spot. Who can pride themselves of having had such a unique experience? Fjortende-Julibreen further south on the Möllerfjord side was the perfect example of what I mentioned before about glaciers. It was totally different from the other giants, it is small, with a peppery character and a loud voice. The setting was more cosy than what we came to consider usual: with its small circular bay and the most recent moraine forming a last, private basin just before the front. The many guillemots and puffins made the scene more lively. When a loud bang came and big piece of the farthest end of the glacier fell, it made our hearts jump. I must admit that the wave provoked was impressive. The breaker rolled along the beach and on the southern shore of the bay roaring. Fortunately we had taken our precautions and we were at a safe distance so that only a slow but definitively powerful swell lifted us about half a meter and gently sat us down again. Another experience to add to our baggage! The coast to Ny London passes in front of Cape Guissez which is a special protected area for birds and we kept the necessary distance though enjoying the busy passage of the guillemots and puffins from the nests to the feeding grounds and back. Approaching Ny London is almost like arriving at a totally different place. The marble has allowed the creation of natural caves along the sides of a small bay and the two wooden houses left on the slope behind the beach look like a fairy tale setting. The view centres on Ny Aalesund and the high mountains behind the village but spaces both ways along the southern shore of Kings Bay. Another cosy anchorage to our collection and one that was very different from the others.
Monday, 10 August. Southern Star arrived at breakfast-time and we barely had time to say hi that we had to leave. We tried to call Olivier on the VHF with no luck. As we prepared for lifting anchor a continuous stream of zodiacs full of people in yellow jackets landed from the expedition ship Akademik Vavilov. They colour the landscape in a very peculiar way: they look like giant arctic dandelions! This was yet another occasion when we noticed the increase in mass tourism in these remote places and the visual impression of the invasions is still not totally positive. We sailed out of Kongsfjord as Kings Bay is called now and let Léo played on the main hatch inside the enclosure of the sprayhood. He loved it and we were delighted by his joy. He is really a dream boy to have on a voyage like this. The wind from the north picked up after a visit to Poolepynten and a last look at the sleeping walrus group resting on the beach out there. The light air allowed us to hoist the MPS and to make good speed towards our planned anchorage in Eidembukta. We reached the spot after dinner and found that there were many walruses here too, not at all disturbed by out presence. We spent some time walrus-watching and to our surprise they got closer than we could have imagined: they even came scratching themselves on the anchor chain and on the aft platform and circled the boat for a good 10 minutes! Nanni even got a close look directly in the eyes of one of the animals. The rest of us lay quietly on deck and admired the scene of these giants swimming with total calmness around our boat. Needless to say that our level of adrenaline was high as we went to bed!
Tuesday, 11 August. A little disappointed that we did not hear any walrus sounds through the hull during the night we prepared to leave. There were still all of our friends feeding in the bay and we passed by to see if we could catch a few more glimpses of their movements. Slowly we drifted to the spot putting the engine to neutral. To our greatest surprise we managed to spend one whole hour in the company of a small group of these walruses that continued their surfacing and normal activity undisturbed and at times curious of what we were doing there. I hope soon I will have some pictures for you as it is impossible to reproduce the exhilaration of being so close to such an interesting animal species (I am biased I know but I promise that the others think so too!). This event really made our day and the rest of the passage to Ymerbukta was dominated by an electrified atmosphere all over Best Explorer! Now we are anchored in view of the glacier and just a few hours from Longyearbyen. It is the right spot for winding down after such an intense voyage and prepare to welcome the new crew (Nicoletta arrives in two days and the others will follow shortly) and to travel home (Mariele, Marie-Anne, Léo and I will take the plane to mainland Europe). Tomorrow we will take one last tour of Isfjord and head for the harbour by Thursday morning at the latest.
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09/08/2009, S/Y Best Explorer - Svalbard tour 2009
The now usual drizzle and very overcast sky with low clouds was present in the morning and followed us the whole day yesterday Saturday, 8 August. Two harbour seals were hauled out and a third, young little seal, porpoised around for a while before joining the two others. A little aluminum boat, a Buster XL with 3 persons onboard all dressed in survival suits stopped by for a rest and a bite on land. The owner of the boat, a guy that works as a technician on ground for Wideroe in Troms=F8 as we learned from him, sailed his boat up to ours as we were lifting anchor (and cleaning the chain, again) to exchange a few words. We discussed the weather forecast as they were also sailing to Ny Aalesund today and later to Longyear. They had been on a boat camping trip to Norske- and Danskeoeyane (quite a holiday if you ask me!) and now they would return to Longyear where they would again leave the boat until next year's trip. This is also a way to tour Svalbard from the sea :) As we motored out of the bay another seal showed its cute face and during the whole 35 and something miles of the trip we saw a couple of other seals probably bearded (at least one was for sure a bearded seal in Signehamna right by the boat). Two minke whales also surfaced quite close to us: one just out and one just in from Cape Mitra at the entrance of Kings Bay (Kongsfjord). Two currents, two different water colours: one turquoise and one lead blue, met each other by Cape Mitra. The turquoise one smelled very strongly of freshwater, a little like an alpine lake, and the other was more like the open sea. Fulmars, kittiwakes, guillemots and puffins were aligned along the border of the two waters and followed the whirls and waves in its shape. Further into Krossfjord we begun to see ice blocks and small icebergs and the guillemots were often followed by their chicks in the water, like miniatures of the adults. Signehamna was strewn with the same ice bocks as the main fjord but we found a good anchoring spot by the northern side of the central peninsula. The ground was shallow enough to bar access to this part of the bay of the bigger bergs that would trouble our sleep. Léo by now is a really experienced sailor, he walks around just as wobbly as any of us when the boat is sailing and would like to climb the companionway's ladder at any occasion. Wind and waves do not trouble his activities in the least. He can open all the storage chests with ease, especially the one that contain biscuits and the one with electrical spares, and knows how to reach the top of the chart table and all the buttons on the instruments and the electrical table. Not even a little fever caused by his new budding teeth diminishes his good humor and appetite, he just sleeps a little more than usual during the day. Today, Sunday 9 August the weather is a little drier and the clouds are higher and let us see most of the mountainsides. The little peninsula in the middle of the bay has a stand and a sign on its top, probably at the site of the German WWII weather stations "Knospe" and "Nussbaum" that were active in 1941-42. We plan to explore this fjord system and anchor in Ny London for the next night before proceeding our journey southwards.
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08/08/2009, S/Y Best Explorer - Svalbard tour 2009
Yesterday, leaving Vulkanhamna we had to spend time cleaning the anchor chain from the reddish mud that formed a uniform coating hiding even the shape of the links! We used the motor pump and sea water and a good deal of muscle power and at the end we managed to take away most of it. All the way out of Woodfjord the sea was a mirror and in spite of the overcast day presented the complete panorama of the area. Reinsdyrflya on the northeast, flat and uniform, the straight east coast with its mighty mountains, the reddish peaks around Bockfjord and the islands at the mouth of Liefdefjord. Noorderlicht was at anchor by Andoeyane, Nordsyssel was coming in from the north. There were bearded and ringed seals, minke and fin whales all around (we even saw a small minke that could very well have been the same one from the previous day). It was all in all a very appropriate goodbye to this area now that we unfortunately have to head south again. Again in calm weather we had to motor all the way to Hamburgbukta, but the 1 to 1.5kn of current this time were in our favour and we made good speed. At Sallyhamna we spotted Southern Star at anchor by the western branch of Holmiabreen. The dead minke whale that we had seen in Magdalenefjord was now aground in the bay even more bloated than last week. Olivier told us that they had observed a polar bear by the carcass and that the bear had run away when a black zodiac from one of the expedition cruisers had zipped by at full speed trying to spot it. While still chatting with Olivier the two small Norwegian motor cruisers that had spent the night with us at Mushamna arrived and anchored 30m from the dead whale. We wondered if they had actually noticed the cadaver! Olivier commented that he had never seen so many private boats as this year and that these were the first small motor boats that he had ever seen in this part of the world. Thick drizzle dominated the rest of the way to Hamburgbukta where we cast anchor in the early hours of today. At the moment we have just left the bay and the harbour seals and we are motoring south in the same drizzle and headwind as earlier. It looks like this tour would have been just as noisy if made in a motor boat!
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