We are finally here! We are back at home!
Sorry for the little silence since Katre last time posted about our arrival. We really needed those couple days to get ourselves somehow back in the everyday routine. That’s not easy at all, neither physically nor mentally. Some recovery time has been certainly needed after for such a long stay away. All those PIN codes, bills and passwords – you need a time to find them and get used again 
First of all we want to thank all of you who you have been with us in thoughts and words! The messages what were received from you via Iridium phone had a lot of spiritual strength that made us believe more into success, even when there were hard times. We felt us not alone at all!
Great thanks we say to our colleagues and friends here in Longyearbyen who organized very warm welcome event and surprised us that way. Yet we were not sending out position report last days for purpose and were trying to make our own surprise. After all we think that it was actually nicer that way. We got two major things we missed – pizza and warm shower!
And then last but not the least – all our sponsors, persons supporting and being behind this project with their great enthusiasm – we are very grateful to you! Without your support this trip would not have been happen.
Now we start to digest the real scale of the journey we have done. If you live out there, you are part of all of that and you take one day in time – simple life. But now we have time to look back with a more like eagle view and see how the whole image starts to come together. I cannot really describe my feelings. Just would not be able to find right words. These are beyond of the description. A dream what was long time carried in heart is finally made real. And after all these hesitations, 3 years of postponing, exhaustive preparations and little hope with the rather bad sea ice season. I can tell you honestly we both scared a pretty much. There were many moments before the trip and during the trip when we felt that this not going to work out. Only thing you can do at these moments is to keep going and somehow keep hope alive. We had the luck on our side at this time. I think I have never before scared so much about my own decision than it was now in April when I started to think that there must come a seasonal change into sea ice conditions, which would still favor our plan. That was high risk indeed as I had no glue if this is going to work out or not. I just tried to look confident enough to Audun as it was pretty much same with him. The winter 2012 in the Arctic Ocean Barents sea region was just so unpromising. But we both also felt that it must be now or never as we finally needed to go on with our life and other plans.
What we have done on these two days now after landing? Mostly eating and sleeping:) A little cleaning was necessary too of course. We’re gaining back some more body weight as we already have done since depots recoveries. But body still keeps behave as there might come crisis and hard times. We could eat so much that feel totally filled up and yet after couple hours we feel that would like to have a meal again. That takes some time to fully recover. Otherwise we are in good health and physical shape is not bad if tiredness will be gone. We have been pushed hardly last weeks and our daily schedule and sleep hours have also been messed up which means little recovery needed here too.
We try now to keep you updated with some fresh material posting it on homepage. It takes some time to go through all this material. But we are going to work on it. So keep in touch and updated!
All we can say for now is that we did some rough distance measuring and got approximately 1600 kilometers during the 72 days. About 400 kilometers of that belongs to paddling.
Posted by Timo