And They’re Off!

It’s 12noon on Tuesday, 16 Aug., here in Ísafjörður, Iceland. The wind calmed overnight (although it’s picking up again) and the rain is just spitting a bit now. And in today’s news: Polar Bear is departing Ísafjörður in about three hours. And there was much rejoicing.

As detailed earlier, we’re going to head out of the fjord here and turn left (west) to ride the strong winds outside toward calmer conditions nearer the Greenland coast. Once we’re clear of the heaviest stuff, we’ll turn north and head for Scoresby Sund. We’ll hope for relatively benign conditions there — not too much wind and/or ice — so we can round the cape that protects the southern flank of the sound. If there’s too much ice, or if there’s too much wind with enough ice that combined there’s sufficient danger, then we’ll turn around and be back in Iceland (likely here in Ísafjörður) by Saturday. We should know, based on weather reports and satellite photographs of the ice conditions, by late Wednesday whether we can get into Scoresby Sund.

We spoke with the family of the skipper of Aurora, a charter sailboat based here in Ísafjörður (that we saw off Jan Mayen several weeks ago), who’s been in Kulusuk for a couple of weeks now. The skipper said he’s never seen so much ice and the locals in Greenland said there’s more ice than there’s been in 45 years. So…we’ll see what happens. (The irony is that Polar Bear could have made it the week before I rejoined the boat had Boy Wonder not skedaddled for the UK, but let’s not get into that here.)

I’ll be stoked if we can make it to Greenland. To see such a unique place would be a rare, if not unique, experience, hopefully surpassing even all that I’ve seen on this trip so far.

But more importantly, I’m anxious to get back to sea. Yes, I’ve been back on the boat for the past week, but I haven’t really been on the boat since I left in Akureyri in mid-July. Being tied to a dock is nowhere near the same as being at sea. That rhythm of daily life on board, the sounds and motions of the boat moving through the water, the way the universe is reduced to the 72-foot length of Polar Bear and the sea from horizon to horizon…these are not remotely replicated when in port. In port, the rhythms of life are driven by shore life and the hours kept by the town in which you’re docked. Being on a boat in port is just living in that town in a very small, damp apartment with a lousy bathroom.

At sea, though, the boat becomes a mobile castle, a bulwark against the harsh-yet-beautful environment that conveys you to ever new sights and destinations. The beds are sumptuous, the food extravagant and the bathrooms, well, they’re still not exactly plush. And the clarity that comes from being on a watch system — you’re either on or you’re off — enables one to be remarkably productive and still be refreshed at all times.

So, yeah…I’m looking forward to casting off the lines this afternoon. Once we depart, we’ll be out of contact until we return to Iceland, be that in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I will, of course, post once we’re back in range. Talk to y’all then…

Custer Had a Plan, Right? Part Two…

We awoke this morning (Sunday, 14 Aug.) to Boogie looking at the weather reports and forecasts for the region. And here’s the plan that resulted: We’re here in Ísafjörður until Tuesday evening, at the earliest.

We have a chart for our original destination, Scoresby Sund, and will make for that port…but the weather charts indicate that the ice and wind conditions in the area of Scoresby Sund won´t open up until late Wednesday. And when we do head out to sea, we´ll head west first because the charts (and the conditions outside) show that swath of wind I mentioned a couple of posts ago: mega winds out of the north…but only about 70-100 miles wide. Inside of that area, closer to Greenland, the winds abate quite a bit. So we’ll make for that mellower area then head north along the coast toward the mouth of Scoresby Sund.

The challenge is that we have two guests aboard (friends of Boogie and Marlies) who need to get out — from somewhere — on Saturday. On that same day we have nine or 10 (I forget exactly how many) guests due to meet Polar Bear — again, somewhere. That “somewhere” would ideally be at Constable Pynt in Scoresby Sund, Greenland. That’s where I was originally going to meet the boat after my American sojourn in July; that’s where Boogie and Marlies’ friends were going to fly in and out of; and that’s where next Saturday’s guests were going to join Polar Bear. So Constable Pynt is where we wanna be next Saturday. But if we can’t make it in due to ice or weather then we need to be in a place like Ísafjörður or Akureyri or Kulusuk where there are regularly scheduled flights. But the chances of getting close to Greenland, being turned around by ice and making it to Akureyri (farther east in Iceland) are slim. And remember: we don’t have a chart for Kulusuk, so that’s out. So it’s either: get in to Scoresby Sund by Saturday, or get turned around soon enough that we can make it back to Ísafjörður, again, by Saturday.

And right now, the weather is honkin’ outside: a cold, biting wind out of the northeast is strong enough to put whitecaps in the harbor and decent-sized swells at the end of the fjords in the area; sporadic rain showers that chill to the bone anyone foolish enough to be caught outside; low clouds scudding by just below the tops of the peaks surrounding the area. Bottom line according to some locals: winter is back.

Great. So where am I going? North. Good thinkin’, Luke…

In the meantime, before the weather completely crapped out we removed one of our headsails in advance of hoisting a smaller version so we’re better equipped for the conditions outside. A few other tasks before the wind and rain made it more work than we felt like dealing with (since we weren’t going anywhere soon) and I wandered off to the local establishment to catch the Chelsea-Stoke and Manchester United-West Brom matches on the telly.

After those matches, Marlies and Boogie and I took a rental car and wandered off south, in the opposite direction we went on Thursday. This time, we hit up Suðavik, about half an hour from Ísafjörður, to see the arctic fox museum (cute and interesting) and Heydalur, site of a true natural hot spring (nice and much better than the concrete pool we wallowed in on Thursday. A tad indulgent, yes, but worth it to see the other half of the Westfjords.

During our road trip it occurred to me that in all my talk of the “otherworldly” and “lunar” aspects of the local landscape, I might be giving a false impression. While it’s true that such characterizations are accurate for the high country in the Westfjords, down along the coastline northwest Iceland is a land with enough shades of green to rival Ireland or Scotland. As you wind along the undulating, snake-like coastline, it’s a light-green grassy patch here, a dark green creekbed there — and everything in between. It’s when you get midway up the mountainsides that the green starts to alternate with the black and brown of rock (before giving way entirely to rock higher up).

Another interesting (to me) observation: given the nature of the coastline here in the Westfjords, driving distances are almost exponential progressions over straight-line distance. Look at a map for this area: it’s just one fjord after another, undulating in and out, for the entire circumference of the peninsula. There’s one road that rings the Westfjords (a couple of others here and there, but not many others) and that road runs in one side of an six-to-10-mile-long fjord then back out the other, equally long side of the fjord. You’ll be driving and you can see where you’ll be in 20 miles — just a half-mile away across the water. On top of that, Icelandic highways are NOT American freeways or German autobahns. In many places, they’re dirt. Yes, dirt. And where they’re paved, the roads are two lanes wide at best. In fact, for many stretches of today’s ride the highway is one-and-a-half car widths wide; when you meet an oncoming vehicle, you slow down and sidle off your right tires to the shoulder as (you hope) the other driver does the same. Heaven help you if the other car is an RV or a semi… It’s like Iceland said, “you know, there are these far-flung settlements…let’s build a road to link them.” They build this road over mountain passes and alongside the ocean — wherever they could — and they said, “that’s good. We’re done here.”

And to be honest, I dig that. It builds in a sense of patience. A sense of “soon come,” as they’d say in the Caribbean. “Island time” is not limited to the lower latitudes, it seems.

Anyway, so…tomorrow. Tomorrow, if this storminess continues (preferably offshore, and lined up north-south as indicated on the charts) I may be looking at some decent Greenland Sea surf. Same goes for Tuesday. The challenge will be access: Maik works (it is Monday after all) but I might be able to scare up a board and have Boogie drive me in his shiny rent-a-car (which he has until 5pm). So…we’ll see.

But more importantly, we wait. We wait on wind here in Ísafjörður and environs; we wait on wind and ice just across Denmark Strait in Greenland. I’ll update as I can. Thanks for tuning in.