A DAY IN THE LIFE OF

TIM SOPER

CO FOUNDER

EYOS EXPEDITIONS

Tim was raised on the Devon coast of Southwest England. Growing up constantly in and around boats, he developed a passion for the sea that led him to study at the University of Wales’ marine laboratories on the Isle of Anglesey, where he combined oceanography and marine biology to earn an honors degree in Ocean Sciences.

Since joining his first expedition ship in 1994, he has spent over two decades immersed in the expedition travel business. Working year-round as Expedition Leader, diver, boatman and guide, he makes seasonal migrations between the Polar Regions and tropics, gaining intimate knowledge of multitudes of cruising destinations.

As well as scores of voyages to the Antarctic Peninsula region, Tim has led helicopter-equipped icebreaker expeditions deep into the Ross Sea & Weddell Sea. He has completely circumnavigated the Antarctic continent, venturing to the far side of East Antarctica, and the seldomvisited Phantom Coast.

Along with leading frequent expeditions to Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Tim has transited the NorthEast passage. He has led expeditions to the Canadian Arctic, Labrador and Greenland, as well as sub-Arctic Greenland, Canada, Norway, and Islands of the North Atlantic and Russian Far East. THE DAY BEGINS BUT CAN CHANGE COURSE My days start differently now, with a morning run combined with dropping our two children at preschool, before returning home to deal with the mountain of e-mails that have come in overnight. Although the pandemicinduced time with my family has been wonderful, I do miss my old routine at sea; waking early, a quick glance outside through the porthole to check the weather and at the monitor to check our position, before running through the shower while thinking about the options for the day and up to the bridge (where there is always good coffee!) to start planning where we will go and what we will do.

Early morning is one of my favourite times on expedition, all is quiet on board with most still sleeping and it’s often just me and the watchkeepers up on the bridge. Looking at the weather, checking the AIS for any other vessels in the area, analysing the latest ice charts as we approach a distant coast is amazing – a world of opportunity lies ahead, fjords surrounded by towering mountains and inviting bays, full of different options for landings to explore.

exciting takes us in another direction. This can be strange at first for owners or charter guests who are used to leading quite scheduled lives, but once they see the rewards of this flexibility, they are converted to expedition style cruising.

BASE CAMP Back at the computer in Stockholm, much of my day is spent planning what can be planned in advance and talking with clients and brokers about how to prepare for an expedition. At the moment I’m working on projects as diverse as The Northeast Passage, Polynesia, Iceland and Madagascar. I’m involved in a lot of operational planning and answering questions based on my experience in the field; what the ice conditions will be like at a certain place at a certain time, where can the clients land in their aircraft, where can we resupply with helicopter fuel, what is the best time of year for a certain wildlife event, or which locations might be best for diving the submersible? Our team packages all of this into a plan for the Captain, crew and our guides to work from, but ultimately it is always the experience of the team on board that decides exactly where they will go and what they will do, which in term determines the quality of experience for the owner or guests.

In the afternoon I’d rather be heading aft to the helicopter to scout a mountain landing for the planned heliski operation, but instead I’m back at the computer as our team in the US is coming online and I’m settling in for a few more hours of video meetings. It’s an exciting time to be in our niche of yachting, with so many amazing new expedition yachts coming online including the SeaXplorer La Datcha, a yacht that we spent years working on the design with Damen Yachting.

and a change of course, ETA is confirmed, the crew starts preparing the tenders as we prepare to brief the guests over breakfast. But then a polar bear with a fresh kill is spotted on an ice floe in the distance, another course change, new ETA, the bosun is told we need the tenders sooner, since the guests have been called and they begin arriving on the bridge in their bathrobes peering through binoculars and telescopes as we approach the bear. Soon breakfast is forgotten as everyone bundles up and heads on deck and then down to the tenders to go out and take a closer look at the bear.

THERE IS ALWAYS A PLAN B The planned landing for a glacier hike will now happen a little later and fortunately the interior team aboard expedition yachts are used to this kind of spontaneity, so they forgive the bear spotter about breakfast being interrupted and are soon out on the bow taking photographs themselves!

It’s this kind of excitement that makes expedition yachting unique; we never know exactly what each day will bring, and every day is an adventure. We always have a plan, but we almost never follow it because something more At the moment a lot of my time is spent working on plans for the upcoming Arctic season, which is more complicated than usual due to some of these areas being closed to visiting vessels this summer. But we have managed to continue operating throughout the pandemic and it’s nice to see a message pop up from our team in the Pacific that they are en-route from Guam and on time to arrive over the Marians Trench in a few hours to deploy the sub for another dive to the Challenger Deep, 11km down to the deepest point in the world’s ocean.