THE BEAR HUNT

LEGENDARY SAILING PHOTOGRAPHER RICK TOMLINSON LEADS A WILDLIFE EXPEDITION SAIL IN SVALBARD

- RICK TOMLINSON

It’s 0600 and I hear movement down below, our guide Marcel going for his shower. I’d woken a couple of hours earlier when I knocked a pillow covering the window and bright, bright, sunlight came streaming in. I couldn’t get back to sleep, we were in an area where polar bears had been recently sighted and I could feel they were out there right now.

Marcel came up, took one look around and calmly said, ‘There’s a bear.” Where? I’d been staring at the same area for two hours and seen nothing, in fact I still couldn’t see it!

We were aboard the expedition yacht Qilak in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard on a photographic expedition that was originally planned to mark a 60th birthday two years ago, but got rescheduled due to Covid. Qilak is a 66ft purpose-built high latitude expedition yacht owned and skippered by Belgian Philippe Carlier, whose unique concept came about after he bumped into designer Merf Owen in a pub in Hamble.

Built at KM Yacht Builders in Holland in aluminium, and launched in 2016, Qilak incorporates many of the skipper’s own ideas as well as the design teams and KMs input. She is distinctive by her outline, tough and functional, yet with a few more comforts than some of the other expedition yachts I’ve worked on.