In the beginning, there was Greensaw, my construction company. 1205 S. 8th Street, my rowhome I renovated and sold for a tugboat in Alaska. A blue Toyota 4Runner bought off Ebay for 1500 bucks that spirited me, at times at the speed of 35 mph as we climbed the Rockies, across the country. Around this time, in fall of 2011, I started this blog.

The original plan called for us to untieJordan Rosen Photography-9752 from Tromsø harbor on April 18th, but a low pressure system with winds out of the east pinned us in town. As we grouped around the computer Rasmus pointed out the Windy app where the low pressure system moved east, while another blow moved in along the coast of Spitsbergen to the north. We had already decided that Bjornaya, Bear Island, in the middle of the Barents Sea, wasn’t going to happen due to the weather and our course. That was fine. We all agreed that we really just wanted to get there. Save Bjornaya for another time.

Five days ago I left the family in Sitka to begin a journey to Tromsø, Norway, the home port of the Linden, the boat pictured above. This will be our home for the next two weeks as we venture north to the Svalbard Archipelago, just sixteen degrees beneath the North Pole.