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.

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Dateline: The Westfjords Region of Iceland

Boogie, Marlies and I got out of Ísafjörður on Thursday in a rental car. We explored the rest of the Westfjords region, of which Ísafjörður is the big city, and found a world of beauty, desolation, and fun. And as with the rest of the post-American Interlude period of this trip, the photos will have to wait until I get back to a Flash-compatible machine.

Our first destination was Látrabjarga, the westernmost point in Iceland and home to a huge wall of sea cliffs that are home to thousands of birds — including nesting puffins that were reputed to be so tame that we humans could approach to quite close distances. It was a long drive of over 200 kilometers on regional highways, which meant that once we reached the village of þingeyri (pronounced something like “Thing-a-ree,” with the rolled R that we Americans just can’t do), a couple of fjords southwest of Isafjöður, the road turned to dirt. And dirt it stayed as we drove past the birthplace of Jon Sigurdsson, the “founding father”, so to speak, of the modern Icelandic nation; past Dynjani, a gorgeous and oft photographed waterfall that is kinda the tourist symbol of the Westfjord region; and past several villages, warm springs and tourist destinations in their own right.

And the terrain in this part of Iceland remains, well, lunar: broad rocky plains topping flat mountain with small ponds scattered about like puddles on a sidewalk after a rain. White cottony plants fringed the ponds and small, low grasses and moss grew between the rocks. Sporadic growths of past-their-prime summer flowers appeared in a handful of places. What roads there are (and they are few) are dirt, rocky two-lanes that are either climbing up to steep passes or descending from steep passes. It is, as I’ve written, out there, so much so that at the top of one pass the solar panel powering the weather instruments was arranged vertically so as to maximize its exposure to direct sunlight.

But when we got there, Látrabjarga lived up to the hype. We got so close to puffins, crawling out to the edge of the cliffs, that at one point a bird appeared at the mouth of its burrow so close to Marlies that both she AND the puffin shrieked. I got so many up close and personal photos of puffins (again: I can’t post photos to this blog since I’m on an iPad; there’s a photo on my Facebook page and I’ll post photos when I’m back) that by the end of the two hours or so that we were there, I was more than happy to have eaten puffin a couple of evenings earlier.

That´s right: Icelanders eat puffins. Yes, I know puffins are just SO cute. But you know what? They’re also tasty. And they are very plentiful. If you’re wondering: no, they don’t taste just like chicken; puffin tastes like other game birds I’ve eaten (wild duck, pheasant), just stronger.

After Látrabjraga, we explored a beach on Patreksfjord that rivaled the Caribbean for white sand and turquoise water, a renowned red-sand beach on the open sea known as the “endless beach” (it’s really 10 kilometers, which is still quite long, and a good half-mile or more wide…it’s big) and one of the warm springs we’d passed earlier: a concrete pool on the edge of a fjord fed by a PVC pipe of wot water bubbling up right out of the Earth. We also wandered around the waterfall, Dynjani, before wandering back to þingeyri, for dinner, and on to Ísafjörður.

It was a great day with beautiful weather, fantastic views and interesting wildlife, all in an otherworldly setting. Again, I have photos to share but they’ll have to wait till I get back to the States and can sync up my iPad to my laptop.

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Didn’t Custer Have a Plan Too?

Sitting in the bar/restaurant across the street from Polar Bear watching the Icelandic soccer national championship match on TV. It’s not exactly Liverpool-Sunderland (which I watched earlier) but in contrast to that consummately professional English Premier League match, the action has been fierce in this one: two crossbars hit in the past five minutes along with another point-blank save, and the yellow cards are a-flyin’ (and rightly so).

I’m sitting here because as you may have surmised by the publication of this post, I’m still in Ísafjörður. Boy Wonder arrived on the morning flight from Reykjavik sans chart for Kulusuk so the current plan is to put to sea tomorrow and head west in an attempt to not beat into the fierce northerly winds that are forecast. We’ll head that way for the hundred-or-so-mile width of the heaviest swath of winds and then turn north along the coast of Greenland to our original destination (and a place we have a chart for), Scoresby Sund. Hey, it sounds like a plan…

And since you’re dying to know: the score is 1-0 to the team in orange at halftime.

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