After a beer at the Texas Bar we grabbed some sleep in the Hornpeakpollen a natural harbour and then we headed out of the fjord to achieve our key objective for the trip (and earn our stash) a trip up to Moffen and an assault on the 80th parallel...
For those of a sailing persuasion you may be interested to note that this was the point we started to notice that the testing undertaken by some marine electronics vendors was not all they might make out.. We had just passed the latitude 79.5 degrees North and the very whizzy looking touch screen Raymarine chart plotter in the cockpit had given up, and so we would be using only the paper charts, plus the well known (and I project increasingly prevalent navigation device) the iPad (with a Bad Elf GPS unit) with the new c-map app which covers Svalbard. No doubt there are many who say that this is not a marine grade navigation, but fortunately our charter company has fitted an iPad holder and charger next to the chart table to facilitate this and it has proved a better bet than the purpose built options even better you can take it on deck when you come across some tricky pilotage (!)
Moffen is an atoll the South end of which is just above 80 degrees (600 miles from the North Pole), and is a protected area.
The Governor of Svalbard has declared a 300m exclusion zone for boats around Moffen from April - September (the only time the sea is liquid) so you have to stay a long way back but we managed to get a couple of shots of the beach-master with some ladies...
As you see the wild animals here you being to understand why people described newly discovered islands as 'enchanted' - the animals have no fear of people (either because they want to eat you or they want to find out what you are up to) so they wander up to you and you feel part of their world.
As we have collected up the Svalbard wildlife on camera we though we could introduce the concept of what the 'big 5' here would be. The first two are easy, the walrus and the polar bear which certainly would attack you given the chance. The later ones are not so easy, but we propose the Svalbard reindeer, whale and the arctic fox - that get's us to 4... and what of the 5th? Well we are holding out for one of the great whales, since in this marine world surely we need a marine member.
As we sailed south back through the North West Sounds (including a G&T at Sallyhamna) we were looking for polar bears again. It was clear that there is a reason Joy is a Radiologist as she noticed the 2nd polar bear of the trip this time swimming and diving for kelp.
We watched for almost an hour as the bear dived down to pull the kelp off the floor, and then swam on for more. There were some moments when a seal and polar bear popped up and looked at each other and then both dived and swam around, but there wasn't quite the blood bath we imagined!
There are few true land mammals here, and those which exist are of a slightly different species, and on the Reindeerflyt during our earlier cited walk one of the group had two encounters with the Svalbard Reindeer on the tundra
The cruising guide says that adolescent deer suffer from a near fatal level of curiosity. This proved to be true when, one of our landing parties spotted a trio of deer picking across a mountain in Reinsdyrflya. After seeing us they duly started edging their way towards the group (which had by now embraced its Japanese cultural roots and was snapping away ecstatically), they got to within 30m before fear exceeded curiosity and they ran away.
On our final land excursion in the Magdalenefjorden, we could tell that we were in the land of the arctic fox, we could hear the bird cliffs above and the flat land below, but we had to wait a few hours for the 2nd walking party to have this fox come up to them to collect almost the full set of arctic wildlife...
Ben, Gabi and Adam were sat up a scree slope looking over the fjord, when there was a clatter behind them (which caused them all to have a heart in mouth 'is it a polar bear?' moment). On turning around there was a small arctic fox, at most a metre long tip to tail. It stood there looking at us mentally calculating (They're not a Polar Bear so I'm not going to eaten, but they are probably too big for lunch...) before it turned and loped away, jumping from rock to rock.
We would also like to provide a recommendation for our tailored gear from Shush Sports who had our 80 degrees stash made up in less than a week. Many of us have been wearing the stash for a considerable part of the week. The crew of one of the other boats even asked us where they could buy some!
(Joy would like to point out that amazing as Adam's cooking was, her Michelin-like frame in this picture is in fact due to the down jacket under her stash...)
We are now making good progress back towards Danskoya, where we had thick fog before, though we are now in brilliant sunlight. On the way South we are hoping to visit Smeerenburg - the ruins of the main Dutch whaling towns in the 1600s where for 75 years they killed and boiled down as much whale blubber as possible until there were few whales left...
For those of a sailing persuasion you may be interested to note that this was the point we started to notice that the testing undertaken by some marine electronics vendors was not all they might make out.. We had just passed the latitude 79.5 degrees North and the very whizzy looking touch screen Raymarine chart plotter in the cockpit had given up, and so we would be using only the paper charts, plus the well known (and I project increasingly prevalent navigation device) the iPad (with a Bad Elf GPS unit) with the new c-map app which covers Svalbard. No doubt there are many who say that this is not a marine grade navigation, but fortunately our charter company has fitted an iPad holder and charger next to the chart table to facilitate this and it has proved a better bet than the purpose built options even better you can take it on deck when you come across some tricky pilotage (!)
Moffen is an atoll the South end of which is just above 80 degrees (600 miles from the North Pole), and is a protected area.
The Governor of Svalbard has declared a 300m exclusion zone for boats around Moffen from April - September (the only time the sea is liquid) so you have to stay a long way back but we managed to get a couple of shots of the beach-master with some ladies...
As you see the wild animals here you being to understand why people described newly discovered islands as 'enchanted' - the animals have no fear of people (either because they want to eat you or they want to find out what you are up to) so they wander up to you and you feel part of their world.
As we have collected up the Svalbard wildlife on camera we though we could introduce the concept of what the 'big 5' here would be. The first two are easy, the walrus and the polar bear which certainly would attack you given the chance. The later ones are not so easy, but we propose the Svalbard reindeer, whale and the arctic fox - that get's us to 4... and what of the 5th? Well we are holding out for one of the great whales, since in this marine world surely we need a marine member.
As we sailed south back through the North West Sounds (including a G&T at Sallyhamna) we were looking for polar bears again. It was clear that there is a reason Joy is a Radiologist as she noticed the 2nd polar bear of the trip this time swimming and diving for kelp.
We watched for almost an hour as the bear dived down to pull the kelp off the floor, and then swam on for more. There were some moments when a seal and polar bear popped up and looked at each other and then both dived and swam around, but there wasn't quite the blood bath we imagined!
There are few true land mammals here, and those which exist are of a slightly different species, and on the Reindeerflyt during our earlier cited walk one of the group had two encounters with the Svalbard Reindeer on the tundra
The cruising guide says that adolescent deer suffer from a near fatal level of curiosity. This proved to be true when, one of our landing parties spotted a trio of deer picking across a mountain in Reinsdyrflya. After seeing us they duly started edging their way towards the group (which had by now embraced its Japanese cultural roots and was snapping away ecstatically), they got to within 30m before fear exceeded curiosity and they ran away.
On our final land excursion in the Magdalenefjorden, we could tell that we were in the land of the arctic fox, we could hear the bird cliffs above and the flat land below, but we had to wait a few hours for the 2nd walking party to have this fox come up to them to collect almost the full set of arctic wildlife...
Ben, Gabi and Adam were sat up a scree slope looking over the fjord, when there was a clatter behind them (which caused them all to have a heart in mouth 'is it a polar bear?' moment). On turning around there was a small arctic fox, at most a metre long tip to tail. It stood there looking at us mentally calculating (They're not a Polar Bear so I'm not going to eaten, but they are probably too big for lunch...) before it turned and loped away, jumping from rock to rock.
We would also like to provide a recommendation for our tailored gear from Shush Sports who had our 80 degrees stash made up in less than a week. Many of us have been wearing the stash for a considerable part of the week. The crew of one of the other boats even asked us where they could buy some!
(Joy would like to point out that amazing as Adam's cooking was, her Michelin-like frame in this picture is in fact due to the down jacket under her stash...)
We are now making good progress back towards Danskoya, where we had thick fog before, though we are now in brilliant sunlight. On the way South we are hoping to visit Smeerenburg - the ruins of the main Dutch whaling towns in the 1600s where for 75 years they killed and boiled down as much whale blubber as possible until there were few whales left...
Location:Monacobreen to Smeerenburg
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