We spent the last five days trying, and failing, to descend southward through the Hindlopen Strait between Spitsbergen and Gustav Adolf Island.
Following Saturday’s harrowing escape from becoming one with the bears or the ice in Murehenson fjord – we anchored safely in Sorg fjord on the western shore at the top of the Strait. Sunday morning we made an early start, sailing for several hours only to be confronted again by the solid wall of ice choking the strait. Defeated, we turned around to sleep exactly where we had optimistically started.
Without up-to-date information about the ice location on Sunday, we had no option but to wait for the Norwegian Met office to come back to work on Monday and post a new ice map. Once in, we discovered the ice had its own plan for us. The maps indicated the itinerant polar ice cap that trapped us on Saturday, was now creeping up on us from behind preparing to block us in. So with full sails raised, we high-tailed it out of there in the opposite direction. We backtracked many (many) nautical miles to hide around the corner in Mossel Bay, but anchored to the most amazing sunset around midnight.
After 3 frustrating days, Tuesday promised liberation! No ice. No problem. Confident and excited we headed north around the cap to get back on track circumnavigating Svalbard. This time to be confronted head on not by ice – but mighty winds. Several hours of waves crashing over the boat slowed our pace to barely a knot, then to null. Defeated again, we again turned back to the starting point, for the third time. I seemed to be one of the few who confessed to losing my breakfast to seasickness.
Today is Day 5 of this human plan-versus-nature saga. These advances and retreats have left us perched at the top of the straight with disappointment and frustration, but no shortage of entertainment.
I wasn’t quite certain what I was getting myself into by joining this experiment to head 21 days to sea with artists. But each discussion and presentation about climate science and the observed impacts of climate change on the environment and people enriches our debates about the social choices to be made for a more sustainable world. Each missing and melting glacier we walk upon adds inspiration and passion to why we are here.
And as I look around at my “cabin-fevered” shipmates, we are all busy behind laptops and notebooks, engrossed in corner conversations or surrounded by cameras, sketchbooks, and recorders. There are songs, plays, books and scientific papers being written; pteropods and open sea data collected; conferences, exhibits, and climate awareness campaigns being planned. It is quite rewarding to be asked to check the facts and concepts being incorporated into projects, and be asked “how exactly do persistent organic pollutants end up in polar bears” and “explain more about how diseases are impacted by climate.” Although its been a long five days of going nowhere in the Arctic, it has allowed the fire of ideas burning on this boat to forge collaborations, and certainly some lifelong friendships.
