On the 19th of May, in the dark of an arctic spring night, MS Malmö came into port in Molde Norway on its way from Gotenburg Sweden to Svalbard. In its hold where our 3 kayaks (Zegul Arrow Empowers), safely stowed, that had been transported all the way from Sweden (thanks to Zegul Kayaks for shipping them there a couple of weeks earlier to their local dealer KanotCentrum), at the dock to greet the vessel was our team member PG. MS Malmö had come into port a day early and was only stopping now for 5 mins, just so PG could throw some 46 litres of white gas, boxes of equipment and food plus two 215 ltr barrels filled with food for our food drop that the MS Malmö will place for us at the north eastern point of Spitsburgen Island. For this service MS Malmö charged us minimal fees as a support for our trip as they where heading that way anyway to run adventure cruise trips with a friends company Vega Expeditions, for which we are very grateful.
PG up to this point has been doing a lot of prep for this pick up day at the dock, organizing team
gear and food for heading up, and just a week ago was in the UK for a work trip and on the way home picked up a huge shipment of freeze dried food. we had asked Adventure Food Holland to ship it to PG there (in the UK) to avoid extra duties from sending to Norway and thus saving us hundreds of dollars.
All of our food for the trip in one big postage pile in the UK
PG wrote to the team in an email about the experience
PG with 8 bags of freeze dried food heading back to Norway
“I picked up all the food in UK yesterday, a HUGE load with 8 big bags-approx 180 kg!
…and I was super lucky to get it all back here free of charge, due to a very nice girl at the counter and some misunderstandings. Custom police showed up massively once we arrived, but they were obviously looking for someone and something else:)
All in my basement now-will start to separate it into 3 piles for each of us and then see how much we can get into the depot part. Rest will be packed into individual bags and shipped with the boat.
Still 20 May we are aiming for regarding pick-up, but will call them tomorrow again for confirmation (holiday here today)”
We are now well underway in to the final preparations for the trip with Tara winding down work in NZ and getting together her gear and our custom down jackets from Wear On Earth NZ, extra team clothes from Ice Breaker NZ, our piles of freeze dried fruit from FRESH AS NZ. Meanwhile I am preparing to leave the USA to Canada with all our Kokatat paddle clothing, our Iridium GO sattelite phone system from BlueCosmo Seattle, and various other pieces of camera equipment and sponsor gear. Wind Paddle Sails, Goal Zero Solar Chargers, Five Ten Shoes, Water Shed dry bags e.t.c.
Less than three weeks until we all meet in Norway at PG’s house.
until then our kayaks and gear await us on Svalbard…. it is still hard to believe that after 6 years of talking about this trip, it is about to happen.
~Jaime~
All the Best!