Tuesday 10th July - Longyearbyen to Skansbukta

Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Fri 13 Jul 2012 09:55

78 34.00 N, 16 02.50 E

 

This entry covers the period after we had completed chores in town and the huge cruise ship had moved to allow us out. All the yachts tied up against

this quay were anxious to be off so we were all more or less trying to push out at the same time. Eddy motored Awelina slowly down the fjord while we sorted out below then we put the main up and headed north in the general direction of Skansbukta up the Billesfjord. The sun continued to pour down although in the wind the chill reminded us how close this place is to the Polar ice cap. We had a fast ~ 7 knot sail on a close hauled course and

arrived in the mining bay of Skansbukta at around 5pm. One solitary yacht was already there - a Dutchman who waved as we arrived and we never saw them on deck again. Anchoring took a while since the area is shown on the chart as being unsurveyed. We anchored first in 9 metres of water, James took the dinghy out and used the lead weight at the end of along rope to do some soundings of the water depths around us. To our alarm we found that behind her stern Awelina was about a boat's length form a depth of around 3 - 4 metres. This is not deep enough for a yacht drawing 2 metres swinging on an anchor chain so we pulled up the anchor and moved. The chart means what it says so the depth test was a wise precaution.

 

Once the engine was off however the magnificence of the place impressed itself upon us. Scree slopes led the eye upwards towards towards the base of vertical stacky cliffs weathered and eroded into strange shapes like an entire mountainside of Mount Rushmore presidential faces and carvings,and it’s actually called Kapp Fleur de Lys. These cliffs were on both sides of us, they are full of birds nesting and wheeling around the heights while the green slopes below the nesting sites point the way to each colony like a large arrow. Guano is obviously welcomed by the arctic vegetation. We went ashore for a look, loading up the rifle and taking the Verey pistol with us. There was an old boat resting gently on the shingle shore above the high water line, in various stages of decay. Its last resting place was close to the entrance of the long abandoned Skansbukta gypsum mine, a small barred hole in the hillside at the end of some very rusty railway track on a small embankment. Some eider duck were gently paddling around the shoreline and a small snow bunting was having a territorial dispute over part of the track with another small but unidentifiable bird. The reindeer were also in evidence: a couple were feeding on the slopes above us as we arrived and we saw more over the course of the afternoon. They are small stocky creatures with impressive sets of antlers. Indeed there were several sets of antlers lying about on the beach.

 

Next to the beach was a small hut - locked and barred by the Sysselmann for preservation reasons. In any case it did not look worthy of a glance inside with so much to see around us. On each side of the fjord the cliffs had the most fantastic free falling waterfalls dropping from the melting ice above into deep clefts and crevasses below, the water almost vaporising over the long drop down. We were lured across the fjord to investigate one of these in more detail. It lay at the side of some glacial moraine dropping from a thick sheet of ice into a hollowed out cavern like space below set back into the hillside. A second waterfall obviously sourced from this first torrent then completed the vertical drop into an iced river the ice being below the surface of some giant mole hills. These were pingo's where the ice had melted form around them leaving them above the surface of the iced over river. All this exploring took until nearly 10pm so we headed back to the boat for a bean casserole and some beer.

 

Skansbukta railway track

Description: Railway Track Skansbukta Compressed

 

Reindeer

Description: Reindeer Skansbukta Compressed

 

Old boat on the shore

Description: Skansbukta Boat Compressed

 

Trekking to the waterfall

Description: Skansbukta trekking compressed

 

That waterfall

Description: Skansbukta Waterfall Compressed

 

There is a temptation with 24 hour daylight when you are not used to going to bed with the sun, that you forget the time and pack as much as you can

into one day. The danger od this is that you end up eating supper around 1 am and bed around 2:30 am. This is fine for a couple of days but by day 3 or 4 as the sleep deprivation sets in you realise that you need to manage your downtime as well as the desire to see all of this wonderful country.