Through the Northern Sea Route by Stena Polaris: A logbook

When the Russian ice advisor Sergey and I arrived in Vardø, high up in north-eastern Norway, we were looking forward to finally embark on the

Stena Polaris

—a 65,000 dwt iceclassed tanker. With great excitement, we boarded the small boat that was to take us to the tanker that drifted some nautical miles from shore. We had been warned the previous evening that the weather forecast was quite bad, and we were unsure if we could embark. As we passed the breakwaters, we realized that the small boat could not handle the big waves well. When we saw the

Stena Polaris

vaguely in the horizon, we could already find that she was rolling quite heavily. After approximately 30 minutes of cutting through waves three to four meters high, we finally made it to the

Stena Polaris

, or so I believed, because the saltwater spray all over the boat’s windows barely enabled us to glimpse outside.