At 9:30 a.m. local (EST) we “officially” left Baffin Bay and entered The Northwest Passage. We designated 80 degrees longitude as the demarcation zone. Watching the GPS, with half the crew asleep, the other half of us smiled a great big smile of satisfaction knowing that we’ve now entered into something few have done (successfully) before. The Passage is steeped in history, some tragic, some inspiring, all enticing and for the next three or four weeks we hope to uncover as much as we can… and then get out of here before the snow starts to fly and the ice starts to roll back in. By the way, because the lines of longitude are becoming tighter and tighter further north we burned through 35 degrees of longitude in 3.5 days. That’s three times zones, a time zone a day!
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.
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.
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.
What do you do at midnight when the sun’s still up and you can’t sleep? You go fishing.
Still in Sisimiut, waiting for crew. Chauncey & Greg fly in this afternoon around 4:00. Shouldn’t be hard to know if there flight is on time as daily it comes in around 100’ over our heads. In past blogs I’ve mentioned some of the mechanical problems we’ve been having aboard and our successful and not-so-successful work-arounds. While we did have to buy the upgrade from Nobeltec, and we’re still dealing with our Sea Recovery watermaker issues, our Iridium/Open Port satellite situation was handled with all the professionalism and expediency I’d expect from such a large company. Open Port basically gives us our Iridium satellite connection via Telaurs (I think I have this right and guys, please send me a “comment” if I don’t). Since we left Newport uploading these blogs and video clips as well as phone calls via satellite had been problematic. Once I got a handle as to how things were working on this end I had land based co-producer Matt Dutra start making phone calls. Very happy to say that Open Port and Telaurs acted like the consummate pros they are and within hours some trouble shooting was done on their end. Happier yet to report that for the past day the files have upload very quickly and without a glitch. (Thank you Sidney et al!)
We plan to leave for Disko Island in another day or so, just waiting to see how the off-shore winds shake out. As it is we’re ahead of schedule so an extra day here may help the new crew get settled in. Disko Island is considered the birth place of all things iceberg and draws special excitement for me as this is where the historic part of the trip begins. It was Francis M’Clintock aboard his 177 ton ship “Fox” who staged out of here July 1857 when he went on his search and hoped for rescue mission for the missing Franklin Expedition, who themselves were searching for the Northwest Passage some ten years earlier. Franklin’s crew of 128 men as well as his two ships “Erebus” and the “Terror” simply vanished off the face of the earth (Eventually over 40 expeditions were sent to try and find them. It was M’Clintock who later found cannibalized bodies on King William Island – but I’m getting ahead of myself). Disko Bay also plays host to the amazing Greenland Ice Cap as well as the great Jakobshavn Isfjord, both considered environmental “barometers” in the ongoing global warming concerns.
