Wintering on the Vagabond 2005

November 2005 - Verslag 1

Imjaq walks far ahead towards a lonely iceberg frozen into the flat white bay. The cold blue moonlight shines on the steep calved front of the Inglefjeldglacier. In the north the full Moon shines bright between Mars and Aldebaran. Imjaq slaloms his way over the ice, trying to find a way without to much overwater. The two other dogs we took on this trip are on a leach. In the low light a yellow shade moves away from the iceberg. Non of the dogs react to the young polarbear that wakes up scarred from his sleep. He runs away at first, running from all the noise and the smell. At a distance he slows down and looks in our direction. In the dark we look at each other in eager expec-
tation. He trusts us as little as we trust him. Like a friend once said it is the food chain
upside down. He might think of us as a pray. The dogs play around our legs and ask for attention not aware of the bear 80 meters away. The polarbear decides we are not his taste and moves on towards the moon looking for a place to finish his sleep without disturbance.

The job for today is to get ice for our drinkingwater supply. With five Greenlandic dogs the level in the barrels is going down fast. We go closer to the iceberg, no totally at ease, for maybe the young polarbear was with his mother, who is still asleep. Imjaq goes close to the iceberg and after circumnavigating the iceberg we dare to go closer to our watersupply. From the pulka
(sledge) I take a tuk tuk and a small sledgehammer. Driving the tuk tuk into the age old ice, it breaks and falls down in large chunks.

When the barrel and pulka are full we tie Imjaq and Nanok to
the pulka so they can do the heavy work. We are walking on snowshoes, like oversized aluminum tennis rackets tied to your boots. Without them, we would sink into the sorpe with every
step. Sorpe is a mix of (salt)overwater end snow on top of the sea ice that is pressed under
by the wait of the snow. Our first so perfect ice sheet has disappeared. Imjaq remembers
the procedure from when we wintered in Nilspollen 2002-2003 and pulls the pulka to Vagabond. Nanok is looking at us. But Imjaq just pulls him along with the pulka. The red Vagabond is fixed in the ice of the small bay on the southern shore of Inglefjeldbukta. (77ºN 18ºE) at the southeast side of Spitsbergen. France and Eric, the owners of Vagabond, also stayed here last winter, partly for scientific work. When the project was extended they wanted to have a brake. So now we are babysitting Vagabond. We took “Jonathan” our own sailboat up in Longyearbyen late September 2005.

Imjaq and Nanokm who now faces and pulls the right
way, are approaching Vagabond. Imjaq pulls to star-
board away from Jin and Frost. They are screaming
and pulling on their chains as if they want to come our way towing their dog house along. After a fight last
week, Imjaq decided to stay away from those young guy’s. Maybe we were a bit to optimistic to have three
of five male polar dogs walk free when we were outside and only keep Nanok an little Imjaq on a leach. There was some grumbling and a little snap now and then, but things seemed ok. Little Imjaq, a nervous uncertain type, attacked without being attacked himself. That was the signal for a proper dog fight, the pack moved out of reach of two that were tight to their doghouses. It was two against our Imjaq. The biggest strongest and oldest had a hard time with those young guy’s. He managed to free himself but is missing a piece of his starboard ear. The damage to his pride hurts more.

Inglefjeldbukta (bukta=bay) developed after the glacier
with the same name pulled back over the last
decades. In thirty years the bay will be a fjord. We are
in a small bight on the southern shore against the old
hilly moraine. With the first ski trips we sometimes mistook polarbears for a small hill but now we follow
and know the flat area’s better so we have a better
view and can keep a greater distance from the bears
and have less surprises. From the salon we have a
free view from the northeast all the way to the glacier
in the west. Even now the sun has disappeared until February we can see over the spit by
the moonlight and look at mountains 20 miles away. Inglefjeldbreen is a fuse of three
glaciers that flow from the mountains to the sea. It all ends in a huge glacier front where
large chunks of centruries old ice break off with sounds like thunder. The small icebergs
float through the bay until they run aground or get trapped in the sea ice. This ice, from the time before air pollution, is our water supply.

Vagabond is a motorsailer with a high deck-house. We live at deck level with a great view all around. When we are working we have a good view of our surroundings. Nevertheless it are usually the dogs that warn us when there is a polarbear. The little nervous guy suddenly got a proper bark, Frost joined the shout but Jin, Imjaq’s competitor, hid in his dog-house even if the polarbear was at the far side of the bay. Our Imjaq stayed very calm in front of his doghouse while the polarbear was approaching him. With a nice curl in his tail he stood there to greet this big white fellow. I did not wait for that and fired a sound signal with the flare gun. More then enough for the polarbear to loose his interest en walk away with a shaking bum. We
counted 26 bears so far and tracks of many more. Two polarbears, we think mother and
son moved around our bay for days. The cubs stay with their mother for 2 years before
they go their own way. Mother and cub are the same size so we think it ia her son. He
surely has to learn how to fight, time and again they stand on their behind legs. The first
days it seems like they are playing but later the hits are harder and the mother gets more problems with her kid.

The downside of all this is that we have to limit our
trips. With the snowshoes we feel much better then
on long skies for it is not so easy to turn around with those restless dogs on the leach. When we go out we look like a walking armoury. Signal pens with sound signals and sound shots in the flare gun. Marina
carries a shotgun with first two rubber bullets and then slugs. I carry a large caliber Ruger rifle. We trust
mainly on the dogs though, specially now it is getting dark. Not that they are always the first to react, but
since three of them walk free in front, we hope they
will wake up a bear before we get too close. When a dreaming polarbear suddenly wakes
up it just might run the wrong way……… . The polarbears that are awake avoid us. We are with too many they must think. Also they are well fed at the moment and we do not have a nice thick layer of fat like a nice round seal.

On the small starboard table in the salon we made a work-bench for Marina. So she can be no closer to her work then this. She is working hard to have a new supply in the Longyear-byen shop for Christmas. Mid December a new crew will come and we will go home with a helicopter. I am trying to make something out of all my diary’s, I am learning Norwegian and study for Yacht Master Ocean. But everything takes time and we forgot about time limits and appointments. Getting water, backing bread, washing clothes, everything goes the way grandma did it when she was young. The toilet is positioned well down in the boat
and froze up some time ago. We do not even try anymore and go outside at some distance to the boat. At minus 20 and with some wind you better be careful …………

Marina’s birthday should not be forgotten this time, I even bought some presents before
we left. I have been reminded a little too often since Nillspollen. We start the day with a concert by six dogs. I cry with the wolves if I need them.

At the end of September we left Longyearbyen to this utterly remote bay, it is not even on the sea charts! According to the chart we are in the middle of the
glacier! Some people still do not take global warming serious! Global warming? This small bight is part of
the larger Inglefjeldbukta. It is part of the old moraine,
it is small and perfectly sheltered. The opening is to
the west towards the glacier, at most a mile away.
On board are, besides France and Eric, 5 Svalbard
guides in training. They join this trip to experience
sailing a small boat and see more of Svalbard. In our
bay all is covered in snow making it hard to find places to secure our shore lines. They
do most of the hard work to dig 2 deadman into the frozen ground and lay a line around a
rock. So that, with an anchor out to the west, we are in a web of 4 lines. The five also
build some more doghouses and create points to secure the dogs ashore. Then their time
is up. Their way back to Longyearbyen goes through knee high snow, across three
glaciers and fresh frozen rivers. After a three day struggle they reach the mining settlement Svea, just in time to take a small plane to Longyearbyen. France and Eric are picked up
by helicopter and in half an hour they arrive in Longyearbyen.

It does not take many days before we can walk ashore
in survival suite. The ice at the shore is to weak to
carry us, the tide is breaking it up all the time. Our
visits to the dogs are therefore planned around low tide. By then the dogs are very restless and make noise enough to scare even a hungry polarbear away. It also drives me crazy! Walking ashore in a survival suite
feels like carrying your own sauna with you. You just
can not get out and cool down a bit, while a little devil throws more water on the coals. Jumping ice-floes in
a survival suite is not really my favorite hobby and you
do not make the dogs happy with saltwater in their food.

We have a nasty storm out of the northeast. The protection in our bay is perfect and the two strongest shorelines are in this direction. The ice in our little bay starts to heave on the swell that reflects against the glacier front. The ice in Inglefjeldbukta all disappears, while it is a lee shore!! The water is probably not cold enough. At the entrance of our little
bight the ice starts to crack and flow away with the wind. Vagabond lies in the middle of a plate the size a soccer field. All is hanging on the two shore lines that are so tight that you can walk over them to the shore, with 50 knots, force 10, of sustained wind. We look at the dogs ashore from our shelter. They lie in front of their doghouses, rolled up tight to keep warm. We cannot do anything but wait, minus 16ºC and 50 knots. If we had wanted to do something we should have done it days ago. Our ice sheet starts to break up, big pieces drift pas the boat. In
half an hour the tension is of the shorelines and our nerves.

Look for more information about the Vagabond at www.vagabond.fr