Today we have sailed through Forlandsundet, investigated three potential ports of refuge in Krossfjorden, two in Magdalenafjorden, one in Bjørnfjorden and in about three hours we will reach the last one for today. Magdalenefjorden is one of the most visited places on Svalbard, approximately 22.000 tourists every year. Per Kyrre Reimert from Sysselmannen is like a live history book, and tells us short but facinating stories about each location. There has been whalers and seal hunters since the 16th century at Svalbard. For each port it has been discussed how large vessels are possible to anchor up, is it possible to close the area with oil retention systems, are there any special sea animals or birds that uses the area for certain times of the year, what's the typical weather and ice conditions, cultural monuments, tourist attractions, navigational considerations, and last but not least, available communication infrastructure. Actually, most systems, including VSAT but excluding mobile GSM, worked rather well all the way up to Magdalenefjorden. Although, at the farther end of Krossfjorden we had only MF/HF and Iridium coverage. This is also the case from Magdelenafjorden and northwards. I have installed an Iridium OpenPort terminal on the vessel, and this terminal seems to work rather well, except for a few dropouts and it has low bandwidth capacity, so that's why you don't see any pictures on the blog today!
Rakel was a lucky girl today; she joined a team on a lightweight boat ("Sjøbjørn") to measure sea depths in Gullyfjorden. Rakel is 29 years old, from Mosjøen, living in Honningsvåg, working for the Norwegian Coastal Administration where she's responsible for the development of ports of refuge in Troms and Finnmark. On this trip to Svalbard she's responsible for taking photographs, register them with time, position and heading. She will also participate in conflict analyses. Like me she's fascinated of Svalbard and we both sincerely believe we have the best job in the world :-)
The work done on this trip is a part of the MarSafe North project, where MARINTEK is project manager, Kongsberg Seatex AS is prime contractor/project responsible, and the Norwegian Coastal Administration is the leader of work package 5 which includes the activities of port refuge at Svalbard. The main objective of MarSafe North is to identify the user requirements and technological possibilities to be able to perform safe and efficient operations in the High North. Take a look at www.sintef.no/marsafe for more information.
We are now approaching the last port of refuge for the day, so I have to go. That's all from KV Svalbard tonight, have a nice evening everyone at home :-)
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