Returning to Land

Arrived in the harbor in Bodø this morning around 11am. And not a moment too soon...

This has been a trying week. As you all know, I'm not the most social guy around. In fact, I might even qualify as a misanthrope. ("The hell you say," you reply...) But even a saint might have been tried this past week.

That's not to say there weren't great moments. There were. There was even some connecting going on -- AFTER a stupendous meal of group-caught halibut and (especially after) peer-pressure-induced sampling of the various types of vodka. But for the most part, it was a case of "never the twain shall meet," and rather than get into specifics (and be accused of being yet another Ugly American), let's just leave the week as an incident of divergent cultures.

As a recuperative measure, and to escape the final night of our Polish guests' presence within the close confines of Polar Bear, I've rented a hotel room overlooking the harbor for the night. A solid bed; no one other than me snoring; a long, hot shower with no time limit; a clear mirror in which to shave at an unpressured pace...these are wonderful things, and all unavailable on a charter boat.

The goal is to recuperate before our next charter begins on Monday. An interesting way for an American, ugly or otherwise, to celebrate the Fourth of July: heading to sea en route to Jan Mayen Island with seven Norwegian hikers/climbers. We'll spend a few days there while they try to summit the big volcano at the northern end of the island, and then head south and west to Iceland.

Before that, however, there are two days of cleaning and prepping to do. And I hope to recap a bit of the past week -- highs and lows -- in between boat chores.

There is Magic on Earth

Polar Bear at anchor in the Nevelsfjord near Eidet

Another 3-4am anchor watch. But again, truth be told: the peace and quiet (snoring from throughout the boat notwithstanding) of an anchor watch is worth it.

I went for my longed-for hike yesterday afternoon. It was great to stretch my legs and the scenery on shore was lovely (and again, very Alaska-esque). Spongy bog and muskeg terrain made for a slog, and between the countless watercourses wending their way down from the high country above and the rain-laden trees and undergrowth, I was soaked through in very short order. My hiking sneakers and socks were inundated so that every step was like walking on a sponge -- while wearing sponges on your feet. The volume of water contained by the Earth in this habitat -- in the streams, the bogs, the swampy areas, beneath the hummocks of grass -- is just inconceivable. How much fresh water is there on the planet if all similar terrain at similar latitudes holds similar amounts of water? It staggers the mind.

The flowing water in the area made its way to the sea in many thin cascades that bounded down smoothed-rock mountain slopes of a glacial cirque. Beneath the slate-colored ramparts, the streams gathered into one fast- and clear-flowing torrent in a green plateau of small bushes and thin stands of trees. This creek launched off the ledge and down the final few hundred feet of elevation in a series of loud waterfalls, eventually entering the saltwater at the head of the fjord in a broad fan. While waiting for Boogie to pick me up in Polar Bear's dinghy, I watched several sea trout feed on the detritus carried down from the high country, including one fish that launched itself a good foot-and-a-half clear of the surface in a tail-wagging feeding frenzy.

As Boy Wonder had said, there were several moose-hunting stands in the area. From down low, near the sea's edge, to midway up the cirque, I must have seen half a dozen in just a short time. All were well-built and commanded great views of the terrain before them; I climbed one and found a plastic chair and a .30-06 casing. Unfortunately, the evidence I saw of the moose themselves was limited to tracks along the shore and one pile of moose nuggets.

Later this morning, we'll fire up Polar Bear's engines and head out of this fjord complex and down the coastline back to Bodø. The weather remains truly crappy, with low skies, high winds and periodic sheets of rain, despite a rapidly rising barometer. I suspect that unless things finally clear, we'll find strong winds and potentially lumpy conditions out in the open water. We'll tie up to the public dock in Bodø for the evening and the guests (along with Boy Wonder with his puppy dog, Mr. KIA Crewman, in tow) will depart on the afternoon flight on Friday. Boogie and Marlies and I will have a short time to get Polar Bear cleaned, provisioned and ready before the next set of guests arrive late morning on Saturday for the second of our two cruises here in northern Norway. I'm told these guests are two Polish families, with kids as young as 10, so a more conservative approach to the week of travel will likely be in order, especially if the weather remains this challenging.

Summer Solstice...and Back to the Mainland

Time for another anchor watch.

Upon leaving Trollfjord, we retraced our steps toward Lillemolla but kept right on going...for another 70 miles or so back across the open water to the mainland. With gale warnings in the forecast, Boogie wanted to get back to within striking distance of Bodø in case things got really nasty. So we're now anchored at the head of a fjord near a tiny settlement named Eidet. It's not far (as the crow flies) from Mannbåer, our anchorage last Saturday, but this time we're on the other side of the mountains from the open water, the fjord we're in having snaked east and south and back around west.

And as if in response to yesterday's observation regarding wildlife, once into this fjord we were surrounded by a pod of pilot whales, some of whom swam quite close to the boat. And after they'd wandered off, a couple of otters could be seen on shore along the waterline. Boy Wonder says there are several stands for hunting moose in the canyon above our anchorage, so I'm hoping a hike might reveal one of those critters.

That might happen. We're not heading anywhere later this morning. Instead, we'll stay on the hook here and people will kayak and fish in the protected waters, or hike on shore, while up along the ridges and out in the open water, the storm rages. You can see the low clouds racing over the mountaintops above, and yesterday's sail including a raucous stretch near suppertime when we bounced and rolled beneath low skies and cold rain while running under yankee sail alone. Poor Marlies was cooking a huge pot of noodles with peanut sauce while Polar Bear rocked from side to side through 90 degrees or more.

Given the crappy weather and a change in the watch, I adjourned to my bunk around 6pm and observed the solstice all snug in my sleeping bag with the lee cloth securely fastened to keep me in my bunk rather than on the cabin floor. I plugged in the iPad and noise-canceling headphones, listened to some music and, shortly after the 6:16pm solstice, nodded off for an hour's nap. Then it was up for the remainder of the run to this anchorage, which we made at about 1am this morning. A long day, to be sure.

But later today is all about having fun, so once this watch is over (in 10 minutes) I'll head back to bed knowing that I won't have to get up again in less than an hour to shove off. Instead, I'll tuck in and sleep as long as my body (and the noise of 15 other passengers) allows.

I just poked my head out of the hatch to check our position (all good) and noticed a couple of tiny spots of blue sky scattered in among the scudding clouds. A waterfall can be heard from the thick, green woods on shore. And the broad, rocky cirque that forms the headwall above the canyon is littered with gossamer waterfalls as well; it's all quite lovely (yet again), so, yes: I'm thinking a hike will be in order today. Who knows? Maybe I'll even conjure some more haiku.

Haiku on the High Seas

We've been seeing a lot of these jellyfish on our journey this summer

I met a German woman named Lynn on the dock shortly before leaving Nusfjord yesterday. She asked me about the iPad case I was using (I was on deck, checking email one last time just before Polar Bear sailed) and we talked about the various accessories available to those who've devoured the Apple Kool-Aid over the years. I mentioned that I also used the bluetooth keyboard (I'm using it now) when I was writing and that took our brief discussion into literature. Language segued into poetry which segued into haiku.

So while Polar Bear headed out of Trollfjord today I sat on the foredeck, pulled out my little moleskine journal (thanks, H) and dabbled. Bear in mind: while I love poetry, I'm a horrible and completely incompetent poet. "Roses are red, violets are blue" would be an epic were I to have penned such verse. And bear in mind, too, that I regard this blog as simply me puking on a keyboard. So what better than a pathetic attempt at poetry in a post of proverbial vomit?

What the hell?! I'm having fun on this trip; writing poetry is good discipline; and Trollfjord was a lovely, peaceful place with which quality haiku-writers could do wonders. And dammit: this here be my blog. So, you've been warned. Here goes:

Trollfjord waterfall:
downy flow in emerald wall
To or from heaven?

Journey to Trollfjord
Sky and earth, water and rock
paint your name on cliff?!

SoCal sprawl, decay,
Graffiti on Trollfjord cliff
Koyanisqatsi
(semi-obscure film reference...go with it)

Slate seas and gray skies
Mercury is falling fast
Gale warnings are up (or: Hatches are battened)

The Fjord of Trolls

Yes, Trollfjord. The fjord of trolls, I guess. A tourist destination, nonetheless, due to its beauty. So much so that the regional ferry, the Hurtigruten, and cruise ships divert into this two-kilometer cleft while on their runs.

As you enter the fjord, the waterway narrows to just over a hundred yards wide. The vertical cliff faces leap out of the water and tower over the boat, while wispy waterfalls cascade from the heights in a series of steps until they reach the sea. Carried on the wind are the songs of unseen birds; perhaps it's just wishful longing on my part, but one song heard several times sounded suspiciously like that of the canyon wren.



Three-quarters of the way in, the fjord widens a bit and the walls slip back away from the water, enabling one to see the high peaks and snowfields that feed the waterfalls. One creek enters the fjord at its head, beside an improbable home and what looks to be a small hydropower facility. Also improbably, many years' worth of morons have painted their names and nationalities and boat names on the cliff walls, the graffiti as out of place here as a condom vending machine in the Vatican.

Also improbable about the whole of this Norway experience thus far is the dearth of wildlife. Since our sea-mammal welcome to Bodo, we've seen a few breeds of seabirds and little else. No whales or dolphins, no seals, few visible songbirds and certainly no megafauna like wolves or mountain sheep or bear. I know I compare Norway to Alaska too often (wrongly and unfairly, I admit), but knowing that such animals don't even exist in the landscape lessens the experience. It's as though there's one piece missing smack dab in the middle of the jigsaw puzzle, and even though you correctly placed 9,999 of the 10,000 pieces, the picture is an imcomplete one.

We did see half a dozen sea eagles as we left Lillemolla this morning. They launched from the rocks along the shore as we passed (they seem to be much more skittish than the bald eagles back in Alaska) and in no time at all soared to great heights, circling on the updrafts in front of the island's cliffs until they were just large specks on the cloudy sky.

Now we're idling at the head of the fjord. A handful of guests have gone ashore for a short hike while another handful are fishing from the dinghy. I don't know what the current game plan is but I'm hopeful we'll do something to observe this evening's solstice. I always try to mark the solstices and equinoxes, no matter where I am; it's the last part of my so-called Zen Taoist New Testament pagan belief structure and part of my insistence that, regardless of ideology, race or nationality, we are all still human animals and part of this self-contained life-support system we call "the universe" and "Earth." And the summer solstice is especially noteworthy here in the land of all-night winter darkness: having the all-too-brief light present 24 hours a day is worth celebrating.

Dateline: Nusfjord, Norway

The village of Reine in the Lofoten Islands

19 June
2045
We motored the few miles from Å this morning. Got an 8am start while the Scots slept; we would have sailed -- the wind was great -- but on that angle of sail Polar Bear would have heeled over at a nice, sharp 45 degrees or so…and all of the Scots on the port side of the boat would have rolled right out of their bunks.

Our arrival was observed by everyone in this picture-postcard village. They all turned out to watch Boogie maneuver the 72-foot beast of a boat into an insanely narrow harbor. I'd have never tried it, not with the narrow waterway, fishing/tour boats already tied up on one side and a shallow spot right in front of where we wanted to tie up. But credit where credit is due: the boy pulled it off.

The fishing village-turned-living museum of Nusfjord

Upon arrival, everyone took off to explore the village. It's actually an ex-fishing village that has been preserved as a tourist destination and historical spot, complete with refurbished fisherman's cabins you can rent, tours you can take and videos of the area's history you can watch. All for a price, of course; and in Norway, the price is quite steep. According to the young guys working in the bar, there are 35 residents -- up from 16 a year ago.

While the now-awake Scots dispersed for an afternoon of kayaking or fishing, I threw on a pair of swim trunks that looked like a painting by the bastard child of Jackson Pollock and Gauguin (but they're the lightest shorts I have) and my Keen hiking sneakers and took off up the one road into Nusfjord for a run. I went about five miles (turned around at the 3-plus kilometer mark) in 41 minutes and felt surprisingly good...not bad for having not run since February in San Diego and for the weather being as hot as it was. And bonus! My knee only ached during and after the run.

I got back to the boat and wandered over the grass-covered rock outcropping to which we were tied (visible on the left in the video I hope to post) and, after much waffling, dove my hot, tired, sweaty ass into that icy fjord. To be honest, it wasn't THAT cold -- bearable but not mindlessly comfortable, cold but not frigid -- and about what I expected. Made my legs and feet feel better, that's for sure, and cleaned the muck of the run right off.

Then I took 'er easy in the afternoon, sippin' a beer in the sun on the restaurant's deck while I got caught up on the world via my laptop. And while I pondered a bunch there, getting sunburned here at the top of the world, I believe I'll keep this post to a travelogue. There will be time for philosophizing later on.

PS: Tried to upload a video I took from the bow as we entered the harbor at Nusfjord but Blogger won't have any of it. I'll try it on my Facebook page.

Comes A Time

19 June
1020
For the first time on this trip -- so, just over a month in -- melancholy has set in. I'm really missing Alaska this morning.

The feeling was undoubtedly set off by our morning motorsail northeast from Å. There, the mountains along the coastline rise steeply from the sea, with a narrow strip of land at the base that provides just enough room for a road and several small villages scattered along that road. The mountains themselves taper from the white of snow at the peaks to the slate and gray of rock forming the upper third, and finally the emerald of lush vegetation covering the lower flanks. Streams and waterways have cut fjords and valleys that provide glimpses back into the heart of the island.

It all recalled Alaska so much that I started thinking about what and whom I've left behind, and what I gave up to come chase this dream. So much so that I even started thinking along the specific lines of, "Well, when I get back to Alaska..." and "I shouldn't have done that" or "I should have done this." It's true: I was second-guessing some of my recent choices to the point where it seemed that I was about to test my theory that I'd rather regret doing something than not doing something.

Not that I have regrets. Yet. I'm still very much into this voyage and I'm happy about the direction my life is taking right now; I remain optimistic that the boldness of my actions is creating opportunities and situations that are where I need to be going at this point in my life. And I'm very happy here in the Lofoten Islands, which are truly spectacular (think: outer coast of the Kenai Peninsula or the northern coast of Prince William Sound...only there are fantastically picturesque little villages, a la Halibut Cove, scattered here and there).

It's just that I miss Alaska and all that my life there entailed. The visual cues of this faraway place put my mind and heart back in my homeland.

File Under "Irony"

18 June
0245
On a 2-3am anchor watch. An anchor watch entails sitting around while everyone else sleeps, making sure the boat doesn't drag its anchor and move on its own into a perilous situation. Sounds dreadfully dull and, if we're being honest here, it's all that and more. Except this anchor watch.

Anchored up in a bay called, I believe, Mannbåen, about 13 miles northeast of Bodo. We motored here yesterday after an invasion of nine guests (eight Scots who are members of a kayaking/outdoor group) and made this short jump in order to get out of town. And here in this small bay, at the base of a sheer cliff protecting our northern flank, looking east up a fjord with Yosemite-like peaks and cliffs lining either side, it was the right call.

Especially sitting here in the cockpit alone. The peace and quiet and solitude is exactly why I head into the outdoors, be it in a boat, on foot, on a plane or any other method. And this particular moment might just be the best moment I've had since I joined Polar Bear more than a month ago in England.

Just three hours ago I crawled into my bunk and amid the cacophony of 15 other people (especially a bunch of Scots on holiday who've been cooped up in planes for many hours) enclosed within the confines of a sailboat, plugged my noise-canceling headphones into my iPad and fired up an application, Ambient. I still have no idea when or why I downloaded the freebie app, but trying to fall asleep in that craziness made the benefits of an app that plays peaceful sounds of birdsong trilling alongside a running river painfully clear. The name of the program? Paradise.

The sounds were indeed peaceful, serene and (thankfully) sleep-inducing, but true paradise had arrived in the form of an hour-long watch, alone, with the midnight sun shining on the snow-dappled peaks and flanks of island mountains all around me and as far as the eye could see. The sound of the ankle-high waves 300 yards distant have replaced the recorded river and real birdsong cascades from the trees just beyond the shoreline. A whisper of breeze flowed past my earlobes, generating a pleasing whistle and a gull splashed in the inky-black water just feet away and looked at me as though expecting a handout. We shared the moment and he went off to more productive locations.

Paradise? No, it's not on a digital tablet, thanks. I've found it in Alaska, in New England, the Rocky Mountains and countless other places. And now it's all around me here in a Norwegian fjord at two in the morning.

Midnight Sun Above the Arctic Circle

I went to the bar on the top floor (the 13th) of the Radisson Hotel for a glass of wine last night and...oh, what a view! It reminded me of the view from the Crow's Nest in Anchorage (atop the Captain Cook Hotel) except Bodo has a lot more charm than Los Anchorage (everyone knows I love Anchorage but that's not much of a stretch, really). Anyway, here are some iPhone photos (complete with a few funky reflections off the windows) of the scenery here in Bodo last night. So with apologies to Ed McMahon: heeeeere's Bodo!

Looking southeast, out over the airport (and airbase)...








...then east over the football (soccer) stadium to some neat-looking peaks (gotta be some climbing out there)...








...and on to the northeast, where you can see the big, snow-covered mountains in the distance...








...now over the harbor and the mountainous islands just northwest of town...








...and finally south over the small-boat harbor and the islands through which we came from Shetland on Monday.








"Sunset" at this latitude at this point in June means the sun dips behind the mountains to the northwest for a bit.










Self-portrait in the midnight sun. The '80s tune "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" fits at this latitude.

Dateline: Norway

The Norwegian coastline from several miles offshore. Bodo is vaguely visible on the waterline in the distance

Arrived in Bodo, Norway, (posts written en route are below) yesterday evening right after dinner. And appearances have turned into reality: it truly is stunning here...helped by bright, warm sunshine. Alaska-like mountains cut by fjords, offshore islands rising out of the sea, dolphins and whales bounding around the bay...I could get used to this.

It is, however, incredibly expensive. Eight bucks for a beer; $18 for a rum-and-coke! But the people are friendly and enjoying the northern summer with its 24-hour sunshine. All eight crew members adjourned to a waterfront bar upon arrival (I had a shower in the harbor facilities first: $5 for 10 minutes) where a couple of serious drunks took a liking to our group and provided some serious entertainment: tall tales of the area's fauna, sparking up a joint on the patio, stumbling to get refills.

Approaching Bodo...a little closer this time

The bartender was a Brazilian guy named Tchiago who came to Bodo a few years ago to play professional soccer a collegiate career at UC-Santa Barbara. Now he tends bar while he starts up a surfing service in the area. You got it: surfing. He gave me the beta on breaks and a place the rents boards and wetsuits out in the Lofoten Islands -- where we're headed on Friday for the first of two, one-week cruises -- so I'm cautiously optimistic that I can grab a wave or two while I'm here, though I can only imagine how expensive a rental board will be.

The Bodo harborfront in warm sunshine

One other observation: in addition to being a lot like Alaska -- think Seward or Valdez, only Bodo is a MUCH bigger city -- it's also kinda like San Diego: fighter jets take off from the nearby airbase pretty much constantly.




The Bodo Welcoming Committee