Aboard the M/V Quest, expedition cruise ship

       CATCHING POLAR FEVER

 

As described in the article below, I succumbed to “polar fever” while visiting Tromso’s Polar Museum (or Polarmuseet) as part of ski trip to Norway’s Lyngen Alps. Thanks to the Wilderness Medical Society’s resources, I found myself working as “ship doctor” for Polar Quest’s summer voyage in Svalbard aboard the expedition cruise ship, M/V Quest a mere four months later.

 

Iceland bound in the Denmark Strait after a brief visit to eastern Greenland, we found ourselves soundly thrashed by a North Atlantic storm, the remnants of Hurricane Ida. With most of the 75 passengers cabin bound and over half the ship’s crew rendered unfit for service, I was forced to consider my role (and fate) as ship doctor if our vessel broke up and sank.

 

Such a fate seemed unthinkable when I was considering the position from the temperate climes of our home in Oregon. Aboard the Quest on this cruise however was Oscar W who experienced the sinking of a similar vessel, the M/S Explorer off the waters of Antarctica the previous year (2007).

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/world/americas/24ship.html

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Explorer_(1969)

 

Learn the conclusion of this sea-faring adventure in the article below…