Barents Sea

We were on a months sailing trip here summer 2006. The sea is mostly calm in summer and it’s sunny and not too cold by my standards.

We did more sea-sailing than we were going to since Russian officials didn’t give us permissions to come to certain ports until just before our trip (which was then too late for planning). Still the sailing itself was nice and the few stops we made were intresting. During our shifts we occupied ourselfs with birdwatching and whalewatching but were quite unlucky and only saw a whale once.

As for the sea itself it was mostly calm as I said apart from a storm we got caught in north of Naryan-Mar. It had waves of up to 4 m and winds of around 8 on the Beaufort scale. A sideboard broke and the front sails set them selfs. Some junk also got caught in the propeller so one of the veterans had to dive down to loosen it, so that we could return to Naryan-Mar and weather off the storm.. We were still stuck in the water for some days.

This was all interesting and adventurous but we were still quite aware that the GMDSS (Global Maritime Distress Safety System) may not be that reliable this far north if you don’t have a large antenna or dish… and of the fact that we indeed didn’t have a big enough one to cut through the storm…