Photos from Go West Sailing's post
Ice watch...
Well another day started far earlier then expected or wanted. Around 2am Greenlandic time Robert comes to wake me up as there are 2 quite large icebergs coming towards our bow pushed by flood tide. He says that they are about 20 minutes away by his estimate. 5 min later I am on deck and they are already at our bow touching our anchor chain. I really hope to pull anchor up before is too late and it gets stuck underneath of them. It would be painful to loose our 145 kg CQR.
By the time anchor comes on deck our bowsprit is literally sticking in to the progressing iceberg. We do reverse back and start checking if we can drop the anchor again on the other side but ice is pilling up and escape routes are getting narrower. Decision is to make our way closer to the middle of the fjord and head towards glaciers as far as we can. I think it's 4 of us on deck, the rest are still sleeping, missing out on this exciting escape. Ice/anchor watch really is a necessity.
It's Greenlandic summer so despite being 3 am the sun is again shinning and it is a beautiful day. Tide should soon turn to ebb so I am getting more confident that it is safe to continue deeper in to the fjord. It's very slow progress and more often we have to use long pole to push smaller pieces of ice away to create space for GS.
Two hours later we are looking at giant iceberg floating and two massive heads of glaciers. It's glorious sunshine and we are enjoying the view. Ice cover is now probably 8 out of 10 and we cannot go any further. After half an hour of drifting with the ice we are realising that ice is actually closing on us again, so unfortunately we have to turn back. Progress is extremely slow, there are 2 guys on foredeck with poles and one with hand held radio giving helmsman directions. Often it takes fair bit of hesitation to decide which way to go. It took us 8 hours to do 15nm. Once we passed our anchorage from last night we have drive our bow on to the small, flat iceberg to take brake and fly drones to get pictures of this unbelievable scenery.
Four o'clock in the afternoon we were back in Sermilik fjord, trying to cross to the other side and find we channel leading to next fjord and anchorage outside of the little village Tiniteqilaaq. Couple of seals are pottering around and icebergs are absolutely giant, however we can now progress faster as we have more free water available. My biggest worry is that the hole in the wall is going to be blocked by ice and we will have to sail all the way back through the open ocean. Fortunately that is not the case, as we are approaching, big iceberg 100 m from us breaks and a big chunk does collapse in to the sea. Noise, wave and feeling that power of nature it's pretty amazing!
Danny and crew ... See more
