Sarah Pedersen 25th July 2023
Bjørnhamna has a really well-kept trapper’s hut, so we had to take the dinghy ashore to look closer at it. It was not an open hut, but we were able to open a shutter to look inside. It always feels a little like breaking and entering when doing this, but we were so curious that we couldn’t help ourselves. It is like looking into a time capsule with a small old fashioned bed and table and a fireplace in the corner for cooking on. These places are sometimes used by the Sysselmen, but then they are normally locked and it will say in the guidebook.
We had decided to moved on to London after this stay as Sarah thought it was only a short trip away, but when we had put the route in the plotter it looked like a 7 hour ride. So it was a much longer trip to London than when taking the plane from Copenhagen.
All we could do was start the travel and enjoy the ride and as the day was sunny and the waves were small, then what is there to complain about.
What suddenly happen was very unexpected though: after approximately 4 hours of motoring the wind started to look like a steady 10 knots downwind sailing! When Steve mentioned this Sarah said ‘What is sailing?’ as she had forgotten she was on a sailboat.
But out the UPS foresail came and the engine was turned off and then we had a good hour and a half of proper sailing!
This however took off some of our speed, so that we wouldn’t arrive at London before 11.30 pm. Little did we know how lucky that was. Because when we finally arrived (after having slowed down for some whales and icebergs) as we were attempting to set anchor for the third time we saw a polar bear slowly walking across the top of the shoreside in front of us
We quickly abandoned our returning problem of getting the anchor to set in the heavy kelp and got ready to follow the bear along the shore in the boat.
The big guy was walking slowly on the cliffs and we were cruising along the waterside. It stops and clearly has gotten the sense of something interesting. We see it reappearing at a little beach below the cliffs and realise that what we thought was snow is actually a dead animal. The perfect bear snack.
We end up watching the bear with binoculars and cameras for around 3 hours.
When we get back to the anchorage we are tired and excited and now have to fight the kelp to get the anchor finally set. So we end up going to bed at 4 am. But all in all we agreed that was a fabulous day.
