13-Sep-2011 -- While being on a ship cruise to north Svalbard with the Swedish ship Origo hard winds to the north made the captain choose a tour in calm weather in the Kongsfjorden area around 79 degrees north. After a zodiac visit to the marble caverns on Blomstrandöya, there was a chance to reach the point 79Nx12E, about half way between the caverns and the ship. I asked the zodiac driver, Heiko, to make an attempt, and he actually ran the zodiac exactly across it (0.00 m according to the GPS distance to the point). Since the zodiac was run at some speed, I could not get a reading with all zeroes in the minute value, but I got one with 79 degrees 00.020 minutes N, 11 degrees 59.817 minutes E, which is 77 metres from the exact point. I took the four pictures of the place between 0 and 77 m from the spot. I used a new tilt-shift lens, and in the excitement, I didn't observe, that the tilt had changed to 5 degrees, so the images are sharp only at the center, sorry. The confluence visitors besides me were Robert, Paal, Sven, Evgenij, Merel, Christian (visitors-1), Heiko and Hilde (visitors-2). Since I have no agreement with my accompanying visitors, I only refer to them in the narrative, not in the Visitors beside me list.

Due to the low light and vibrations, the GPS proof image is quite blurry. It is taken before the waypoint is stored. Therefore I also submit an image of the stored waypoint (which is possible to edit afterwards and therefore is no proof).

About an hour before the confluence visit, there was a green flash at the sunset with a duration of 5 - 6 seconds and extremely brilliant. The picture I took was totally overexposed, because I couldn't realize, that the flash would be so strong. The sky was cloudless, there was no wind and the temperature of the water and the air was the same (1 C). The sun is setting very slowly at this latitude, so the conditions for a green flash were absolutely the best.

Blomstrandöya is now an island due to the general retreat of glaciers on Svalbard. Some decade ago it was connected to the main island Spitsbergen by a glacier and thus called Blomstrandhalvöya (Blomstrand peninsula).