Sail to Svalbard

On seeing the book my immediate thought was that I wished that I had had it on board when I sailed to Svalbard (Spitzbergen is just the western island) in 2001 but my confidence was shaken by the first word of the Contents – “Preperations”. Despite a repeat on the next page, it corrected itself at the third repetition. In fact I quickly realised that the book has been poorly translated from Norwegian with many spelling mistakes and bad grammar. Why didn’t the publishers give it to an English speaker to correct? There are plenty around in their town, Sandefjord. There are innumerable typos and many of the photos in the review copy have vertical white scratches. Many of the 98 pages are extracts from the log of the yacht with four pages on one grounding incident and most of the photos are not relevant to navigation. Half a page of a man walking on a “grovel” (sic) covered hill and another of a bit of Bear Island just visible through fog are less than necessary. There are however brief descriptions of, I would guess, nearly all possible anchorages but very little about passage pilotage.

Yes, I would have bought this book but only as a second opinion on anchorages. Volume 7 of the Norwegian Pilot, in (correct) English and Norwegian, is infinitely to be preferred with its clear chartlets and relevant photos.

 RHR

27 July 2011