EYOS · Bodø to Longyearbyen · M/Y BOLD · Norway, Bear Island & Svalbard

01Embark

Bodø

Bodø, Norway

Saltstraumen · Vestfjorden · Embark

Bodø sits just above the Arctic Circle at the mouth of Vestfjorden, an hour and a half from Oslo by air. Board in the afternoon. A short run south brings you to Saltstraumen, where four times a day the tide forces up to 400 million cubic metres of seawater through a strait three kilometres long and 150 metres wide. It is the strongest tidal current in the world, and at full flow the surface turns into a field of standing waves and slow rotating whirlpools. Sail west across Vestfjorden through the light night.

02Lofoten

Reine & Moskenes

Reine & the Southern Islands

Lofoten Wall · Beaches · Tenders

Wake under the Lofoten wall, a line of granite peaks that rises straight out of the sea and runs for more than a hundred kilometres. The southern islands hold the most concentrated version of it: sheer faces dropping into deep water, white sand beaches in coves that face open ocean, and villages wedged onto whatever flat ground exists. Walk ashore for the high ground and the views back down the chain, or take the tenders into the narrow arms where the yacht cannot follow.

03Lofoten

Henningsvær

Henningsvær & Svolvær

Fishing Harbour · Sea Eagles · Svolvær

Henningsvær is built across a scatter of islets linked by bridges, its harbour still lined with working boats and the timber racks used to dry cod through the winter. This has been one of the richest cod fisheries in the world for a thousand years and the town is organised around it. Continue north toward Svolvær and the entrance to Raftsundet. Norway holds the largest white-tailed sea eagle population in Europe and Nordland more than a third of it, so they are usually seen from the deck rather than looked for.

04Trollfjord

Trollfjorden

Trollfjorden & Raftsundet

Raftsundet · Thousand Metre Walls · Vesterålen

Raftsundet is the channel that separates Lofoten from Vesterålen. Roughly halfway along it a gap opens in the eastern wall into Trollfjorden: two kilometres long, about a hundred metres wide at its entrance, under peaks that stand over a thousand metres on either side. Enter slowly under power. The scale only registers once you are inside and the sky has narrowed to a strip. Continue north through Vesterålen in the evening.

05North

Senja & Tromsø

Senja, then Tromsø

Okshornan · Segla · Clear Outbound

Senja's outer coast is a row of blades. Okshornan runs down to the water in a line of teeth and Segla stands 640 metres above Mefjorden as a single flat face. Anchor for the morning and go ashore or up. Run east to Tromsø in the afternoon, at 69 degrees 39 minutes north and long the port that provisioned polar expeditions heading for the ice. Clear outbound formalities, take on the last fresh stores, and sail in the evening. From here it is roughly 300 nautical miles of open water to the next land.

06At Sea

Barents Sea Crossing

The Barents Sea

Passage · Whales · Seabirds

A full day offshore. The Barents is shallow, cold and extremely productive, and the crossing is worked rather than endured: fin and blue whales feed along the shelf here in summer, and fulmars, kittiwakes and guillemots follow the ship for hours. The expedition team runs the briefings that matter before Svalbard, covering ice, polar bear protocol and the rules that govern landings in the archipelago. Bjørnøya raises late in the day, usually out of fog.

07Bear Island

Bear Island (Bjørnøya)

Bjørnøya

Six Hours in the Zodiacs · Bird Cliffs · Sea Caves

The day the itinerary is built around. Bjørnøya is the southernmost island of Svalbard, named by Willem Barentsz in 1596 after his crew met a polar bear swimming offshore, and it is a nature reserve with no harbour and no settlement beyond the manned weather station in the north. Spend six hours in the Zodiacs along the south coast. The cliffs run several hundred metres straight out of the water and are broken into stacks, arches and sea caves you can drive a tender into, and in July they carry one of the largest seabird colonies in the North Atlantic. This is, by a clear margin, one of the finest Zodiac cruises anywhere in the world. Sail north in the evening.

08Svalbard

Hornsund

Landfall · Gnålodden · Tidewater Glaciers

Round Sørkapp and enter Hornsund, the southernmost fjord in Spitsbergen and the first Svalbard landfall. Gnålodden is a bird cliff with a strip of unusually deep green tundra beneath it, fed by a thousand years of guano, and it is one of the better places in the archipelago to be put ashore under a colony. At the head of the fjord, Brepollen is ringed by tidewater glacier fronts. Polar bears work this coast.

09Wildlife

Poolepynten

Forlandsundet

Walrus Haul Out · Forlandet National Park

Run north into Forlandsundet, the shallow sound between Prins Karls Forland and the west coast of Spitsbergen. Poolepynten is a low gravel spit with a walrus haul out that is used through the summer. Approach on foot, slowly, to the distance the guides set, and sit with them. Bulls come and go from the water, and the group rearranges itself constantly. The whole island is a national park.

10Glaciers

Kongsfjorden & Ny-Ålesund

Kongsfjorden

Kongsbreen · Ossian Sarsfjellet · Airship Mast

The Tre Kroner peaks stand at the head of Kongsfjorden above the fronts of Kongsbreen and Kronebreen. Ny-Ålesund, near the mouth, is the northernmost permanent settlement in the world and now an international research station. The mooring mast used by Amundsen and Nobile to launch the airship Norge over the pole in 1926 still stands on the tundra behind the huts. Land at Ossian Sarsfjellet for the tundra and the view back down the fjord.

11Kayak

Krossfjorden

Lilliehöökbreen · Signehamna · Kayaking

Krossfjorden runs in beside Kongsfjorden and is quieter. Lilliehöökbreen closes the head of it with a glacier front several kilometres wide that curves away on both sides. Launch the kayaks here if the ice allows, which is the right way to register the scale of a calving face, and go ashore at Signehamna, where the remains of a German wartime weather station sit in the moss.

12History

Magdalenefjorden

Magdalenefjorden & Smeerenburg

Gravneset · Blubber Ovens · Danskøya

Magdalenefjorden is short, steep and full of ice. At Gravneset, on the spit inside the entrance, are about 130 whalers' graves, dug between the early 1600s and the late 1700s. Continue to Smeerenburg on Amsterdamøya, the Dutch whaling station whose name means Blubber Town, where the fused remains of the try works are still visible in the gravel. Walrus often haul out on the same beach. Danskøya, next door, is where Andrée launched his balloon for the pole in 1897 and was not seen again for thirty three years.

13The Ice

The Ice Edge

North Past 80 Degrees

Pack Ice · Above 80°N · Ice Watch

Turn north out of the fjords and run until you meet the ice. In July the edge of the pack usually sits somewhere north of 80 degrees, and its exact position changes with the season and the wind, so the day is navigated rather than scheduled. Work along the edge in open water where the floes loosen, which is where the hunting is and where bears, bearded seals and ivory gulls are most often found. Twenty four hour daylight means there is no wrong time to be on deck.

14Glaciers

Monacobreen

Liefdefjorden

Southbound · Five Kilometre Glacier Front

Come south into Liefdefjorden on the north coast. Monacobreen closes the head of it, a broad tidewater front named for Prince Albert I of Monaco, who surveyed this coast on his oceanographic campaigns of 1906 and 1907. Hold off the face and wait. Sail south overnight for Isfjorden.

15Disembark

Longyearbyen

Isfjorden · Disembark · Flights via Oslo or Tromsø

Enter Isfjorden in the morning and come alongside at Longyearbyen, at 78 degrees 13 minutes north the largest settlement in Svalbard and the northernmost town in the world with scheduled flights. Disembark after breakfast. Longyearbyen connects to Oslo and Tromsø, and there is enough in the town, from the Svalbard Museum to the old mine workings on the hillsides, to justify staying a night at the end.