Wednesday 3rd July 2013 +1hr BST At Sea to Bergen: It¹s All Gas & Gaiters! Well Churches Actually!

Following our departure from Archangel we had 4 days at sea before arriving in Bergen on Saturday morning 6^th July.  Along the way we had several notable encounters that I would like to share briefly with you. First a comment on the weather that throughout our passage, until the last run into Bergen, was calm and sunny. The Captain commented at his Farewell Cocktail Party that he had been astonished by the calm sunny weather in the White Sea, which even at this time of the year can be very changeable with snow showers!  Instead we had enjoyed Midnight Sun on our way back north across the Arctic Circle towards the Barents Sea and the North Cape.

Late in the afternoon of 2^nd July a Code Alpha came across the PA indicating that an emergency had occurred and after dinner the Captain announced that a helicopter evacuation would be taking place around mid-night.  He wanted to get back into Norwegian waters rather than evacuate a fellow guest to an isolated city in the extreme northwest of Russia!  The helicopter had to be flown up from Bodø (About 500 miles south of the North Cape) and so the evacuation did not occur until about 2.00am local time.

The afternoon of 3^rd July saw us passing the site of a large liquefied natural gas (LNG) site (The largest and most expensive construction project in the history of Northern Norway) on Melkøya (island), which processes natural gas from Snøhvit, a natural gas field in the Norwegian Sea, situated 87 miles northwest of Hammerfest. This gas field, according to Wikipedia, has estimated recoverable reserves of 193 billion cubic metres of natural gas, 113 million barrels of light oil, and 5.1 million tonnes of natural gas liquids yielding an annual export capacity of 5.75 billion cubic metres of LNG, 747 thousand tonnes of light oil and 247 thousand tonnes of liquified petroleum gas. The photo is of an LNG tanker being loaded at this site.

The stone/concrete church in Hammerfest (See photo) is equally impressive in a different way.  It was built in 1961 by the architect Hans Magnus and can seat 525 people.