It is time to carry on with my blog about leg 3 of the SKIRR adventure. And as you recall the nerves of crew and professional tightened a lot over the last days as the weather just did not want to turn into our favor. But now we are on our way heading West. Sails are up and we are moving. Iceland slowly disappears on the horizon in the East. The first night is coming slowly. The wind is moderate, and the sea state much less than I expected. We made 8 knots. Wave height was only 2m after it had blown 40+ knots for more than a week.
It is all about sailing.
The routine of the watch system took over the rhythm of life on board. It is different from what you are used to because at home where it is dictated by breakfast, work, hasty lunch, work, end of work, social activities, dinner and whatever you fancy to do before you go to sleep. So, the routine is more or less 16 hours up and 8 hours out. For an old fart as me it might be even only 4 hours out as I tend to sleep less.
On board it is very different. Wavy had chosen a 3-watch system. So you are on 4 hour shifts a day, 4 hour standbys and 4 hours off. At night this shortens to 3 hour shifts. It practically means theoretically you have 4 hours rest during the day but only 2 days out of three. And at night you have 6 hours rest theoretically. But it needs to be taken into account that you need to dress and undress and you need to eat and need to do toiletries every day. It reduces your available time to rest considerably.
Dressing takes up to 20 minutes depending on sea state, time and weather. In rough weather you will be tossed around like a ping pong ball. Hitting the entry of your boot in darkness can take a while. Finding your third layer at night in the pitch black Ghetto (this is how they named the crew quarters) is a discovery hunt. Basically you lose one hour a day of free time for dressing. You lose 1 hour for eating, drinking and toiletries.
Another impact to your sleeping abilities is the noise level. The head is 40mm away from smashing waters. In high seas under powerful sails the noise by the sea is significant. And you have the crew snoring in the front and sometimes whistling in the back. There is our girlfriend Gennie (Generator) to ensure we have enough power for all our instruments but also to make a cup of tea, a pot of coffee or just a slice of toast.
I define my sleeping by saying it is the period of non-memoizable brain activities. And I have 2 hours of that in 24 hours in a shift system. I add 2 hours of dozing giving me a strong 4 hours by 24 hours in a sustainable setup.
Anyway, out on deck we had stellar sailing conditions going West. The boat was doing very well in the old sea. Amazingly we had not seen a single case of severe temporary food allergy. All they ate stayed in. But the sailors at risk dosed themselves up very well. Means we were able to lean on a fully functional crew pushing then boat. The sky was over casted, and time runs by. I cannot say that the day came to an end and the night took control because on this leg there was no night. There was a period of two hours where the colored world turned into a million shades of grey. No complete darkness. But helming turned out to be a challenge for some crew. It seemed that not everybody was able to execute the principle of controlling the bow first and correcting the course as second priority well. But anyway, we were not in a race, and we made it westward.
The expectation within the crew to explore Greenland was sky high and the motivation of getting there was very high. It for sure superseded the social stress that was noticeable within the group. I won’t go there here but it became a considerable factor of performance. And the expectations were sky high even with skip Wavy trying to down tune any expectations.
Almost halfway across we suddenly heard this deep hissing sound. And gone. And there again. A scream came across “WHALE 9 o clock 5 cable to starboard”. We all stared into the direction into then endless shades of grey. And then we saw it. In a rhythm of minutes, we saw the rounded back and the splash of spray rocketing into the sky. And as it came it disappeared, without leaving a sign except the stamped mark in our memories. I have to say it always touches me emotionally seeing these large animals swimming in elegance doing no harm to anybody
Watch after watch we sailed westwards. The wind died, Wavy executed the principle of motor sailing creating our own apparent wind to give us more efficiency in lower wind speeds of about 12 knots true wind. And at midnight the second night we saw a white bank at the horizon. Was it Greenland? No, impossible. Minutes later we became eaten by fog. The temperature dropped from 9 degrees to 0. And suddenly biting cold scratched on the moral.
You know it is this sequence where you go on watch well dressed. Two base layers, a thin second layer plus a full second layer, foulies and storm jacked with very high collar, gloves, neck preventer and hat. You feel warm in the first 30 minutes. And then suddenly you feel a patch of cold under your armament against cold, not big, but down there on your skin. And like throwing a stone into water creating centric waves the cold slowly eats you up. Trying to scratch it away does not help. The area becomes bigger and bigger. You start moving your amrs, jumping your feet, rubbing your gloves. Your feet cool down and your fingers get stiffer by the minute. But with brutal consistency the cold moves on and on and on. You start looking at your watch. OK another 15 minutes at the helm. You stare into the grayness of the fog. Fingers are hard to move. Feet end at the knee. You believe you made another hour but looking back to the watch only 5 minutes. My god. After three hours I had no feet and no hands anymore.
Off watch I limped to your bunk. No interest in food, no interest in drinks. Just my bunk, ripping off outer and all second layers. Swinging up into the sleeping bag. Once I was in my Ocean Wear sleeping bag, I zipped it over my head creating a tent so that me breathing would warm the bag at night. I slipped the socks off while in my tent. Icecold feet, yeah, because of wet socks, Jesus!. So, I laid out the socks in my bag so that they would get dry for the next shift (and that works with this sleeping bag very well). The reanimation of feet and fingers took me half hour
And on deck? Hours and hours of fog, lovely freezing fog. Skip and mates were wrinkling their foreheads. Crew was getting worn out by the cold, misty grey ahead. Would we see Greenland at all? Late next morning I cut into the boat, I was on standby in the galley prepping coffees and tea, a yell cut through the boat, the mist, the dull feelings. “Iceberg, Iceberg on the bow!”. And a few minutes later “Landfall, Greenland ahead”. And it was not the progress of the boat but the lifting fog turning the environment from a freezing coat to a feathering grey which lifted from the surface of the calm sea. Our headsail was down, engine in overdrive and we made 6 knots towards land. Land was a small stripe of darker grey on the horizon and in the distance up front there was this white shadow, almost without contour.
We altered couirse taking the “Berg” on the bow. Slowly it grew bit by bit lifting from behind the horizon. It slowly became bigger and bigger, massive, overwhelming. We were still about 4 miles away from the “Berg” when suddenly, a hole could be seen in the cloud cover. And through this hole we could see a single peak of a mountain ridge. “What?”. “Amazing, a pin needly, sharp as a knife up in the sky, towering high”. The weather turned better every minute. And our later we were close to the “Berg of Hope”, as I named this my first iceberg. It turned out to be somewhat mystic. In front the temperature dropped so you could feel it. Also, the smell of the sea changed as the Iceberg is sweat water.
It is almost impossible to describe the feelings. The crew became euphoric. What a sight. The coast of Greenland cleared. Waving glaciers could be seen making their way from mountains thousands of meters height fed by the inner glaciers of Greenland. Fjords cut into the seafront. The shoreline was covered by hundreds of smaller icebergs. Our “Berg of Hope” was here in front of us. On top a flock of about hundred birds travelling with this giant free of charge to the South.
The color of the iceberg is full of shades of white, grey and blue. Hit by sunlight the top appeared like sprinkling stars, bands of blue clear ice started to gloom like a torch. Our berg was about 20m high and about 100 by 400m, small. The walls were full of cracks. Occasionally there was a loud banging sound and most of the time you hear this whistling and hissing of melting ice. Inside the block a big lagune was created by the waves splashing continuously against the walls. The lagune showed light green water and in contrast dark green ice under water. It was mysteriously beautiful. I could not stop looking around and admiring the beauty of the colossi having in mind, that this is a process of complete destruction. At the end the berg will vanish. The melted water will just disappear in the vast ocean, thousands of years just gone. But the Berg lulls one in with its could cover of air, with his beautiful face and its charming whisper.
Sorry that I got carried away. But honestly, they touched my seriously, these silent giants on their journey of death along this coast with its sight of these scurrile mountain ranges
The second iceberg was much taller, about 60m tall, full of cracks and scars. With its height it was majestic, and it had a special color of green shading from a green hint of white to a dark ultramarine green. On the waterline the ice-cold ocean turned from a dark blue to a smaragd green with splashes of white whenever the spray of a wave smashed back. Our second iceberg, the “Tower of Berg” made our feelings even stronger for this environment. It is beautiful and charming on one hand, but empty, hostile and unforgiving on the other hand. It is trhe beauty of nothing that is coming across as something – something not to forget.
There is this block of ice. One fifth over the water, 4 fifth under the water. Gigantic. It reminded me that this block started to be formed more than thousand years ago, maybe when Vikings found Greenland or even before that. And these glaciers in Greenland are feeding the ocean with icebergs for many hundred thousand years sending then on a journey down South, releasing them to the death row day over day.
We, who entered this inhabited piece of ocean close to the Vedel Fjord, earned your “Blue Nose”. These are sailors on sailboats sailing North of the polar circle. We celebrated on board with a cup of tea and coffee, blue painted noses and a group photo. We saw skipper Wavy Immelmann happy about the result that he was able to take us West, presenting two icebergs and the great views of the coastline of Greenland.
We had no time to rest of explore more. We had three days left to make it back. So, after a few hours only with our new ocean companions, the “Berg of Hope” And the “Tower of Berg” we turned the bow to East and headed to Isafjördur. It was 11pm when the sun went down behind the mountain range in the far distance. I few whales played between us and Greenland diving for food. A few more icebergs passed by in silence. And no wind. It meant it would be only a question of time when we would disappear in fog. But before that only 45 minutes after the sun disappeared sunrise happened in the NNW. Very strange but extremely beautiful.
And as predicted 2 am in the morning the fog just swallowed us, dense freezing fog. And with it came freezing feet, cold hands and biting skin where it was exposed to the ice-cold air. But most of us were happy, happy to pay the price of discomfort from a while because the payback of this experience was and is priceless, unimaginable for those who did not sail bergs, inaccessible for those who don’t try.
Uneventful we came to Isafjördur. The wind picked up and finally we sailed into the majestic Northland of Iceland, the land of the Fjords, whales and dolphins. We moored safely. It was an experience of a lifetime, short, full of dedication and full of memories. I am also happy that I could make some great friends hoping that we will stay in touch and that we will have the opportunity sailing together. And I was also happy to shake off some unhappiness that sailed with us as it did and does not matter anymore. Thank you Wavy for not letting the idea down to show us the beauty of ice and Greenland, even when it was only a glimpse. Thank you, Sasha and Kitty for taking care of our sugar and caffeine level, feeding us properly and guiding is through all the action on board. Can’t wait to do leg 4. So more to come on this blog.
Joe Sails 