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.