The Big City

During our exploration of Isfjord, we made several stops at Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s main port and administrative center. The name harks back to the days when it was an American coal mining town. Now back under Norwegian ownership it is evolving into a real community with a population of around 1,700 making it the largest settlement in the archipelago.

Many of the people who live there today are driven by economic opportunity. A lot of the work is seasonal and some leave during the winter. The harsh climate is not for everyone and those who stay year round tend to value the isolation. Over all the population is fairly young which is not surprising considering that that there is no hospital.

The density of population has the added bonus of making it one of the few places in Svalbard where you can walk around unarmed. Without Polar Bears to worry about, the real concern becomes not getting run over, as Longyearbyen residents take their SUVs and small amount of road seriously. During the winter snow mobiles and dog sleds become the norm. Apparently the best way to keep a sled team in shape is to have the dogs tow a vehicle during the summer.

One of the nicest stops in town is the Svalbard Museum. Aside from an excellent exhibit covering all aspects of Svalbard, they also have a good selection of books for sale including “Into The Ice, A History Of Norway And The Polar Regions” which has been an invaluable addition to Snow Dragon’s library. The Museum is also one of several places in town which follows the Norwegian custom of removing shoes before entering and kindly provides crocs for anyone who does not want to walk around in their socks.

The heart of town is essentially a shopping center mainly targeted towards the thousands of tourists who come by cruise ship. There are also several restaurants where you can get anything from pizza to seal. We have been told that the local delicacies are quite good, but can only vouch for the pizza.

Our main shopping interest was the supermarket, which only lacked good coffee. Snow Dragon’s wallet however, did choke at paying $8 for a head of lettuce. Over all fresh fruit and vegetables were pricey with the only exception being mangoes and avocadoes. Why you have to go almost to the North Pole to find reasonably priced mangoes and avocadoes is still beyond us. Sticker shock aside, the quality was excellent.

In order to purchase alcohol we had to obtain a permit from the Sysselman (Governor). Requesting our permit did make us feel “underage” but the process was relatively easy and the ration of 2 litres of liquor, 1 litres of fortified wine and 24 cans of beer was generous. The wine was unregulated but the selection turned out to be dismal compared to the wide range of liquor. Not wanting to waste our permit, we purchased a couple bottles of Snow Dragon’s latest vice, Dark Havana Club Rum.

To see more pictures of Longyearbyen, visit my Picasa album.

Revenge Of The Sea Ice

Our anchorage at Pyramiden seemed ideal, good holding, a spectacular view of Nordenskiold glacier and a visiting piece of sea ice that was large enough for Frances to stroll on with a brightly colored beach umbrella. Though the sheet of ice was four times the size of Snow Dragon, they seemed to coexist without incident. Suddenly the wind picked up, filling the bay with ice, and the friendly ice sheet began pushing against Snow Dragon.

We are not sure if the ice was more offended by being walked on or the bright colored umbrella but needless to say we got the message: the ice wanted us gone. The only thing preventing us from a speedy departure was that the objecting piece of ice was sitting on top of our anchor. This normally would not have been a problem but in this instance the ice was pushing us towards shore.

In effort to let the ice move past without having to cut our anchor loose, Frances dumped all 120 meters of anchor chain into the water while Krystina maneuvered Snow Dragon around the large sheet of ice. The anchor was pulling us towards deeper water but the combination of ice and wind pushing against Snow Dragon’s bow made it questionable how much longer the anchor would continue to hold. The ice had already managed to push us into shallow water where Snow Dragon found herself firmly aground.

While pulling the anchor up from under the ice, our powered windlass stopped functioning and we resorted to pulling 60 meters of chain manually. Two and half hours into our ice dispute, we finally got the anchor up and managed to motor Snow Dragon off the mud. By this time the wind had dropped and the ice had left the bay.

Snow Dragon escaped from her unscheduled shore visit without any damage and headed back to Longyearbyen to spend a couple days free of ice. On our way, we discovered that the anchor windlass had only flipped its circuit breaker when it sensed that it was being overworked. With a flip of the switch the windlass was back in action.

Once we got settled, Frances suited up in multiple layers of dive gear and went down to double check that there was no hidden damage. Everything looked good and Frances took a few moments to do a bit of recreational diving before getting out of the freezing water.

     (photo courtesy of Twinga)

Pretty In Orange

The 25 mile dash from Barentsburg to Lonyearbyen turned into a major production. Snow Dragon poked her nose out of the Grone Fjord and found herself in over 35 knots of wind on the nose and snowing. It was rougher than anticipated and we quickly turned around and headed back to the protected area of Barentsberg and evaluated our options. Kirsty and Eivan had a flight to catch and we did not want a little thing like wind to get in the way.

Since going out with a stay sail and triple reefed main was too much sail, we decided the storm stay sail was the next logical solution. After getting the bright orange storm sail up and the dinghy out of the davits and on deck, we were ready to try again.

Once out we quickly realized that Snow Dragon could not point high enough to windward with such a small sail. Instead of risking being blown out to sea we went back to our anchorage and waiting six hours for the wind to calm down to a sensible level. It did, just barely, and we were able to get Kirsty and Eiven to Longyearbyen in time for their plane.

Kirsty, Elvar & Krystina sleeping on the trip to Longyearbyen.

North Across the Barents Sea

At the last minute, three new friends that we met in Tromso decided to join us for the trip up to Longyearbyen. After doing the required extra provisioning that comes with having additional hungry bodies on board, we spent three days getting our new friends used to Snow Dragon and Angela, our beloved autopilot before venturing out on the open ocean.

From the moment we left Tromso, the wind was on the nose with the only redeeming quality being that it was strong and consistent enough to maintain a good tack angle. Once on the ocean, the sailing conditions deteriorated and the wind become completely erratic. Snow Dragon went from one intense hail and snow squall to the next followed by gaps of complete calm before getting slammed with another squall, making the crossing one of the more active for her crew. Trying to outwit the wind become our focus as we clawed our way north.

In an effort to get a handle on what the wind gods were planning to do, we sailed close to Bjornoya (Bear Island) and radioed the station there to see if they had a more dependable weather report. Though their report did not tell us anything new or even remotely accurate, the slight detour was well worth it, as we got a clear view of the normally cloud shrouded island basking in blue skies.

At the southern tip of Spitsbergan, we where greeted with our first batch of sea ice which had blown down from the east side of the island. With thirty miles still to go, we decided to go along the edge of the ice instead of picking our way through, watching schools of Harp seals hunt for food as we made our way along to Hornsund Fjord.

Five and a half days after leaving mainland Norway, we dropped anchor in Gashamna Bay and briefly took in our new surroundings before catching up on some much needed rest.

Heading North

Cruising, adventure sailing and expedition travel are a few of the terms that have been used to generalize what we do. Yes, it is true that Snow Dragon is a comfortable, well equipped boat that is designed to go anywhere in the world and we do take her to some pretty cool places. However, Snow Dragon is more complicated than just a method of travel, she is our home, way of life and at times our most demanding team member. Together we have crossed oceans, survived our share of disappointments and have made amazing friends along the way. After spending the past year and a half making our way from Alaska to Europe, Snow Dragon is now ready for the far north and will be spending the next 2-3 months exploring the arctic wilderness of Svalbard.

Svalbard, located just below the North Pole, is heavily regulated and anyone who wishes to go out of the Longyearbyen vicinity, also known as Area 10, without being part of an organized tour must obtain permission from the Sysselmannen (District Governor) before they can proceed. We found the application process to be fairly straight forward but it did take awhile for the Governor's office to respond. All expeditions must be entirely self-sufficient and once the Governor approved our request to explore the area in depth he set a bond of 200,000 NOK ($31,841) to cover potential search and rescue expenses (SAR). We decided to purchase SAR insurance instead of providing a bank guarantee and have spent much of the last week in Tromso organizing the insurance which turned out to be a nonstandard item.

Our plan is to arrive in Svalbard by the second week of June and explore the west coast while we wait for the ice to clear before going around to the east.