Sue & Charles Sail Ariel-: July 2015

Monday, July 27, 2015

Reykjavik pictures 7 25 15

Brokey Yacht Club and RRYC burgee exchange

Pictured are Charles Springett and Jon Petur Fridriksson, Racing Chairman
and sailing instructor for the Brokey Yacht Club in Iceland.

their web site http://brokey.is/

Brokey Yacht Club docks- warm welcome, nice neighbors Harpa Concert Hall in background. We walk past it every day.

The Hampton Yacht Club burgee made it here first!

Our dockmates on our first night. Some energetic young men carried the tables, chairs, dishes and BBQ onto our floating dock and we had a wonderful evening together. We left about midnight with the sun still light, but getting nippy.

View down the street toward the harbor with a gorgeous mountain in the background. Fog and grey clouds do not deter our spirits.

Part of the heavy foot traffic areas are closed to traffic for certain hours.

Send your letter to Santa by December 1st.

Hallgrimskirkja Church- we went here for service on Sunday at 2pm for an english service. Huge gorgeous organs with concerts given from time to time. Lief Eriksson statue.

Sue & Charles in front of the Leif Eriksson memorial in front of Hallgrimskirkja Church.

Kaldi is a fabulous funky bar. sit and talk. at least two IPA's on tap!

Reykjavik 7 25 15

We arrived here at 1300 Friday morning after an uneventful but fairly arduous crossing from Qaqortoq, Greenland. We are staying at The Brokey, Reykjavik's yacht club in the main harbor right next to the new and very impressive concert hall - more about that later. They are very nice floating docks with power and water and there are quite a few visiting boats here most of which are on their way to Greenland - our input has been much in demand. Friday night the Norwegian contingent put on a BBQ on the dock complete with table and chairs to which we invited ourselves. A very congenial group of people - see picture.

We left the dock at Qaqortoq at 0815 last Saturday so the passage took six days and five hours for a total distance of 840 miles. We decided to change to UTC at the start because all of the weather information comes to us in UTC time and Iceland time zone is UTC. That meant putting our clocks forward two hours so we are now four hours ahead of the East Coast and two hours in front of mainland Europe.

The body of water between Greenland and Iceland is the Denmark Strait. The Icelanders, who it turns out have no particular love for Denmark, call it the Greenland Strait. From Qaqortoq we headed South through the remains of the Storis - which had retreated South by this time - towards a point south of Cape Farewell. The big question was how far South did we need to go. There are two considerations the extent of the ice South of the Cape and the expected weather which can be very bad close to the Cape. We used Commander

Weather for our routing and their recommendation was to pass immediately South of the Ice field as close to the Cape as we could. The weather prediction for the first two days was very light winds with no risk of bad weather. That recommendation turned out to be very good and we probably saved about 100 miles by staying close all the way round. The second part of Commander Weather's recommendation was to make as much northing as we could for the first several days until we reached the 64th parallel (the latitude of Reykjavik) and then head due East directly for Reykjavik.

A storm a long way to the Southeast would be producing strong NNE to NE winds and to take advantage of them we needed to be well North. That also turned out to be very good advice and the last two days saw us on a beam reach in winds varying fro 12 to 25 knots. Lots of sail changes but an exhilarating sail. The sea conditions were bad with large and confused seas that produced pretty uncomfortable motions and a lot of banging on the hull - sleep was difficult.

The last 15 hours were straight into a 15 knot easterly wind that delayed our arrival from an expected 0900 to 1300. One interesting feature of the passage was the complete absence of any sign of other human activity; a freighter passed us before we rounded Cape Farewell and we never saw or heard another ship until 20 miles before arrival I discovered we were completely surrounded by fishing boats with unpronounceable names - but at least they had AIS which is more than a lot of US fishing boats do.

One thing I have failed to mention is the seagulls. Shortly after we left Long Pond we noticed two or three distinctive seabirds flying round the boat. To me (not an ornithologist) all seagull look pretty much the same but these were distinctive in both color and shape.

Anyway six days later when we were approaching the Greenland coast these birds, or their lookalikes were still with us. While we were in Greenland we did not see them but as soon as we departed the Greenland coast they rejoined us. Were they same birds? They looked the same. But they did not leave us until we approached Reykjavik Harbor. It will be very interesting to see if they rejoin us when we leave for Seydisfordjur. I suspect they are looking for fish bits left by enterprising offshore anglers. I feel very sorry for them; my fishing skills are close to zero. We have put a line out but all I seem to catch is weed.

We checked in with Icelandic Coast Guard 24 hours before arrival and periodically after that. The Reykjavik Harbor Master (Pilot) directed us to the floats at the Reykjavik Yacht Club (the Brokey). They have a long float right at the entrance to which we tied while finding out if we could get a slip. The dockmaster showed up after an hour and we moved to one of the slips on the main dock (see picture).

The yacht club is very friendly, accommodating and helpful. We have exchanged burgees and interestingly there are only three US club burgees on display. The other two are Santa Barbara and Hampton Yacht Club - Frank Miller will be pleased.

The yacht club is housed in a collection of rather rusty shipping containers stacked on the dock. Apparently their original clubhouse was torn down to make way for the new concert hall. Seems to me a stack of shipping containers might be just the replacement clubhouse we could afford if a wave comes by and carries ours away. hey have toilets, showers and laundry facilities. hey have beer can races on Wednesday night and it is quite a lively place.

The customs people showed up almost immediately after we arrived and checked us in, lots of forms and they insisted on applying official stamps to all of our beer bottles and a half empty bottle of Newfoundland Screech. But they were very nice. The immigration officer showed up later that afternoon and stamped our passports and gave us his recommendation for a good fish restaurant - we have a reservation for tonight.

Reykjavik is a very busy city (the world's most northern capital city) and very clearly one of their major economic supports is tourism - they are everywhere and apparently every time an building in down town becomes available it is converted into a hotel. We have elected to stay on the boat but Gregers has decamped for the week. I did check out one place - $650 a night although there are lots of cheaper places available. A great deal to do here and once we have finished cleaning up the boat and fixing what needs to be fixed we will be off doing it. More later.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Pictures 7 17 15

Typical Fjord View

Wind

Exiting Zacharias Havn in Morning Fog

Chart plotter of leaving Zacharias Hvn- close to bergs!!

Sydprovn- a fishing town

Another Typical Fjord View

Unartoq Anchorage to hot springs

Viking Hot Tub - With Two Local Boys (spoke no english)

Glaciated Valley Rock Face

Local Public Transportation - Significant Money Losing Proposition

No Wind but a Neat Photograph

Fjord and Mountain

Quiz for your Friends - What is This?

Sadrloq Village With Decrepit Dock

Close Up of Dock With Fish Crates

Local Freight Transport - Our Dock Mate on Wednesday Night

Goodbye Greenland

Qaqortoq July 17th 2015

We are back in Qaqortoq for two nights before we leave on Saturday morning for Iceland. Since the last blog post we have fixed our chart plotter and radar with the help of Kikik, a very friendly and helpful electronic technician with very strong negative views of the government in Nuuk - more on that later. (Kikik runs the Furuno shop and he calls Nuuk or Denmark for technical assistance- lucky!). We left Qaqortoq on Wednesday morning and motored using the inner leads to Zacharias Havn via the little fishing village of Sadrloq - see photos. The entrance to Zacharias Havn was almost completely blocked by large ice bergs but we managed to thread our way through and anchored for the night in a quiet corner in 25 feet of water. This anchorage unlike most around here is both completely protected and quite large. As usual we saw no other boats. The next morning Gregers and I took the dinghy to the end of the bay and walked across a narrow isthmus to the other side of the island. We also went back out to the entrance to see if we could still get Ariel out - of course the bergs had all moved but there was still a narrow passage.

Our destination that morning was Unartoq, site of the Viking Hot Tub. On the other side of the island to Zacharias Havn we passed Sydprovn another small fishing village with a somewhat more substantial dock and a large fishing boat tied up to it. All of these villages are very picturesque when viewed from the water. They all consist of small square house perched on the hillside overlooking the water and painted a kaleidoscope of bright colors. On the way we were passed by two high speed passenger tour boats heading for the same destination. There is a wooden dock in the anchorage to which the tour boats anchor and four large orange mooring buoys, three of which were available. We picked up one of them and took the dinghy into the beach because there was no way to get onto the dock from a dinghy. It was a short walk to a naturally heated shallow pool surrounded by rocks with a view of snow covered mountains in the background. No shower necessary that night.

Since we arrived in Greenland we have done almost no sailing. The winds are either light, from the wrong direction or both. On the other hand sailing through the fjords and the inner leads is breathtakingly beautiful. Our photographs do not really do it justice. My comment in the last blog about the Norse was of course inaccurate. They had more patience than I do and if the wind was blowing the wrong way down the fjord they just waited until it blew from the other direction and away they went.

After the hot tub we continued on to Nanortalik (Place of the Polar Bears) which is a small town with about 1500 inhabitants and is the furthest South population center of any size in Greenland. We tied up alongside the end of the container dock in a rather precarious situation. It was late, there was no one around and we decided the face of the container dock, which had more space might not be a good idea. We arrived at high tide so getting on and off the boat was easy but figuring out how much slack to leave in the lines to accommodate low tide without running into the rocks at the root of the wall was a challenge. As it was when I got up at 1:00 AM to check the lines three of them were tight and had to be eased some more. At about 11:00 PM a Royal Arctic Line cargo ship arrived and tied up at the face dock (good thing we decided not to stay there) its bow about 5 feet from our stern I walked around town early next morning and I must say it was a big disappointment. Nanortalik gets a very good write-up in the cruising guide but it is obvious the town is in serious decline. The hotel was boarded up as was the restaurant and the whole place had a sort of neglected and sad look. The economy in Southern Greenland is suffering and even Qaqortoq, which is a truly delightful place, is showing signs of decline. According to Kikik the politicians in Nuuk care only about Nuuk and are seriously neglecting the more remote areas. Greenland is a very big place with only about 56,000 inhabitants - as he says Nuuk has a government sized for 2,000,000 inhabitants and they look after their own interests and are not taking proper care of the more remote outposts. South Greenalnd could be a wonderful summer tourist destination but they have a lot of work to do on the infrastructure to attract more people - of course we loved it without all of the people.

We decided to leave Nanortalik the next morning and return to Qaqortoq where there is a working fuel dock. This morning we refilled the fuel tanks, replaced the dinghy on the deck and generally got Ariel ready for an offshore passage. The forecast is light winds for the next two days with wind building from the East by the middle of the week. Our intent is to round Cape Farewell on the 59th parallel and make as much easting as we can until the wind does turn when we should have a good sail for the rest of the way. Anyway that is the plan and it probably won't turn out like that at all. It is 840 miles to Reykjavik and the earliest we could arrive is late Thursday, more likely some time Friday. No more blogs until then. One more thing; having viewed the pictures on the blog I am disappointed to say the least. We will be creating a link to a site which has these and other pictures with the size and definition that come direct from the camera and the quality will be orders of magnitude better. That will not happen until Reykjavik but we will make sure it does then.

Monday, July 13, 2015

missing Nuuk

We have decided to pass on going to Nuuk. It is 300 miles away from here and would involve at least 8 days of hard motoring. then we would have to come back the same way.

So we will cruise in this area.. in about ten days we should pick the weather window to leave for Iceland. Internet is SCARCE. Costly. frustrating.. but hope you are enjoying what we are able to post.. uploading pictures takes forever... sorry..

Qaqortoq (=Julianehab) Monday July 13th

Sue has posted several very good entries and I will try not to duplicate what she has written. Our original intent after leaving Newfoundland was to go North to Labrador and leave for Greenland from there. It substantially shortens the crossing. The problem with this plan so early in the season is that a lot of ice is carried South along the Labrador coast and sailing through it at night can be dangerous. The ice charts are updated regularly and the commodore of RYNC had access to some very good unofficial ice information that he shared with us. The conclusion from all of this was that our best plan would be to sail due East from Newfoundland for 24 hours and then NE for another 24 hours before turning just West of North for a straight run to Nuuk. We did this and did not see a single piece of ice as a result. The passage was remarkably uneventful. We had 24 hours of really good wind on the beam but for the rest of the passage winds were light and irregular. We tried every sail combination but ended up motoring the majority of the passage. As we neared Greenland it became clear we would have enough fuel to teach Paamiat (Fredeikshab) but maybe not enough to reach Nuuk. Our preferred destination was Qaqortoq (Julianehab) south of Paamiat but Qaqortoq is usually not accessible this early in the season because of the pack ice (they call it Storis) that is brought down the East coast of Greenland, around Cape Farewell and then up the West coast. Ice Central told us initially that we would not be able to get around the storis but by the time we had to make a decision they had changed their minds and given us the coordinates of the storis limits and it looked as if we would be able to make it. In the end we crossed the northern extremity of the storis in fairly thick fog and passed through hundreds of bergs, bergy bits, growlers and ice junk. Although somewhat nerve-wracking they are not too hard to avoid if you pay attention. The overall density was much less than 10%; had it been much more it would have been more difficult.

We would not have been able to make Qaqortoq until late in the day on July 3rd so we decided to find an anchorage, spend the night and make an early start for Qaqortoq in the morning. Total passage time was five nights and six days (130 hours). Anchorages in Greenland are interesting. They are fairly well spaced out and if they are protected they are not big. Tunuliatstaap Nuna Bay was certainly protected with a 10 foot bar (rock) to cross. It was big enough to accommodate one boat and had steep too rock walls around most of it. We dropped the anchor in 25 feet, let out 150 feet of chain and dragged the anchor across half the bay. We did that four times before we could get the Bruce to penetrate the weed and take hold. Since then we have found most bottoms are the same with a lot of weed that the anchor needs time to work though; once it does the holding is usually good in heavy mud. Once anchored securely the settings could not be more beautiful

Saturday, July 4th - Happy Birthday America - we motored into Qaqortoq and after trying out the container ship quay (not designed for small boats) we were assigned a place on the teehead of a floating dock really made for much smaller boats. But it has proved to be secure, convenient and they have water (no electricity). All three of us decamped to the Hotel Qarqortoq (four stars) for three nights of unlimited hot showers.

I should say something about the amazing job the marine authorities do here in looking after incoming and outgoing boats. The Search and Rescue (AKO) people require you to report in when you are 250 miles from the coast and to continue to report in every six hours thereafter. If you miss a report they will initiate a SAR. Gregers does all of our communicating in Danish of course and he developed quite a rapport with their office. They also had our tracking link and used it. Gregers also kept in contact with Ise Centralen who gave us regular current ice reports. The Harbor Master here in Qaqortoq is friendly, efficient and very helpful. In fact everyone we have met seems genuinely glad to see us and everyone has been helpful. As an example I had a small engine problem that required the removal of an injector to reseat it which, on this engine involves quite a lot of fuel piping removal. Although I can do it myself I really wanted a proper mechanic to do it in case there was something else going on I had failed to appreciate. The Harbor Master dispatched a mechanic at seven that evening. The mechanic returned at 0700 the next morning and reseated the injector successfully. He absolutely refused to take any payment (and I tried) and insisted that we enjoy the rest of our stay in Greenland. The people here are very proud of their country and rightly so. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen; the mountain and fjord scenery is magnificent.

We have now visited three of the original Norse settlements (active from 982 until the middle of the fifteenth century) and to do so at this time of year is to understand why they stayed here. All of the settlements are right on the coast in breathtakingly beautiful surroundings. The requirements seemed to be relatively flat meadow land with a freshwater stream nearby and an abundance of rocks with which to build things, and build things they did. The cow barn at the Gardar farm was 208 feet long by 14 feet wide (internal dimensions) and could hold 65 head of cattle. Unfortunately not much of the original structures remain and an Inuit village has since been built on top of the ruins. The best preserved structure is the church at Hvalsey. Each farm had its own church; the Norse converted to Christianity in 1000 AD although Erik the Red who started the whole thing never did. The Norse history and its links to Iceland, Norway and Denmark are fascinating and we hope to learn more as we continue back along the route they took so many years ago.

And now to answer the question "what happened to Nuuk?" Well we set out but it became apparent we would need four days of continuous motoring to get there and four more to get back. It is necessary to use what are called inner leads which are narrow passages between high ridges on either side. The wind either blows one way or the other and neither is conducive to successful sailing (I don't know how the Norse got anywhere unless they rowed most of the time). Anyway we decided to abandon Nuuk and spend a few more days in the South which still has more to see. So we are back in Qaqortoq and today (Monday) is laundry day. The storis has now retreated to below Cape Farewell and we will try to access the inside passage to the East Coast. If that is ice free it will cut about 150 miles of the passage to Reykjavik and will keep us away from the area South of Cape Farewell which is notorious for its bad weather.

If we can find internet (a big challenge here) this will be posted and I have no idea when you will get another one.