Katherine
08/09/2011

Left Upernavik in the early hours of this morning with a slight bit of breeze and an awful lot of sunshine, not a cloud in the sky! We headed through a clear passage to the northwest, admiring the sea of massive grounded icebergs around the islands to the north and northwest of Upernavik. I'd been a bit concerned when all I could see was white from the top of the hill in Upernavik, but fortunately it wasn't the way we were going. The sunshine is amazing and I'm wearing only trousers, a t-shirt and flip flops, feels colder in bed than on deck! Will try and remember this moment when the weather next gets bad. We're having to go further north than we'd like, rather than straight across Baffin Bay, due to a very large section of sea ice in the middle of the Bay. Another yacht heading for the same destination left yesterday afternoon after a brief stopover for diesel and supplies as well. Upernavik was a great little place to stop at and we found all the people were very friendly. A kind gentleman at the post office let us use his office and the internet, gave us a printer cord to keep (which he went home to get for us) and then gave us paper as well. It's great to have a nice working colour printer for the ice charts! He said there have been about 7 yachts stopping in at Upernavik so far this season, so we might just see some of them further down the track.

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08/08/2011, Disko Island

We saw two seals on an iceberg near Disko Island :-)

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08/07/2011, Upernavik

We arrived in Upernavik in the very early hours of this morning after an interesting passage. There were a lot of very large and small icebergs to avoid once we'd past Disko Island, something to keep us busy on our watches. We even saw two seals on one iceberg which was great! There hasn't been much wind to speak of and today was so very warm and sunny. Upernavik is a small town of about 1000 people situated on an island with stunning views of the bay, other islands, interesting rock formations and of course icebergs. One just drifted into the harbour today but fortunately missed us! It is a very quiet place (especially this morning) and it was good to stretch our legs and explore as much as we could of the island. We haven't been able to get the internet here, so currently our only source of communication is via the sat ph. Our apologies also for the lack of phone calls or emails to family and friends, hope to get in touch properly soon! We'll try to update the blog using the sat ph as we go along but won't be able to get any pictures up until we are next in port. It's most likely that we'll be leaving Upernavik tomorrow for the next part of our adventure..

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08/05/2011, Godhavn, Greenland

We are currently anchored at Godhavn on the south coast of Disko Island. Decided we'd have a bit of a look at Disko Bay rather than sail straight past and stopped in here for the night. Sailing through the massive icebergs to get here was incredible...as Jeffrey put it regard icebergs as moving rocks! We had sunshine and a steady breeze for the last several hours of the passage which was great. Will put some pictures up at the next port! For anyone wanting to get in touch with us you can call the sat ph on 0088 1621438446 or you can send an email of 160 characters to 881621438446@msg.iridium.com which we will receive as a text (Katherine's mobile phone can still get text messages too). The sun is shining again this morning so we should get some nice views of Disko Bay and the icebergs on our way out. Best get going...next stop Upernavik approximately 250 nm north. Picture is of an iceberg in Disko Bay!

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Katherine
08/03/2011, Sisimiut, Greenland

Left Nuuk early in the morning with the sun shining and a light southerly breeze but that soon changed and it started to rain and the wind picked up a bit. We had a quick passage though (getting up to speeds of over 9 knots sometimes) and arrived in Sisimiut within 36 hours. After talking to a few people in the harbour we were told we'd be ok tied up on a free section of the seawall but a few hours after going to bed we were rudely awakened by a whaling boat ramming into us! It wasn't very fun trying to move the boat out from between the seawall and whaling boat while half asleep but we managed. The fishermen had a good laugh at us I think, they were selling the whale meat direct from the boat the next morning, Was quite a sight to see the slabs of meat and whale carcass and I meant to get up early to take some pictures but slept through my alarm! From Sisimuit we'll head north past Disco Bay to Upernavik, but there doesn't look to be much wind the next few days.

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08/03/2011, Nuuk, Greenland

The iceberg in Nuuk harbour that Alex and Katherine rowed out to have a closer look at.

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