It was a good thing that the weather was nice for the first half of the trip because by the second week the weather had turned for the worse. It was hard to make landings due to the rough water, so we had some days just on board the ship and I didn’t get much more work done. We spent a couple of days visiting Ny-Alesun and Barentsburg. Ny Alesun is a scientific research station that looks like a quaint little town. Its so isolated that scientists can use the atmospheric readings as controls for what the atmosphere "should" be without all the human pollution. Barentsburg is a Russian settlement, primarly a mining community, but its real purpose is to keep a strategic outpost in the North. The townspeople are essentially trapped in the small snowy village for two years while they work out their contracts-there are no roads to other towns, they don’t have boats or snowmobiles and they cant hike out and camp because they don’t have rifles to protect themselves from the bears.
Since I couldn’t really work, I had fun acting small parts in another artist's film, helped raised the sails on deck and generally rested. During the worst days of sailing, the boat would tilt at a 45 degree angle and it was exhausting just trying to stand up straight. The angle combined with the swell meant that most people stayed on deck trying not to fall overboard or retreated to their rooms to sleep until it was all over. Sleeping meant laying just as much on the wall next to the bed as on the actual bed itself, until the wind changed direction of course and you have to hold on to keep from being thrown out of the bunk.
On the last day of the trip, the cook and crew prepared a five course candlelight dinner for us. The food was very good throughout the trip, but this was truly incredible, especially given the small galley that the cook had to work in. It was probably the nicest meal I have ever had. I was very lucky and grateful that the cook made accommodations for my diet (gluten-free) throughout the trip and I didn’t have to eat peanut butter for two weeks.
Now we are back in Longyearbyen and I will have 30 hours of airports and flights before I will be home.
