Greenland #2 – explorations, observations and reflections

In which we explore Kangerlussuaq Fjord on land and sea, greet friends old and new, swim in the waters and bask in glory of being alive and present in such a staggeringly wild and beautiful place. Teddy proves her worth time and time again, and a steel hull is lodged firmly in my list of must-haves.

Waking up I’m surrounded by icebergs and vast granitic peaks, the reflections only disturbed by the occasional duck paddling by. Coffee and breakfast on deck is unusually quiet (excepting the distant roar of discharging glaciers), as the four of us are locked in open-jawed awe and contemplation. Nothing for it but to go ashore. We inflate the second dinghy and deploy in two pairs, Diego and I taking the inflatable for a very romantic row, weaving between the small bergs en route to the pebbly beach below the village. We beach the boats between stranded blue bergs, the obituary of recently-deceased bergs written as a series of indentations in the beach. Time for a swim. One by one we strip off and dive into the refreshing water, sluicing away the hygiene sins of the past few days. The swims do not last long, the temperature being low enough to convert imperial measurements to metric with ease, but the lack of wind allows us to dry in the sun. Lucky, because none of us remembered a towel.

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The buildings of the abandoned village are very basic, little more than plywood walls and tin roofs over a suspended floor. I hope this was a summer-only hunting camp, it’d be bloody miserable in winter. The buildings are surrounded by piles of discarded household items, interspersed with unidentified seal and cetacean bones. Graffiti on nearby rocks indicates occupation as late as the mid-eighties, and several cross-topped cairns identify inhabitants who never left. The refuse is not without it’s treasures however. I find a plastic toy trumpet, which I earnestly play to accompany the cryospheric concerto all around us. At least Nick seems to enjoy my music; Darren and Diego may wish for deafness after some time. Darren, playing true to type, finds an unopened bottle of maple syrup, something he’d been bemoaning the lack of on board. Canadians, eh?!

We all wander our separate ways, stretching sea legs and obtaining some solitude to absorb the magnitude of this place. Nick also takes the Remington for a stroll, hoping to bag a duck for dinner. At least half an hour of my alone time is spent cross legged atop a headland, gazing up the ice-choked fjord. There’s some truly mammoth glaciers discharging into the water around here, and their offspring litter our proposed path like so many sheep in a chewed out paddock. We plan to push inland up the fjord as far as possible; from here the possible doesn’t look so far. But Teddy will be up to the challenge, no doubt about it.

It’s great fun rowing in among the small bergs sharing our sheltered bay, scooting over submerged portions, and slipping through the gap between adjacent bergs, all the while hearing the constant drip of melting ice. After lunch we all nap (siesta), embracing the cultural diversity aboard our fine vessel, and gathering energy for another scramble on the neighbouring island. Climbing higher and higher up the red weathered granite, we gain increasingly expansive and impressive views, tripping over our jaws in the process. An easy hour passes at the summit, watching the icebergs wallow and roll, and spotting occasional seals taking a breath between dives. The seals here behave distinctly more nervous and standoffish than any others I’ve encountered, likely a result of past and present hunting pressure. The presence of seals tells the lie to our claim that there mustn’t be fish here however, and we need to be more persistent. Education for cod must be better here than in Iceland, where they swim onto your hook, lured by little more than a shred of potato chip packet. A couple of stranded fuel drums mark a helicopter landing pad for “Project Isbjorn”, a (presumably) Polar Bear research programme under the Greenland Nature Institute. A salient reminder as to why we have a shotgun with us, although it is safely aboard Teddy at this moment. Eyes open boys! A slight paranoid awareness creeps into the margins of our psyches on padded paws. The drums are stamped 2015, so they’re no longer suitable for aviation. If only we had a two-stroke for the dinghy… Back to Teddy for a feed and obligatory topside rum, gazing at mountains stretching in both vertical directions from the waterline.

I get the morning coffee going before jumping off the bowsprit for another D-shrinker of a swim, climbing back up the rudder awake, refreshed, and relatively clean. A mast is spotted behind a hill to the East – intruders! As the Canadian fires up the pancake pan I row across to greet the newcomers, getting partially grounded on a shoal midway and having to lever off a grounded growler with an oar. The yacht, Pollastenna, has just arrived from Iceland, and the skipper is having a well earned breakfast beer (my people!) while crew are ashore flying a drone. I’m summonsed aboard by Captain Thornstein to join him for a brew. He knows Jon, our friend in Djupivogur, and lets me know that Pangey are anchored nearby also. Last we heard they were aiming for Scoresby Sund, but the ice hasn’t cleared enough in the North yet. We’ll attempt to radio them later on.

I return to Teddy just in time for pancakes, filling the tank for the climb ahead, planning to get as high as possible up the hill behind the village. Nick stays aboard, nursing a dodgy knee, but determined to bag a duck for the pot. The three of us row ashore to the village, drag the dinghy up above the high tide bergs, and set off eager to stretch boat-weary legs. It’s good going, scrambling up big granite slabs and the occasional scree filled gut. It takes us two and a half hours to get to our summit, the next one requiring a relatively serious crossing of a steep glacier margin, and thus out of our reach for now. The rock is far from barren, hosting numerous small oases of green mosses and vibrant flowers. Small waterfalls fill our bottles and mouths with water much fresher than Teddy’s tanks, and occasional bird tracks across snow patches indicate we are not alone. It’s as if every couple of metres gained yields another jagged peak to our eyes. Sitting at the summit we see across the broad fjord, the entirety of Uttental Sund, complete with silt-laden glacial melt muddying the southern end, and a bird’s eye view of Suhaili Bught. The knight surely picked the best anchorage in sight, protected from all quarters and hidden from view to most; Pangey’s mast is just visible above the granite. A gourmet lunch consisting of pistachios, baked beans, sardines, prunes and chocolate rewards our exertion. Delicious. We drink in the vistas for a solid half hour, with barely a dozen words exchanged between the three of us.

A light fog is rolling in from the sea, prompting us to begin our descent while we can still see the boat. A weathered grey dyke cuts a direct pathway most of the way down the hill, offering the best VMG to the dinghy. Dropping down off the dyke into a scree gut, I spook a pair of ptarmigan in a portentous* explosion of feathers and frantic croaking. With the remington otherwise engaged I revert to my childhood Tim Road peacock chasing, envisioning an impressive return to Teddy with a hand caught bird for the pot. Alas, my speed and agility are greatly overestimated, and the cryptic birds easily elude me, while staying close enough to help me reflect on my shortcomings. Returning to the beach empty handed I’m treated to the rare sight of a Spanish Beluga basking in the shallows; Attenborough never got so lucky! Back aboard we have hot fresh bread (thanks Darren) with liberal swathes of garlic butter and cold beers as an eider-duck stew bubbles on the diesel stove. Nick achieved where I failed, shooting a duck on the wing from a seat in the 6-foot dinghy. The rich peppery stew fills hill-hungry bellies, and sleep is found easily in eleven o’clock twilight. ’twas a good day.

*see later entries for further ptarmigan encounters in Nova Scotia and Mexico

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The morning of the twenty-first is spent anchored in Suhaili Bught alongside Pangey, taking in the sun and eating cheese scones, coleslaw and chocolate cake with Mike and Helen. Try as we might, we cannot find RKJ’s datum mark. The unweathered rock constituting the south-facing wall would suggest the mark is now well below datum, a victim to the unceasing attack of both sun and sea. No doubt this will be updated in Mike’s book. In shorts and t-shirts we raise anchor at 1430, and head out to the fjord proper. We aim to push as far inland as we can, until turned around by in-navigable ice concentrations. The fjord stretches near on forty miles NNW from the coast, but we’ll see how far we get. The afternoon fog we observed yesterday is back, creeping in slowly from the sea. We’ll have to be mindful of that. Navigating through thick ice in the sunshine is one thing. Dancing with these behemoths in minimal viz is something quite different. Luckily, the high pressure system that dominates conditions over, and marginal to, the Greenland ice cap produces perfect conditions for getting up close and personal with the herd of calves. No wind, no waves, and crystal clear air (fog willing).

A disturbance is felt in the force, prompting us to turn hard a’port in search of the trouble. A building rumble guides our eyes, as ripples begin to radiate from a large berg in severe distress. A giant of a berg is in the beginning stages of self destruction, precipitated by the constant attack from the (relatively) warm fjord water. Over a hundred metres across, and with a good twenty metres of freeboard, this berg is one of the largest we’ve seen in the fjord. The delicate balance between buouyancy and gravity has been fatally perturbed by subsurface melt, and the multi-hued block of ice-cap begins to death roll. As the rolling becomes more pronounced large car-sized blocks are shed, sending ice-bearing waves across the previously slick water. In less than ten minutes the berg has split completed in two, the resultant halves continuing to disintegrate as they part ways in a choreographed conservation of momentum. Concentric rings of brash ice choke the fjord, and Teddy bobs in frantic excitement. It’s a multi-sensory display of raw natural forces on par with sitting on the crater rim of Mt Yasur (an active volcano in Vanuatu) several years ago. Darren has more footage of the dying giant at the end of this video.

In the amplified silence of the aftermath, Teddy points her nose upstream and we return to the programme, inching along below four knots. With no wind to speak of, the song of the diesel rings true, and we station a lookout on the bowsprit to guide the helm, occasionally putting extra eyes in the shrouds. Our path becomes more and more tortuous as the ice concentration increases, and within an hour we’re frequently ‘making contact’ with ice. Generally, the smaller brash and growlers bump off the bow, keeping clear of the hull. However, a quick shift to neutral is called for as soon as any debris slides along the hull aft of the mast, minimising the risk of prop damage. The odd lower lying piece gets wedged under the bobstay, necessitating reverse or a robust shove with a dinghy oar. As the pieces get larger the bumps get heavier, but Teddy continues to brush them off, whispering “tis but a scratch” in her best John Cleese impression. The offset between GPS position and chart is very pronounced in here, enough to turn Teddy into an amphibious vehicle. We know she’s capable, but this a stretch. By the time we’re a mile or so past Watkins Fjord, we’re convinced to turn around. Ice concentration is (estimated) between thirty to forty percent, and the proportion of larger bergs makes the prospect of getting stuck a likely and unpleasant possibility. We turn tail and head east into Watkins with a new objective – complete our circumnavigation of Kraemer Ø via Uttental Sund.

The presence of the high pressure system is in full force once out of the main trunk of the fjord and associated (light) sea breeze. It’s dead calm, and we’re down to t-shirts again for an hour or so, while surrounded by ice. I have the helm for the rest of the afternoon, with Darren and Diego alternating on bow watch while Nick sits beside me in the cockpit, smiling and taking it all in. This is what Teddy was made to do; why else have 10 mm of steel beneath us? It’s a culmination of a fair amount of planning and dreaming for Nick, but also a catalyst for future plans, which are being cooked up at the rear of the boat. Baffin Island? Ellesmere? Northwest Passage? The helming is immensely fun, and challenging. Navigating at two scales, looking for the clearest general path over the next half mile to mile, while dodging specific pieces as indicated by the bow. Over five miles of ice choked water lies between us and Uttental, the three sizable glaciers discharging into this fjord seem to be pitted against our progress. But Teddy forges on, under a crisp blue sky and hot arctic sun. The ice gets tighter and tighter as we continue pushing up the fjord, perhaps past the point of recommended navigation, but no way near our limit of fascination. Our VMG is poor, with deviations in excess of a hundred degrees often needed to sidestep frigid flankers before heading back up-field. A rough guess would give 40% of our time pointed at our mark. The entrance to Uttental Sund is about a half mile wide, and difficult to see until it’s almost abeam of us (assuming a steady course that is). As we near, it’s fairly apparent that we shall not pass. A line up of fairly uniformly sized bergs delineates a subsurface shoal or bar; this is illustrated quite well in satellite imagery below. Perhaps this is a terminal moraine from a side-branch of the former main Watkins glacier, akin to the eyrar (plural of eyri) we encountered in Iceland. Regardless of genesis, the ice wall is Trumpian in intent, preventing our immigration South. Again we turn around, and not a moment too soon. The tide is ebbing, drawing more ice down from the upper fjord, and threatening to ground larger bergs near us, subsequently leading to a very constricted ice field.

Heading back into the lowering sun, me make slow progress towards open water. Multiple contrary surface currents and eddies render the fjord into a a chaotic multi-lane multi-directional highway; merging with the icy traffic takes patience, throttle control, and multiple look-outs. It’s still fun, but it’s serious work. We won’t be getting any further tonight, nor will we be back at our anchorage. Another plan is needed. After two and a half hours of pain-staking ice weaving we’ve made good around two miles, and are in fairly open still water. The yanmar is finally silenced, and we have tea and chocolate on the foredeck in the 2200 sun, as Darren flies his drone to capture the scene. Brief consultation reaches consensus quickly. Why not stay here the night? It’s highly improbable that Teddy’s fifty metre chain will reach the bottom here, yet anchor we shall. Our number two anchor (a Rocna of course – give ’em a taste of kiwi) is dropped onto a nearby flat berg, some six or seven metres in diameter, with around twenty feet of rope back to the bow. Senor Beluga claims the berg for Spain, in romantic defiance of our previous anti-expansionist agreements; the gloves are off.

We’ll sit anchor watches tonight, not that it’s a chore in these surroundings. The full range of water sounds permeates the air, while high altitude cirri whisper of magic in the sky later on. I selflessly volunteer to sit the 0100-0300 watch, hoping to snag the magic for myself. Democracy be damned.

I sit my watch with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in hand, reading by the midnight sun while surrounded by the polar opposite of his humid colonised Congo. The landscape is open for reading as well. Former tidewater glaciers have dried their feet and are heading for the hills, no longer contributing to the floating sculpture garden in any solid way. The fresh moraines dumped unceremoniously at their retreat are a poor compromise for the previous ice extent, in both an aesthetic and climatic context. As we drift in the tidal flow alongside our tethered berg, encroaching neighbours are monitored between page turns. One particularly close and unstable passerby prompts me to burn some diesel, using short idle bursts of reverse to pivot Teddy around our anchor, keeping the captive berg between us and danger. Apart from this single punctuation of action, the watch passes in a dreamy drift of ice, reflected mountains, and tales of the jungle. Truly the most serene and impactful night “at anchor” of my life. I feel this trip working an inescapable grasp around my heart, like python round prey, but instead of breath being crushed it is the last shreds of desire to lead any sort of “normal” or “comfortable” life. My early introduction to the Antarctic at twenty-one had already spoiled me, and this current confluence of mountains, ice and sailing has confirmed my suspicions. Domesticity and geographic certainty are unlikely to feature strongly in my future, and the possibilities left open down this other path fill my post-watch dreams with peaks, ice and oceans. Alaska. Svalbard. Patagonia..?

We are anchored to a different floe by the time I wake up. The Spanish outpost had buckled under excessive colonial weight, and Darren was forced to retrieve and re-set the anchor before dawn. Coffee, bacon and eggs are enjoyed on deck in the brightening sun as Teddy floats in concert with the nearby glacial fragments. As Diego had so unceremoniously removed the gloves of peace the night before, I take it upon myself to complete the destruction of the treaty. Removing all rags of reconciliation, I descend from the bowsprit nude, claiming this most northern floating Island for the republic of Aotearoa, before promptly diving into the fjord’s icy embrace. I am awake. I am alive.

Under diesel alone we twist and turn across the fjord, heading towards the calving front of the second glacier on the northern side of Watkins Fjord. We slip into an idle as we drift parallel to the front, some three to four boat lengths from the 20-30 metre high wall of ice. The glacier wears a multitude of faces, ranging from smooth and unblemished to twisted and fractured, painted in every hue of blue imaginable. The beauty is mesmerising, not least due to the implied forces wrought upon this millenia old ice. A quite tension is palpable in the air as Teddy is drawn, like moth to flame, towards the calving front. We edge within the probable “splash zone” (or worse) should any large calf decide to spring forth, decreasing our proximity to an extent perhaps less than prudent. But Prudence was the object of a Lennon-penned song, and Teddy’s more of a Rolling Stones girl. She can’t get no satisfaction… Narrow benches high up the looming granite cliffs bear stranded moraine deposits, pointing to the former might of this ice stream; anatomy is not the only victim of contraction due to changing climes in this region.

We turn back to the main fjord at midday, heading back to sea to begin our cruise south. We’ve got a further eight days before we plan to be in Tasiilaq, the largest settlement on the East Coast, to re-provision before heading back to Iceland. There’s a heap of islands and inshore protected waterways to explore along the way, and new uncharted anchorages to find. We raise sails near the mouth of the fjord and wave goodbye to Kangerlussuaq, farewelled by a mob of spy-hopping seals maintaining a respectful distance remarkably similar to the range of your average rifle. We hope to make good progress down the coast while the breeze holds, but the first wisps of afternoon fog suggest this may be short lived. We shall see.