80˚ North

A FOGGY DAY

We awoke to a dark grey day. A thick, wet fog lay over us. The shore, only 100m away, loomed darkly and indistinct out of the grey before dissolving away again. The sail bags and rigging dripped cold, cold water and the chill seemed to envelope us.

Our plan for today had been to make the short hop to Ytre Norskøya, just to the north of us, to do a bit of hiking there. However, in a fog this thick the chances of seeing a polar bear before you were rubbing noses with it seemed pretty low, and the consequences of doing so seemed pretty unpleasant, so we decided that going ashore wasn’t a sensible option.

The alternatives were to motor around the islands and see fog (nah, not tempting), to go North to see if we could find the sea ice, or, to go to 80˚N where there is either sea ice or nothing to see but the sea, with the chances of the latter being higher than the former. Given the heavy fog, going north seemed a good option and with navigational information from another boat it did not seem too complicated: a straight run from Ytre Norskøya and look out for Siberian logs.

TO 80˚N

So, after dealing with some kelp salad that got well and truly wrapped around the anchor, off we went north to find whichever came first, sea ice or 80˚N.

With the radar on to give us advance warning of any impending collisions with ice, we cruised the 12 nm or so to just beyond 80˚N.

Once there we celebrated this little bit of silliness with lunch and a bit of a look around. We could see a small bit of ocean and a whole lot of fog.

Lunch duly consumed we headed back to Sallyhamna for the night. Where the spectacular surroundings gradually revealed themselves again as the fog lifted later that evening.