Akureyri, Iceland

Gonna fire one off the cuff here…

Sitting in a bookstore in the small city of Akureyri, Iceland. It’s on the north coast, at the end of a 30-plus-mile fjord, and it’s an interesting city.

As we motored toward the city yesterday morning, there was universal agreement on board Polar Bear that the town was kinda ugly. And it was, because all we could see at the north end of town was the industrial side of things: dry docks and factories and commercial-fishing boats and the like, all beneath a depressing, gray overcast.

Pardon the interruption: Whoa! A DeHavilland Beaver on floats just took off from the fjord! Takes me back to the AK…! Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

But after we turned the corner to the dock, things took a turn for the better. The town climbs a hill to the west and plateaus out before rising up into mountains a few kilometers distant. An interesting, modern-style church adorns the hillside right next to the main road leading up from the waterfront. A small promenade is quaint and charming and people — a lot of them tourists — meander around the various shops.

Atop the hill, a municipal pool complex was our destination after we cleaned the boat and checked in with customs. And oh…what a treat! A 43-degree (Celsius) hot tub, steam room, water slides…all were available to us for about $3. Yes, $3 — I don’t think we’re in Norway anymore, Toto. A decadent hour or so of lounging in the facilities, followed by a shower and shave, and I was a new man and Akureyri was looking like a new town.

And today, in the sunshine that has just broken out from the clouds, it’s looking even better. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to explore, which is why I’m
writing this post on the fly: I’m headed to the airport in an hour or so to fly to Reykjavik for the evening and then on to Boston in the morning. So exploration of Iceland will have to wait, and given the schedule changes for Polar Bear’s season, I may just make some time come September.

Now, though, I’m heading back to Polar Bear, and back to the United States.

Haiku, Part Two

I promised a friend that I was going to try to write one haiku per day on this Bodø-Jan Mayen-Iceland journey. As has been my tendency throughout life, I got lazy and blew off the task.

So while on watch this afternoon I whipped out my little moleskine (oh, you cheeky monkey, you!) and scribbled. As with my past haiku efforts, you are hereby warned not to proceed unless you can stomach infantile poetic efforts by one with less than zero skill in such matters. With that caveat out of the way, here goes…

(NOTE: For those who aren’t familiar with haiku, this is actually several attempts (17, to be exact) since haiku is a three-line poem of strict format.)

Blue sky overhead
Fog obscures the horizon
Alone on the sea

Deep blue underneath
white wings stretching to the sky
Bird sails to the sun

White specks on deep blue
Bird on the sea, boat in the sky
Same destination

Southward on the wind
Iceland hides in the distance
Warm sun on our backs

Our shadow points south,
hull and sails on the same course.
North Pole hides my heart

Great Circle route or
shortest line between two loves?
Boat points south, heart north

Southward bound to where?
On a sphere, all paths lead home
North to the future

Spherical planet
Going south means going north
leaving, arriving

Small blue dot in space
This is all we’ll ever know:
grain of sand and sea

Fulmars squawk, sea rolls
fog drifts before northern sun
mares’ tails point southeast

Ear flaps up, gloves off
north wind cold but we head south
summer has returned

Summer has returned?
Or: we head south to summer?
Far south, it’s winter

Summer and winter:
Strange names on a calendar
with no start or end.

Ear flaps up, gloves off
sun shines through long northern night.
Birds prep for flight south

Winter is long, dark
Birds stock up for migration
Sun shines high in north

Solstice is now past
sun dips below northern edge
Earth returns southward

Solstice may be gone
sun warm on upturned faces
winter’s not here…yet.

The Coast of Iceland

We’re about 20 miles off the north coast of Iceland now, 30 from the mouth of the fjord we’ll enter to head to Akureyri. From there, it’s another 30 or so to the dock, so we’re about 10 hours from tying up and being finished with this expedition.

My watch starts in half an hour and runs until 3am. Given the timing, this will likely be my last official watch of the trip as well. Boogies mixed up the lineups for the leg from Jan Mayen: I’ve been teamed up with two 50-something physicians from Oslo. Nice guys, both of them named Tore (pronounced: “TOR-uh” with that rolled R that Americans are largely incapable of pronouncing), they have some sailing in their backgrounds and are both very active. They’ve run the New York Marathon and, as you might expect, climb mountains. Both are personable and intelligent, too, so it’s been an enjoyable watch detail this trip.

And as always, it’s with mixed emotions that I near port. Offshore passages are, to be honest, pretty exhausting, even when there’s not a lot of work to be done — as on this trip. But the motion of the boat, the wind, the short sleep stints…it all adds up to being a fatigue-producing effort. Throw in current conditions — thick fog, an island off our starboard beam, several fishing boats at work — and the workload that was so small suddenly ratchets up a couple of notches.

But on the plus side, there is the joy of simply being at sea: sailing on the wind (conditions permitting), birds and dolphins coursing by, the deep blue water, the freedom. I always fear these things could disappear from my life forever upon tying up to a dock and going ashore. I know they won’t but there’s always that fear.

Switching gears: Boogie said that the tenor of my posts had been on a downward trajectory since the trip started back in May. I went back and examined this here blog and I don’t see it, but just in case some of you do, let me stress the fact that I’m having a great time out here. Any negative vibes that come through are due to two factors: one, the introspection that this trip and this whole stage in my life has engendered, and two, the shennanigans with the owners changing the boat’s (and my) plans for the year.

The first factor, the introspection, is the main reason I’m out here. Yes, there’s the learning-more-about-operating-a-boat aspect to the trip, but that’s clearly less important in the long run than figuring out what the hell to do with my life, boat or no. The navel-gazing I’ve been doing — and my apologies to all who’ve bothered to read such tripe — is my way of following Robert Frost’s “through” directive. I’ll come out the other end at some point, I promise.

The second factor, well, ’nuff said on that one. As you may have read, I’m pissed at the owners and what their timidity and stupidity have done to plans made by both friends of mine and me, and their callousness when confronted with the news that hey, you clowns are jerkin’ us around.

So any negativity that comes out from either of those factors is either me working through things or me venting, and I beg your indulgence. On top of that, my mother says she prefers when I get more of me and less travelogue into this gibberish, so I’m searching for a balance between the two. Again: your indulgence, please.

At any rate, we’re nearing the end of this leg, and I’m nearing the end of the first half of this summer of soul searching at sea. I’m looking forward to getting back to the States in a couple of days and sleeping in a stable, wide bed for a bit. The posts will continue; it is to be hoped that the change in venue will provide an equivalent change in perspective, a new way of looking at these same things, so to speak.