Svalbard, an archipelago roughly the same size as the UK with a population of around 3,000 people, is about as remote a place as you could keep a boat.
It is some 3,000km north of Oslo and closer to the North Pole than it is to mainland Norway. In a harbour full of Botnia Targas and Nord-Stars, Geir Kaasa’s 2017 Axopar 37 Cabin and its twin 300hp Yamaha outboards cuts a dash.
The first recorded landing on the islands of Svalbard dates to 1604, when an English ship landed at Bjørnøya, or Bear Island, and started hunting walrus. Annual expeditions soon followed, and Spitsbergen became a base for hunting the bowhead whale from 1611.
The archipelago features an Arctic climate, although with significantly higher temperatures than other areas at the same latitude. The flora take advantage of the long period of midnight sun to compensate for the polar night.