Cruise Spitsbergen 2012 - From Wawel Hill to Mountain Wawel

     The expedition, which is a continuation of the "From Kopiec Kościuszki to Kościuszko Mountain" journey, will set off from Wawel Castle in Kraków and will proceed to the Wawel Mountain - Spitzbergen (Waweltoppen - peak in Pilsudskifjella Mountains, 935 meters, 77°10'N - 015°40'E). We will visit Lofoten, Narvik and Norvegian fiords.
     After reaching Tromso, also known as the Paris of the North, we will prepare for the rough Barents Sea. We’ll travel to Hornsund, where the Polish Polar Station named after Stanisław Siedlecki is located. In 1956 a reconnaissance group led by Stanislaw Siedlecki, geologist, explorer and climber, a veteran of Polish Arctic expeditions in the 1930s was searching the area for the future station. The members of this group were S. Siedlecki, K. Birkenmajer, Maciej Kuczyński, Jerzy Piotrowski and Stanisław Rafałowski. The station was erected in July 1957 by the Polish Academy of Sciences Expedition. It was built from prefabricated parts brought from Poland.
     We will be looking for other Polish, and especially Kraków related traces, in this severe, archipelago, lost in the north. The name of our expedition is connected with a mountain in Spitsbergen –Wawel Mountain!
     If Neptune and the ice allows us, we would like to sail to Franz Joseph Land, discovered during the reign of the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph I, who was also the emperor of Galician Kraków at the time. On the way back we’d like to visit the Orkney Islands and the Shetlands and then make our way back to Gdańsk via the Bergen and Danish straits.
     The yacht is perfect for such expeditions: it has all the necessary equipment for professional yachts sailing in these regions, as required by British specifications. After all, Nashachata II is Jonathan IV, which has spent the last three years sailing Arctic seas.