We had such a great day today. We anchored off a small village and this morning took the dinghy in to explore. The town has no roads or running water. There were fillet's of fish hanging outside of peoples homes drying. We got invited into a locals home for cake and coffee. It is tradition that on your birthday to put on a feast for the town. Over the day majority of the residents came to eat and giving gifts. It was great. Inside was the cake, cookies and coffee.... and shots of whiskey. Outside was a table full of dried fish, strange plant (like celery), shrimp/ prawns and what looked like raw whale meat. We tried some of the dried fish, will skip that next village. The kids got lollie pops and played with some kids. The town was amazing and I have so much respect for the people who can live in such diversity. We picked up some UHT milk and fresh bread from the store. And headed home. I did pick something up in the water on the way home and worked on it for hours. I won't say what it is, just real exciting!
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Saturday, June 27, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
June 26th 2015
Nuuk has been fun, we went to the solstice festival, ate seal, swam at the pool a couple of times and provisioned. We fuelled up this morning. There were 5 pumps with only one saying diesel but 3 of them actually did have diesel. There's a large rock upon entering the fuel dock, luckily Francis from SV Snow Dragon warned us about. The store there sold snacks, oil, guns, hats and there were odd embalmed animals hanging from the walls. Every place we go into is interesting and I have to hold myself back from taking random pictures. We bought a hand reel for fishing arctic char, red bull, wool socks for Crew, spare pair of sunglasses for Carl and the fuel 5,000+ krone.
Today we have left and are heading for who knows where. We plan on motoring/ sailing until dinner time and finding an anchorage. We're taking the inside route amoungst all the rocks and cliffs. Some of it is unchartered so fingers crossed we don't hit a rock. It's so beautiful. Greenland isn't green, we haven't seen any trees and even the grass is brown because summer hasn't quite hit yet. There's patches of snow everywhere, even at the waters edge. The girls are just dying to get off and play in the snow.
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Today we have left and are heading for who knows where. We plan on motoring/ sailing until dinner time and finding an anchorage. We're taking the inside route amoungst all the rocks and cliffs. Some of it is unchartered so fingers crossed we don't hit a rock. It's so beautiful. Greenland isn't green, we haven't seen any trees and even the grass is brown because summer hasn't quite hit yet. There's patches of snow everywhere, even at the waters edge. The girls are just dying to get off and play in the snow.
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Friday, June 19, 2015
June 19th 2015
We are a few hours out of Greenland. Yay!! It's been a long.... um 4 days, 5 days... I can't remember when we left. It's all a blur. Last night was rolly again, I think we need to rename the boat Rollo. Light head winds with one motor running, we made slow progress through the night. We all had a hard time sleeping with the rolling and poor Carl finally got to sleep at 11pm and started his watch at midnight and has been up ever since due to the heavy fog. We're all excited to check out Greenland.
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Thursday, June 18, 2015
June 18th 2015
We are less than 24 hours out of Greenland. We have changed our plans and are making landfall in Paamiut instead of Nuuk. Its a small town with 1600 people, grocery store, laundry, showers... all the necessities. We're actually excited to see a small town first instead of the metropolis of Nuuk (pop 15000). Originally we changed our heading due to gale for winds but since then the weather has changed a bit and died down. We are all looking forward to some land. We knew that this trip over the Labrador Sea would be unpredictable and lumpy but we're all just plain out tired. Michelle has chundered a few times over the side, Capri puked once, Crew is doing ok and randomly slides across the salon. Carl got his sea legs today and is annoyingly happy. Peter has be our watch MASTER! Taking over most of the day time watches, giving michelle some rest and allowing Carl to help me out with the kids. Cali is a sailing trooper, no signs of seasickness.
I'll be sure to post something of our trip if/when we get internet.
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I'll be sure to post something of our trip if/when we get internet.
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Tuesday, June 16, 2015
June 16th 2015
We left Fox Harbour Labrador yesterday at 11:30am. There was a nasty low that blew in the day before with 40kts of wind we waited a little longer in the morning to leave to let the seas calm a little. We had head seas around 4m which slammed us around a bit. We were all feeling a little under the weather and poor Capri lost her breakfast. So much for me taking 20 minutes to convince her to eat her peach skin not knowing that an hour later I was destined to toss it over board in a bucket of puke.
We saw a few icebergs out but it was the growlers (smaller bits of ice broken off from icebergs with majority of size under the water) we had to watch out for. Today the swell has calmed down a lot and we are making good time sailing downwind at 8kts. Almost 24 hours down and I'm ready to get there. 600 miles to go and as the girls say 4 more sleeps.
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We saw a few icebergs out but it was the growlers (smaller bits of ice broken off from icebergs with majority of size under the water) we had to watch out for. Today the swell has calmed down a lot and we are making good time sailing downwind at 8kts. Almost 24 hours down and I'm ready to get there. 600 miles to go and as the girls say 4 more sleeps.
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Sunday, June 14, 2015
June 14th 2015
We motored from St. Anthony, Newfoundland to Fox's Harbour in Labrador yestersay. There was barely a breeze out and the water was glassy. We were felt like we were drifting along like one of the icebergs heading south, other than our rumbling motors... and we were going north. It was a 10 hour run but a smooth one. We met another boat here at the fishing dock, Snow Dragon II, they will also be attempting the Northwest Passage this summer. It's finally good to meet up with another cruising boat. Peter is making cake and mousse and we are all going over to their boat for dinner tonight. Carl and I plan on discussing the weather a little more later on, we may be leaving out tomorrow for Nuuk, Greenland. If we leave out in the morning we'll encounter 3m waves and headwind's but if we wait a few hours for the seas to calm down we will probably meet up with bad weather on the last day of the trip. Low pressure fronts look to pass through the Labrador Sea every few days, no matter how we plan I think we will have a rough trip over. We can't really shorten the 6 day journey by arriving in the south west portion of Greenland because it's going to be encased with pack ice. If I'm not chucking up lunch over the side I'll be sure to update our log daily with our progress.
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Tuesday, June 9, 2015
June 9th 2015
It is the morning of June 9th. I have had to put the heater on high to warm up the main cabin so my bread will rise. Peter is on watch in the cockpit and even the enclosure has a horrible dampness to it. A chill that gets you to the bone. I've opened up the companionway to try and get him some heat on this gloomy day. We decided yesterday to motor through the night in order to get to St. Anthony this evening. Carl pulled the night watch and ended up shutting off the engines and bobbing around for a few hours in what we call the pinch (AKA Strait of Belle Isle), this is where some icebergs funnel down the west coast, even though it was a clear night it would be hard to spot icebergs. Lucky enough we didn't see any bergs until this morning around 8am. We are located at 51°38N, 55°58W with 3 icebergs ahead of us. It's cold, overcast, damp with patchy rain and a touch of fog, not the best of days to get excited about icebergs. In another hour or so we should be coming around the top end of Newfoundland where we'll see a lot more berg action, hopefully I get some good shots. If not the icebergs in Greenland will be spectacular! Fingers crossed for wifi (and ice cream) in St. Anthony.
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Monday, June 8, 2015
June 8th 2015
We spent the past day in Bonne Bay, what a spectacular place. We went on a great hike with the kids and collected snails. Michelle and I were hoping to climb Gros Morne (highest mountain in Newfoundland) but it was closed until July for the bunnies to make babies. Probably best because I was still hurting from our hike at Little Port (about 3 miles) to the beach.
Today we left out at 5:30am and are going to motor sail until the sun starts to set. We want to be able to make St. Anthony (top of Newfoundland) tomorrow but it's too dangerous to sail through the night because of the thread of icebergs. We may see some icebergs come the end of the day today but we'll definitely see them tomorrow. From the iceberg chart I pulled last night there are about 13+ just to the west of us and the further north we get there's 53 before we round the point of Newfoundland. We're all keen to see those floating chunks of ice and also want to get some for our cooler and to toast with some Baileys later on. Mmmm. All crew are doing well, we all seem to have our sea legs and don't need to take any seasick meds for a while. Today should reach into the low 50sF with maybe some frost in the morning. Our heating systems are working great, Arctic outside, Caribbean inside!
49°54N Longitude
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Today we left out at 5:30am and are going to motor sail until the sun starts to set. We want to be able to make St. Anthony (top of Newfoundland) tomorrow but it's too dangerous to sail through the night because of the thread of icebergs. We may see some icebergs come the end of the day today but we'll definitely see them tomorrow. From the iceberg chart I pulled last night there are about 13+ just to the west of us and the further north we get there's 53 before we round the point of Newfoundland. We're all keen to see those floating chunks of ice and also want to get some for our cooler and to toast with some Baileys later on. Mmmm. All crew are doing well, we all seem to have our sea legs and don't need to take any seasick meds for a while. Today should reach into the low 50sF with maybe some frost in the morning. Our heating systems are working great, Arctic outside, Caribbean inside!
49°54N Longitude
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Friday, June 5, 2015
June 5th 2015
We left out of Baddeck at 10am yesterday and it is now almost 24 hours of (motor) sailing later. We were very glad we waited the extra day in Baddeck while a low passed by because even though it was out of the area we had some pretty large swell left over hitting us. We had ourselves a very rolly night and I'm not sure about the other but I had an horrific sleep trying not to roll from one side of the bed to the other, this is when a king size bed isn't the best on a sailboat. I awoke this morning to snow capped mountains of Newfoundland, glorious! Not too sure on the plan today, we are finally able to sail with out the motors and are dead downwind moving at 6kts, this will put us into Little Port at 10:30pm tonight. We've been into the port last year and is pretty cut and dry but that said I'm not too sure if Carl wants to do that at night. Maybe the winds will pick up a little more and we'll make it there in less than 15 hours, that would be nice. Time to thaw out some ground beef, spaghetti for dinner tonight.
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