Our day on Friday June 26th was somewhat inactive.
By mid morning we were off AEkongen Island near Tusenoyane and attempted a landing. The sea seemed quite flat, but there was a gentle swell. On the ship it was hard to perceive, but in zodiacs it was more noticeable. It was creating waves on the flat-topped island of about two metres and these made landing impossible. Instead, we went ice cruising, bird watching and sight-seeing. It was a very nice day for this activity.
We were back on the ship for lunch to hear the big news of Michael Jackson’s death. We are all grateful that we won’t be anywhere around a radio and having to listen to countless replays of his songs.
In the afternoon we looked to see if we could land at Kvalpynten (Whale Point) on the southern tip of the island of Edgeoya. It was an area of steep cliffs with a small beach and some long ribbons of waterfalls cascading down the cliffs. We could see a band of ice around the shoreline that was covered (and insulated with scree from the cliffs. I assume that it had been there for a long time. From the bridge, it looked as though there were large waves breaking on the shore and these were confirmed by the couple of zodiacs that we sent out on a recce mission. It was quite unsafe to land, so we gave away any idea of stopping there.
Our attempt to circumnavigate anti-clockwise has really been thwarted by ice so we are now sailing back to the west coast of the archipelago to travel north again. Overnight we have sailed over 100 nautical miles and we expect to make a landing after lunch today (Saturday).
