Moffen Island

Nautical charts are chock-full of islands.

On some days we pass by one every now and then. Other times there are so many around us that we have to meander among them. Some are little more than rocks rising to the surface, large boulders. Others are islets, places where you could go build a hut, take a nice walk, spend some time.

There are so many, and one gets so used to avoiding them, that I almost never feel sad to pass by their side without visiting them. But from time to time a mechanism of curiosity, of illusion, of whim, jumps. Sometimes an island just calls out to you, although there are not so many occasions when you can afford to take the time to visit the place. Normally, the weather, the expedition, the trip, prevents you from disembarking on them.

Those are occasions to practice compliance, to remember that we already have everything we need to be happy. But those moments are not at odds with our tintinesque side. To take a good pair of binoculars and get as close as the seabed allows you. Scout out, poke around. What seabirds have come to see you?; what is the vegetation, does it have pretty colors?; are there trees, flowers?

This time there will be little vegetation. Moffen Island is a tiny one above the eightieth parallel in the Arctic. At such high latitudes there are no trees, there is no vegetation of any kind reaching more than five centimeters off the ground.

After reading everything that is available on board about the island, we know that if we manage to pass very close by we could see a good colony of walruses that have taken up residence there.

Barely three meters high, the island is very low. We were already very close but we could not see it. With the help of the radar we set a course for the southernmost cape.

We were going to pass a little more than three hundred meters. Behind the white curtain, gently the fog began to indulge us with scenes:

First the outline of the island with a distinctive navigation sign of stacked red timbers. Then, out of the middle of that cloud, as if in a dream, a family of walruses appears huddled together.

And at the southernmost point, at the moment when we were closest to the islet, coming to greet us, cheerful, friendly, brave, with their whiskers and those big tusks, there they were: their most curious inhabitants.

Kenneth Perdigón. Skipper.

22th August 2021