SVALBARD
Friday, 28 September – Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Almost everyone from the expedition had gathered together by 8:30 this morning at the departure gate in Oslo airport for the flight to Longyearbyen via Tromso. We arrived here around 2pm and loaded all our gear onto a bus for the short ride to the lodge where we’re staying for 2 nights – time to acclimatize, catch up on sleep (some people are very jet-lagged) and explore the town. The temperature is just below freezing, and there is a light sprinkling of snow. My room-mate and I did a short walk around, and I picked up a few essentials from the grocery store before coming back to the lodge to power up the laptop, check email and post this journal entry.
Our ship is the Antigua, a 50-meter Dutch-registered 3-masted barquentine. She hasn’t yet arrived in port, but I hope to get some pictures when she does arrive so that I can post them before we set off on Sunday afternoon, after which time I’ll be off the grid until we return here to Longyearbyen on or around Oct. 13th.
It has been interesting meeting all the other participants, learning a bit about their individual projects, and talking about the trip to come. Our itinerary will be flexible, depending on weather and ice conditions, but apparently we will actually be sailing (not motoring) whenever we can, which I am pleased about, of course.
Here are some pictures from earlier today.
Here is a map of Svalbard (aka Spitzbergen).
Longyearbyen, located on the west coast of the island of Spitsbergen (see the map), is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of Svalbard. Known as Longyear City until 1926, the town was established by and named after John Munroe Longyear, whose Arctic Coal Company started coal mining operations in 1906. Operations were taken over by Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK) in 1916, which still conducts mining. The town was almost completely destroyed by the German Kriegsmarine on 8 August 1943, but was rebuilt after the Second World War. Traditionally, Longyearbyen was a company town, but since the 1990s, it has seen a large increase in tourism and research with the arrival of institutions such as the University Centre in Svalbard, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and Svalbard Satellite Station. So there’s your history and geography lesson for the day!
Saturday, 29 September – Longyearbyen, Svalbard
Spent the day exploring Longyearbyen. Here are some more photos which include a view from one of the old abandoned coal mines, the church, and two other views of the town from the surrounding hills.
Longyearbyen is also the site of the Global Seed Vault designed to store duplicates of seeds from seed collections around the world. Dug into the permafrost just near the airport here, and maintained at -18 degrees C., the vault has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed types. Although it is not possible to visit the interior of the vault, the entrance can be seen.
… and here is our ship:
The Antigua was built in 1957 in Thorne, Yorkshire (U.K.) as a fishing trawler and was in service for many years. Between 1993 and 1997 she was reconstructed into a sailing ship, adding three masts and all the required rigging, and below deck renovations were made to convert working spaces into passenger accommodation. The specifications are as follows:
Length: 49.5 m
Width: 7.13 m
Draft: 3.10 m
Tonnage: 212 GT
Main mast: 31.5 m
Sail surface: 750 sq. m.
Speed: sailing up to 9 knots / motoring up to 7 knots
We set sail on Sunday morning, Sept. 30th, and return to Longyearbyen on October 13th.