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For the last four years, the rock festival Aldrei For Eg Sudur has been held during Easter in Isafjordur. It started as a crazy idea by the great musician Mugison, a local artist and his dad, Papamug, the local harbour master.

Now, the first trip of the season is finished. It was a ski trip to the Glacier Fjords with a group of Icelandic skiers and snowboarders. The weather forecast was pretty nasty but it turned out ok and we were able to ski all when we wanted but the crew did not get much sleep on the third night.

The last few days have been very busy working on getting AURORA ready for its first trip in the beginning of April. We had a lot of help last weekend insulating the sides, painting and setting up the kitchen cupboards.

Borea Adventures doesn’t only do adventure trips on the good ship AURORA. We also offer all kinds of other adventure activities on land and at sea. This week we had a great group of PhD students from Pittsburgh, USA on a multi adventure spring-break holiday. We did cross-country skiing, kayaking, horseback-riding, mountain climbing, ice climbing, bathing in outdoor and indoor hot pools and last but not least we built an igloo where the whole group slept for one night. Soon we will post a few pictures from the trip and a link to the group’s blog but here is a “postcard” greeting we received from the group when they left.

The International Polar Year is huge, exciting scientific campaign focusing on the polar regions. It is also and unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate, follow and get involved with cutting edge science in real time.

There is an ongoing debate in Iceland about the future of the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve and the neighbouring areas such as Jökulfirðir (Glacier fjords) and the Drangajökull ice cap. One of our favorite spots is the beautiful Leirufjörður fjord. This is one of the Jökulfirdir fjords where a small glacier runs from the ice cap down to the bottom of the valley and a muddy glacial river runs from there and into the fjord. We quite often anchor in this fjord in our trips and people often hike up to the glacier. A year and a half ago a man who owns part of the land in the fjord brought a bulldozer over the mountain and built a road right down into the most scenic part of the valley. This was done without permit and against all rules and logic. We have been quite vocal in our fight against this and are going to continue to fight for this guy to clean up after himself and remove the road. As it is now, this is the only access into this area for motorized vehicles and we want to keep it free of cars and trucks for the future. A good friend of ours and one of the neighbouring landowners is (understandably) very upset about this road-building and he wrote a very good article in a local paper where he his arguing that we should let the land have the benefit of doubt and keep it free of cars and other motorized vehicles. The article is in Icelandic so unfortunately it will only benefit our Icelandic visitors…. later I may find time to translate it.

“For a business so closely involved in sailing, it is somewhat ironic how little time most of us have to actually get out on the water. It was therefore doubly ironic that my first sail of the season coincided so perfectly with one of the increasingly rare “cold snaps” the forecasters seem so fond of referring to.” Tim Hedges, Race Director for the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race tells us about their skipper selection program.

The weather has been very stable in Iceland for the last two weeks with hardly any wind and constant blue skies. The temperature has drop down to two figures on some days but the lack of wind makes it very nice with crystal clear air and the colour of the sky varies from light red in the morning, to turkish blue during the day.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ” Henry David Thoreau wrote this over 150 years ago in his cabin on Walden Pond. We too like to seek inspiration from nature and spend as much time as we can outdoors. We love to share this with like-minded people – this is the main reason for us to start the Borea Adventures operation.

With prevailing westerly winds recently the sea ice is coming close to the shores of the West Fjords. Actually it is now forecasted that ice may close the shipping lanes around the NW of Iceland and into some of the fjords. Attached here is a sattellite photo with the ice edge sketched on as of today.