Dropped the Hook in Nordre Laksebugt
After a quick overnight in Godthab we ran up the coast for four hours and dropped the hook in Nordre Laksebugt, another beautiful and very isolated deep cove. Once settled, Chauncey and Sefton strapped snowboards onto their backs and started to hike up the hills (remarkably steep hills) in search of a patch of ice they’d seen from the boat. Clinton, Greg and I headed off to a different part of the cove where they kite boarded trainer kites (1 and 3 meters) while I hiked inland a bit. Dom stayed aboard, cooked and stood anchor watch (definitely the short straw). All were successful in their various endeavors (Chauncey and Sefton’s HD video of them boarding down the small glacier was stunning to say the least) and met back aboard about 7:00 for dinner… then the fun began.
Greg and I decided to start breaking out our dive gear and two hours later, after spending far too long climbing in and out of my new dry suit to keep trimming the neck seal (something I should have done in Newport), I went over first and lasted about two minutes. The gear was still all wrong and every diving instinct in me suggested to get out of the water and call it a day… now. Gladly. This didn’t deter Greg, as by the time I’d gotten my various layers off he was already under the boat replacing zincs. Then we saw it; a very small and manageable ice berg about half a mile away across the bay. We all piled into the inflatable, took a close look at the berg, hooked Greg up with underwater communication, and over he went with the underwater video housing. Attached with this blog is some pocket-camera video of Greg filming the berg. You’ll have to trust me when I say that the HD footage he shot above and below the waterline is astonishing, absolutely breathtaking… trust me or buy the documentary when it’s done!
The next morning we up-anchored around 9:00 and are now in our second day of crossing the Baffin Bay. The weather window held, the light breezes which were predicted to fall apart and we’re now in flat seas with less than five knots of air. Our original intent was to head for Pond Inlet but after looking at a ice chart, we down loaded last night, found it to still have ice in it. Lancaster Sound is wide open up to Beechy Island (where the Franklin Expedition graves are) so we’ve altered course. This will add an extra day to the crossing and I’m very happy to report that we are now two days out from The Northwest Passage.
Photos from the ice fields
Bergs on the radar
Again no words...
Chauncey and Sefton filming and looking for bergs
The Greenland Ice Cap
After a quick over night anchor at the small fishing village of Christianshab, (complete with hundreds of howling huskies on land) we left this morning around 9:00 A.M. We immediately came into a massively and seemingly endless ice field studded with bergs of indescribable size and beauty. Again, because words simply won’t support any sort of attempt at a description, I’ll upload two small video files for you.
The first shows the leading edge of the ice in Jakobshavn Isfjord coming down the east side of Disko Island. This is an indication that the Greenland Ice Cap is calving at a very healthy rate. The potential concern for this ice cap is that it wasn’t long ago that the predication of the “Larson B” ice shelf in Antarctica would take decades to melt, but it disappeared in just 30 days. Drastic changes like these can potentially effect global climate overnight. Needless to say, environmental eyes from many differing camps on global warming are watching this ice cap. Because of the heavy concentration of ice and any unexpected wind shift could potentially lock us in, we opted out of going north of the east side of Disko Island and headed straight for the south side. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather window we saw a few days ago stays open, and we can scoot across Baffin Bay to Lancaster Sound sooner rather than later.
The second video depicts the sheer enormity of these creatures. If you look very closely at the bottom of the video you’ll see our 20’ inflatable with Chauncey, Sefton and Greg driving by about 100 yds off the berg. It was during this pass that we on Bagan heard what sounded like a canon exploding inside the berg itself. A piece of ice approximately the same size as the inflatable had fallen down from the top of the arch. Inflatable and crew were back aboard in record time.
By the way, before we leave Greenland could anyone tell me what “Inissinneqassanngilluinnarput” means? We’ve seen it on a few signs and are hoping that whatever it means we’re in full compliance of.
July 25
Seeing a nice wind window on the weather charts we left Sisimiut yesterday morning and immediately found that while the wind was as advertised (less than 12 kts from the north) the seas left over from an off-shore blow were lumpy and from most every direction, the “washing machine” effect. Didn’t get any video or pics as looking through a small viewfinder wasn’t something I wanted to do for any longer than necessary (promise to make up for it as tomorrow we “should” be approaching the Greenland Ice Cap). It wasn’t too long after we started to head north that pockets of fog built to a steady fog bank and once again all eyes were trained on the two radars watching for ice bergs; fog & ice not being a real comforting combination. 120 miles later, at around midnight we felt our way into the small fishing harbor in Aasiaat and dropped the hook. Don’t know what the others did but after a day like that I headed straight for my bunk. The 24 hour daylight has really played havoc with our sleeping schedules so thought is best to let everyone sleep in a bit this morning as we’ve only about 40 miles to cover today. Our aim is to get up deeper into Disko Bay and closer to the Ice Cap and do some exploring from there. Clinton and I are also keeping an eye on the wind forecast for this coming week as there appears to be a large weather window opening between here and Lancaster Sound. If that’s the case it’s my hope to get while the getting’s good and scoot across Baffin Bay ASAP to get over toward the Passage. From what we can see in the downloaded ice charts the ice is continuing to break up and while it may be a tad too early yet to enter it’d be nice to be in place and ready to go.
Arrived in Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg)
Yesterday afternoon, at 3:30 p.m. local, we crossed the Arctic Circle and arrived here in Sisimiut (Holsteinsborg), Greenland two hours later, 20 minutes late for clearing in with Customs who won’t be open again until Monday… and one of us needs to fly out today, Saturday. The joys of the cruising life. We were told that the local police can clear us in but their hours are 9:00 – 5:00 and too are closed for the weekend; gives a whole new definition to Organized Crime. As luck would have it the crew bumped into a local cop last night and he took them to the station and stamped them in, then and there. The joys of small, beautiful & equally as friendly fishing villages!
Sisimiut is Greenland’s second largest town with over 5,000 people. The community itself goes back hundreds of years and it’s current location was established in 1764. The passage here from Sondre Stromsfjord – itself one of the most beautiful anchorages/fjords I’ve yet to be in – was as predicted by the downloaded GRIB files, 10kts from the NNW and relatively flat seas which gave us all a chance to stand down from iceberg watch and catch up on laundry, ship’s maintenance and reading. The current situation with the watermaker has slipped into that of an “intermittent” problem; sometimes it works as advertised, sometimes not, very hard to nail down and diagnose. I’ve every confidence that eventually this will get squared away but my concern is that due to logistics this won’t be until Seattle. We’re going to remain here in Sisimiut until at least the 23rd as two new crew, Chauncey & Greg, will be flying in the 22nd. It took moving heaven and earth (and travel agent David Pearl of Bond Street Travel in NY’s reinvention of the wheel) to fly Ulli Bonnekamp, our cinematographer out today. All fingers and toes crossed that Chauncey and Greg make all their connection on the 22nd. Stay tuned?
By the way, can anyone tell us what “Inissinneqassanngilluinnarput” means? We’d hate to embarrass ourselves and not do as requested.
Nuk (Nuuk?) Greenland
First, let me say that St. Anthony’s, Newfoundland was as truly a welcoming harbor of refuge as we could have hoped for. Thank you to all who helped us enjoy our stay and get squared away. Having said that, waiting eight days for weather systems, all the while anchored-out, was an ongoing test of coping skills as well as tolerance levels that none of us wanted or particularly enjoyed. It’s nice to know we can do it though. Needless to say, when the window opened, we took it. After 5 days at sea we arrived here in Nuk, Greenland safe and sound late yesterday afternoon with a southerly at our heels. The weather window we were watching held as promised for the first three days and the crossing from Newfoundland to Greenland was as straightforward as hoped for; winds light & variable and seas benign. As expected, during the final evening the wind started to fill in from the SSE. Very quickly the seas built and winds punched in 25-30 kts. For the whole crossing we were pleasantly surprised as to the general lack of icebergs but as we closed in on Greenland we started to pick them up on radar more and more. During the day it’s usually no problem as even the smaller pieces, the growlers can be spotted. Nighttime was were our concerns lay as even radar has its limits. Filed under Everything Always Works Out For The Best, our deep concerns about these small growlers hidden in the darkness were alleviated by the fact that we’re now far enough north that we’ve all but 24 hours of light.
The main harbor of Nuk is primarily a commercial harbor and you basically tie up wherever you can find an opening. We currently lay alongside a work barge, which lays alongside a 100’ Greenlandian (?) wooden fishing trawler, which itself lays alongside an 80’ Norwegian steel trawler which is tied to a steel bulkhead. Just now a 65’ French steel ketch tied up outside of us. Our hope to hop to the fuel dock this afternoon is going to take the unbridled cooperation of four different nations.
A Couple of Very Unexpected Low Points: Our brand new, budget-busting, $14,000, Sea Recovery, Aqua Whisper, watermaker crapped out after less than 30 hours of use. Basically it started to divert all newly made fresh water overboard and not into the tank. What water we were making was going right back into the ocean. Clinton found a work-around and although we are making water I’m not real happy… to put it mildly. The guys who installed it, Ocean Options, have been great about helping us diagnose the problem (control panel?) but the product’s reliability is deeply concerning. The cost of the unit was a brutal hit to the trip’s budget and the fact that we’re heading for an area not known for it’s ample marinas is very unsettling.
Also; last year I bought the upgrade package of for our Nobeltec electronic chart system. As expected we now need to buy a “key” to unlock their World Folio of charts on the system. These charts include Greenland, The Arctic, as well as Alaska. That’s fine. We called Nobeltec to purchase the key and it’s my understanding that in order to access the World Folio we now have to buy their newest upgrade as the one we bought last year in no longer valid. We have all the paper charts aboard that we need but in order to access them on the computer I now have to buy yet another upgrade… again.
Newport, we have a window
For the past week we’ve been hunkered down in a small northern cove of St. Anthony’s, Newfoundland. As mentioned before it was a small but persistent low pressure system which, having parked itself a few hundred miles away to the east in the North Atlantic, kept us from starting this next leg, Newfoundland to Nuk, Greenland. Two nights ago the weather charts showed a small high pressure system developing just north of us and yesterday morning’s charts showed it again, if not a bit larger. This was what we’d been waiting for eight days while anchored.
For a few of those days we couldn’t get off the boat due to driving wind and rain (actually, we could have gotten off the boat but life’s hard enough; we would have put our Helly Hansen gear to the test.) The day before yesterday was a bit dryer so we decided to take the large inflatable, head out of the harbor and take a look at a massive iceberg which was just outside the entrance. I have no words to describe the actual majesty and power of the berg so will leave them at that. We didn’t get too close to it but close enough to hear its internal cracking and groaning as it meandered south. Once about 50 yards off of it, it was seemed that icebergs of this size are clearly in control of not only themselves but anyone who decides to take a large inflatable out to admire them. These large ones show up on radar with no problem; it’s the smaller ones that lurk just about at water level that are our main concern. If the seas are large enough and these small ones don’t show up on radar it’s possible that Bagan could come bounding off the back of a wave and land squarely on top of one of theses smaller but more menacing type; a landing that could potentially hold as much finality as I’d like to imagine.
Yesterday morning we downloaded the weather chats again and were ecstatic to see that the high pressure had gotten large and in doing so created a perfect weather window for our crossing. And that’s just where we are now, around 200 miles out, heading for Nuk and thoroughly enjoying relatively flat seas, less than 10kts of breeze and only the occasional pocket of fog. Right now the ETA for Nuk reads 7:30 p.m. on July 13th. A lot can change this arrival date but for now life is good (hell, it’s always good) and we’re back on the road to Nuk, Greenland. By the way, the ocean temp is 38 degrees and outside the air is 34.
We sit…We watch….We wait…We celebrate.
Waiting in St. Anthony's
Last night we pored over the weather charts and GRIB files again, looking for favorable weather trends for the next few days, all we saw was continued disorganized volatility. If it was benign enough for us to leave for Greenland, we’d be hammered down the road. If we went for an open window down the road we’d be facing 25kts, icebergs and fog at the start, not a healthy combination.
Someone asked me to report on what we’ve been doing since we left. The answer to that would be, everything and nothing. Clinton’s constantly been making a dent in the ongoing ship’s maintenance. Dominique has been cooking for the rough weather and when she can, restocking all the food and stores. Ulli and Sefton have been shooting for the documentary seemingly around the clock, covering all aspects of ship’s life as it occurs. I’ve been basically trying to stay out of everyone’s way (albeit not always successfully), listening to any and all “situations” and trying to help facilitate answers, arranging and rearranging flights, working with Matt Dutra on the continuous quest of finding funding, writing these blogs and trying not to think too much about what these weather delays may mean for our potential transit through the Passage. We’ve all been standing our watches. Suffice it to say that July 4th couldn’t have come at a better time. Dominique cooked us an amazingly “American”, July 4th dinner (sloppy Joes, French Fries, big salad,) and the boat was festooned with all things Red, White & Blue. We’re all walking away from Bagan today, renting a car and are going exploring. She needs a break from us. I also need more Prilosec.
