Our NEW BOAT Changes Everything │ Svalbard Our NEW BOAT Changes Everything │ Svalbard Our NEW BOAT Changes Everything │ Svalb

Okay so it's been some changes this year. Last year you saw us drive another boat in the end of the season. We actually bought that boat. Welcome back to Svalbard everyone. Spring has arrived and summer is racing in right behind it. The snow is starting to melt and as snowmobile season comes to a close a new and exciting time of year begins. Boat season! If you've been around for a while you'll know that in summer the only real way to explore is by heading out onto the fjords. Longyearbyen, our main village, has only a handful of roads and none of them go much beyond town. The furthest you can drive is to places like Adventdalen or Björndalen where we live. And since you're only allowed to walk on the tundra when it's not snow covered for these four months the ocean becomes the only road out. Yeah when we bought the cabin we was planning to use the big boat but when we used this one we saw how easy it was and how difficult it was with the big boat. In bad weather it's almost impossible to lay there so this is excellent. Our off-grid cabin is located in a place called Kols Bay. At first glance the bay looks wide and easy to navigate but it's actually full of some hidden obstacles. For example if you steer too close to the abandoned town you need to watch out for debris, especially the old dock foundation that stays hidden just beneath the surface at high tide. On the opposite side of the fjord it's so shallow for so long that our big boat can't get anywhere near the shore. It sits too deep in the water and if you leave it anchored offshore you have to keep a constant eye on it. The weather here changes quickly and strong winds or shifting currents can easily cause it to drift or run aground. But the boat that the cabin owner used is perfect for this spot. It has an aluminum hull so you can bring it right up to the shore. That makes it easy to unload everything, my gear, supplies and of course Grim, before anchoring it to the buoy and heading to land with the dinghy. It's pretty ideal. When we took over the cabin the 26th of August he asked us if we want to buy the boat but we said no because we wanted to try the big boat and it was not so easy so we decided to borrow this boat last season and it worked so good so we bought it and it can you can be used for so much more than to the cabin. We can go on we can go out take photos easy and exploring around so this is a really good day trip boat in small boat. So this was not according to the original plan but after we borrowed it like Christopher said and we saw just how easy it is we just made a decision to make our lives a little bit easier. So we are still keeping the big boat because it is such a cool boat that was such a great find and we will never find something like that again at that like low price point that we bought it at so we're keeping that one but we're not putting them in the water at the same time so we're gonna you know since we're going full in on my cabin life at the moment which is a luxury to be able to do we decided to just put this boat in the water for this year and then you know every season we'll evaluate but we won't have boat in the both in the water at the same time because we only have one boat space but let's do a boat tour and now we're also gonna head out and show you why this is such a cool boat because we're gonna go to the glaciers on the other side and see what it looks like and you know just go out in nature and start the season. Come aboard and I'm gonna take you on a tour. As you see it's not the biggest boat so it's a day trip but small boat you need heating so we have a heater here it's a Webasto. Grim is wearing a life vest of course but he's gonna be hysterical for a little bit because it's the first trip. Torsten put up a good set for fishing so we have the fishing rod here that's excellent the heart of the boat the hearts it's two of them it's two mercury 250 horsepower so it's a quite fast boat goes super fast it's like a supercar and a small dinghy here so we can get to land we manually take up and down this one but it works quite nice it's a good system not as good as a big cabin cruiser of course but like it is what it is when you have outboard engine. Okay the name on the boat now is Polar Tussa and Tussa is the dog that Heidi and Torsten used to have used to take care of so it's polar for the Arctic and Tussa. So is this going to be Polar Grim? Polar Grim or maybe Polar Fjellan. Yeah I think Grim you don't get this boat because you hate this boat so much that it would be it would be a shame to make it after him we're not gonna do that so well let's we're just gonna leave it Polar Tussa for now. Yeah right now I think we're gonna do next year we're gonna do some painting on the boat. Yeah because it's green and we I think we found a I don't know a bluish one that we're gonna use. Yeah it's like a glacier. Yeah very much glacier. The inside I don't know I just bought some carpets that I put in it's not the most beautiful thing but at least it's gonna Grim is comfortable to walk on it so I put it in. Okay so this boat is small but quite roomy anyway I would say the main goal here is to have a lot of space to put stuff because it's not a passenger boat right but I do love this little table like we're not going to use it except now this is always down we just have our sandwiches here at the moment but I mean when we go up to the glacier and everything then you can put it up and have coffee if you want but this is definitely much more of an adventure boat so it's you know it's for speed and it's for kind of exploring so there's no kitchen in Cali there's no coffee maker there's nothing in here I don't even have a coffee maker here but I think Christopher you bought me a latte yeah so you have to buy everything to go but so what I'm sitting on here is a little couch in here there's a bunch of storage we have life vests here we have survival suits here and that's basically it for this area we have a little corner here today yeah it's not going to do anything is it I know it's scary this is the captain chair here we have everything we need the boat had a solar panel vof radio of course and up here in Svalbard we only use Garmin Garmin is the best up here because the maps go all the way up to the north of Svalbard so that's what we use up here really really good weather it's so quiet this boat as well if you compare it to the other one so this was definitely the way to go with Grimm he has calmed down so much since I put him here we tried up here as well but it was just it's like this is not the best place for him to sit it's too high but so when he's sitting like this in between my legs I can actually hold on to him with my legs so he doesn't have to worry about like falling around and I can really feel that he started or stopped you know shaking and everything so that's very very nice we are halfway now I think or a little bit more and it's starting to the glaciers you love the ocean you did so well now this is absolutely unreal Kristoffer look at this it's one of those rare days on the ocean this morning I looked out and Kristoffer was already in town doing things and I'm like wait a minute we should be going out because he put the boat in yesterday so we just decided on a whim and like the weather is perfect let's go but so what I was gonna say is now that we're getting close to the glacier we're gonna have to start looking out for ice you always kind of have to look out for ice but definitely even more here because driving into ice could ruin the propellers on your motor and boat and literally strand you so what we usually do is now that we're getting closer we slow down and one person is on ice duty this is so insane I'm wondering how close we can get to this glacier this is the anchor for the cabin of sweet cabin so the polar bear has been eating playing with it oh my god you're kidding you're doing so well you could be the boatiest of both dogs and you decide to be the scariest of scaredy dogs scaredest of standard dogs there we go you could be the captain man no I should be wearing my uh life vest we'll bring them out don't worry I'm a king of the world I'm a queen of the ocean oh it is so dark how deep do you think it is here oh my gosh look at it's like uh 77 meters 77 meters and it's not even that's not even that deep you know but just imagine what's underneath here crazy how warm is it today two degrees must be two degrees the sun is very very toasty this is the first trip so I made a little mistake as always on the first trip I forget everything I the binoculars literally the one thing you want so you can like check out wildlife and see where you're going yeah I forgot those what can you do first trip whoa I'm not just going whoa we are driving into Borabukta but there is a park here that is super shallow we have arrived now we are gonna do ourselves a little bit of a picnic we bought sandwiches and coffee so we're gonna drink that outside in the sunshine we're just gonna figure out how to give Grim some water which I brought for him he's hysterical again because he thinks that we're going into uh going ashore but we're not so he's super hyped he almost tried to jump off the boat onto the ice as well so I had to pull him back he's like I'm going guys I'm going we're not sandwich one sandwich two I'm hungry and I have to pee and Christopher told me that he has a peeing solution for me on this boat so we're gonna check that out as well that's today's option okay Grim we forgot to bring you a bowl it's a combi cup how does it feel nice give us a little bit of a debrief of uh starting this season with the new boats yeah excellent tour boat like a day trip boat so easy to get into areas with a lot of ice isn't that so cool this is why it's good to have a steel boat have a steel boat aluminum aluminum look at that so beautiful living on Svalbard means being surrounded by wild raw nature but it's the glaciers that truly steal the show I still remember the first time I saw one staggering in scale it completely blew me away what struck me most though was the color I never imagined ice could hold so much depth and variation they shift with the seasons in winter they take on soft whites and muted blues mirroring the snow and sky around them in summer they glow with rich teals and vibrant blues that almost don't feel real over half of Svalbard is covered in glaciers many formed three to four thousand years ago standing before them feels like standing before a time capsule listening to what you can do early in the season is actually go and anchor your boat to this so people do that they go a bunch of people or just alone and then you anchor along this that's pretty cool then you do need to get what is this like ice anchors is that what it's called I don't know the ones that they use when they do like glacier caving yeah so ice screws I think it's called it's yeah it's really cool so you can like screw into the ice by just I don't know if that makes any sense but yeah so you can do that here we are in our boat may beautiful weather eating a sandwich with the glacier yeah so we tried the no we just borrowed the boat to be able to get to the cabin he was so kind to let us borrow it and after that we were hooked and we just said oh no and we bought it but we're gonna keep our big boat snap yellow because that's still something so rare it was such a find for such a good price it's such a good Svalbard with the isolated windows and like it's a cool old really old boat isolated boat with a double there we go isolated boat it's winter winter fight yeah winterized oh I feel like I'm all over the place you know I've been on vacation and my brain is in scramble mode so just bear with us while we remember how to do this but okay yeah so this is so exciting I feel like this is a very very good mayday day in may day in may mayday yeah no good it's a very good day in may mayday is never good no but the day in may is good can be good today and today it's good today in may he won't eat because he's upset yeah he won't eat anything because he's mad at us that we're on the boat so he's like edited it up question could you walk on this it looks like it is uh but I think he wants to try uh yeah it looks to be very very thick but also maybe it's a little bit wet yes maybe no walking but everything in me wants to try but maybe not okay that is not the best strife or you're just standing here on the the bow is that what it's called okay I need to hold on to you so you don't knock all the guys into the water what a day I feel like we haven't done a boat trip like this in a really long time where we just go to see something beautiful if we had binoculars we could also look out for polar bears but today we cannot see anything we can only see what's in front of us and nothing else I'm going to show you the toilet situation on the boat that's really luxury here is the toilet this super bucket I have to strap it off and then you can do your thing I think I can pee right as it is there squeeze my little body in maybe so I do need to pee so maybe I should try no maybe so what a beautiful bucket so maybe only number one's here no do you know what you do you maybe you want to do another thing here that's the toilet the super toilet I don't even mind that I do not mind a good bucket toilet as long as there's somewhere to pee and then if you need to do a panic poo you know there's nothing you can do about it but as long as there's a solution for it so you know that if it's necessary you can go then you know there's nothing to worry about if you use toilet paper you have to put it in a like a little bag and then bring it back home and throw away so nothing goes in the ocean except the pee you can throw the pee in the ocean these are big the thing is you never know how much they go under either as you can see there oh here's some small ice but I think that's fine imagine driving into one of those you're kaput we're gonna put some gasoline in the boat this is where you fill up the boats so you can only uh what's it called fill up for boats here you can't come here with a car don't jump I know you want to don't do it okay so you go up there choose your card and then you use these thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed spending the day with us and getting to see more of Svalbard's incredible scenery we're so excited to kick off the season and we'll be heading out to the off-grid cabin as soon as the weather allows if you haven't already make sure to subscribe and as always thank you for being here I will see you next week bye