Day 5: Björndalen

An unexpected and unwanted stop

If you’ve made it this far into my photo journal series, thank you! You might think it gets even better from here, and it does, but it doesn’t on day 5. Day 5 was definitely the worst day of the expedition and the day we came closest to not having the expedition at all.

We awoke on day 5 to some very worrying news: Overnight, an important electrical component of the engine broke. Luckily, as we were sailing north, we happened to be not too far from Longyearbyen. The captain later shared that if this component of the engine had broken in the pack ice or in bad weather, we likely would have been stranded and had very little control of the ship. We pulled in to Longyearbyen’s harbor and in a briefing in the lounge the expedition leader, Ryan, told us we would be moored in Longyearbyen for at least the next day. In the meantime, the crew would continue to try fixing the problem and a specialist engineer would be flown here from Oslo. Although we were not told directly on the morning of the day, I later learned the crew was very worried about having to cancel the rest of the expedition.

Despite this very worrying problem with our dear Polar Pioneer, we still had a determined expedition team. They identified a suitable zodiac landing location called Björndalen just outside Longyearbyen for us to explore. As we could not move the ship, the zodiac ride would be more than a half hour long! One of the guides joked with me that it might technically be outside the maximum allowed distance for a zodiac cruise, but it depends how one measures the distance (as the crow flies vs route of travel). While on our way to the location, it looked like a Svalbard police car was following us along the shoreline, but it turned out the coast was clear.

As we made our way there, I remember thinking there is no way zodiac landing can be any good. After all, it’s on the outskirts of the town. If it was good, we would have seen it already. Conditions were also very boring - Flat overcast skies. And I was right: Conditions were boring and the location underwhelming. Of course, pretty much everywhere in Svalbard is beautiful, so I recognize the irony in what I am saying. But this location did not do it for me.

The highlight of this location were the reindeer, and I managed to capture a few interesting shots of a baby reindeer resting against a stark white snowy hill. What you don’t see in this shot is the mud and bog that surrounds it - The plot of snow itself was probably only 10 meters wide by 5 meters tall. While I sat in the muddy bog taking pictures, the reindeer approached me within about 2-3 meters.

The only other interesting shot from this outing was a photo of Tom’s boot in this little glacial estuary. We all were trying to take photos in this estuary because we thought the colors were interesting, but I don’t think many of us came away with any photos. It was funny seeing us bent over the muddy water trying to frame up a composition. In fact, I think Tom even filmed a bit for one of his YouTube videos, but it didn’t make his cut. That tells you about how successful the outing was. We can call this photo “One small step for Tom”.

I spent the rest of the time on this outing walking around with Brendan. We discussed his passion for coffee and his growing coffee shop and coffee roasting business in Portugal.

When we arrived back at the ship, we were told the ship’s crew had identified a specialist engineer in Oslo and he was on the afternoon flight to Svalbard. The engineer, a Swedish man named Hans-Eric, arrived that evening around 7 PM and worked through the evening to repair the ship. Thank to his incredible overnight effort, we were able to sail north to the High Arctic. Hans-Eric stayed aboard the ship in case of any more troubles, no doubt raking in a hugely lucrative daily rate for his services. In effect though, he got a paid vacation to Svalbard! He had some duties in the engine room, but otherwise joined us for meals, relaxed in the sauna, and even joined us on a few excursions! It is no understatement that Hans-Eric was the savior of our expedition, and a brilliantly nice guy too.

I later purchased a toy puffin at a gift shop in Longyearbyen for Meghna and named him Hans in honor of Hans-Eric’s good work.