Today was the first of the two sea days that we have between Akureyri and Longyearbyen on Spitsbergen. This area of the North Atlantic is partly called the Greenland Sea towards the Greenland side and the Norwegian Sea towards the Norwegian side, and I have never been able to figure out exactly where the one ends and the other starts. The area is well sheltered from the North Atlantic weather that comes from the south by Iceland and as long as there is no wind from the North, the seas are smooth here. However there can be a lot of wind from the North and therefore we are very lucky with the weather. Nothing but a gentle breeze, temperatures in the mid 40’s (10 oC) and low hanging clouds. May it last for another few days. The only issue with low hanging clouds is that it obscured the top of the island of Jan Mayen, the Beerenberg Volcano.

Still the clouds were high enough to see the cliffs and the end of the volcanic flows that came down this high Volcano (2277 meters) with dark black, green and rusty red colors. The island is 26 miles long and quite narrow. Relatively low in the South West and then ever rising to the summit of the Beerenberg (Dutch for Bear Mountain) at the North Eastern side. The slopes are covered with glaciers and one of them comes all the way down to the water at the western side, so we could see that one as well. Unfortunately the summit itself remained obscured during the sail by, but it is a small price to pay for having this smooth weather and no fog.

Hess1 Hess2

In the mean time I had another thing on my mind and that was my lecture for the crew. Our company is busy with morphing all the shipboard inspections into one live-well philosophy called HESS. Health, Environmental, Safety and Security. Those four things basically cover everything needed for a crewmember to do a good job. This is not a fixed set of rules but more a rolling program that forever looks at new opportunity’s to make the shipboard environment better all the time. That means that all these new challenges have to be communicated to the crew and therefore my colleague and I do during our respective periods onboard a HESS lecture. In two sessions all the crew attends and most of them appreciate it very much as they can now see the framework behind all the plans and idea’s that the head office sends to the ships.

Tomorrow we will have another sea day before we come to Spitsbergen. The weather seems to be holding and means that the sightseeing that is planned after our call at Longyearbyen might work out as planned.