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Adèle was
flying along at 14 knots in a northwesterly breeze with the apparent wind just
forward of the beam. The sea was smooth, the swell dampened by the pack ice less
than 50 miles to the north of us, and the sky had at last turned blue as we
headed east along the top of Spitsbergen, the main island in the Svalbard
group.
With our crew of eight led by captain André Engblom, we left
Holland less than a month before, sailing directly to Bergen and then following
the Norwegian coast north to the Lofoten archipelago above the arctic circle. We
expected cold weather, but instead met incredible sunshine 24 hours a day
and temperatures of 24 degrees Celsius.
 Approaching pack ice at Seven Islands, north of
Svalbard, 800 miles north of mainland Norway. (Click image to enlarge)
From Lofoten, we voyaged another 700 miles north to
Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard, at 78 degrees north, where we picked up
my friends, including Adèle’s designer Andre Hoek and photographer Rick
Tomlinson. From Longyearbyen, we sailed into the Smeerenburg fjord, on the northwest coast, to document the movement of its glacier. Ninety-nine years
earlier, an expedition led by Prince Albert I of Monaco took a series of photos
showing the head of the Smeerenburg glacier, and we wanted to document
how much the glacier had since retreated.
As we approached the glacier, a cry of "polar bears!" rang out,
and we changed course abruptly. Three bears—a mother and her cubs—were walking
along the shore. We followed the bear family, motoring slowly, but when
Adèle’s
wake splashed the mother, she decided she’d had enough and turned away from the
shore. We returned to the glacier and took Adèle as close as we
dared to take some photos of our one-month-old yacht in front of the age-old
glacier.
 A polar bear lounging, spotted at the northwest
corner of Spitsbergen, Svalbard. (Click image to enlarge)
We then climbed the mountains to find exactly the spot where
the expedition took photographs almost a century before. It appears that the
glacier has withdrawn some 4,000 meters, most of which probably happened in the
last 15 to 20 years.
 Documenting the glacier at exactly the same spot
that prince Albert I of Monaco photographed the glacier in 1906. (Click image to enlarge)
Continuing north, the ice increased and we resorted to motoring as we
approached Phippsöya in the Seven Islands group, the northernmost island in
Svalbard—and in Europe—at 80 degrees 45 minutes north latitude. Though
preferring to eat most of our meals on deck, where we can dine in the protected
main cockpit or just aft of the main mast, neither of these options suited this bitterly
cold evening. We had to retreat downstairs to the deckhouse, although we could
still watch the walruses lounging on the beach. Afterward, we had our coffee while seated around the
fireplace in the salon. The fireplace is an antique we found in Bath,
England, and restored. It can be fired with wood or coal but we normally
prefer cleaner, artificial logs. The next morning, we paid the walruses a visit. They were
basking in the sun, tickling their bellies and generally looking very
content with life, which was surprising as the females were far away in Russia’s
Franz Josef Land caring for their pups.
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