The start of an adventure - Traditional skills in Greenland
This story series is written by Annukka Pekkarinen, a traditional sailor, member of our organisation and working for our project "Traditional skills in Greenland".
The project received support from Global Greengrants Funds and with their support we succesfully brought two indigenous cultures together on a traditional sailing vessel Byr to sail the fjords of East Greenland while sharing the skills and knowledge of each culture.
Follow our story series to know more about this project!
PART I
Our project started with a slight challenge: how on earth would we get to Greenland? There was a stagnant low pressure system lingering over Iceland since a week already, we were supposed to sail over in the early days of august but it was just not happening. We heard stories of other boats being rescued or assisted and returning to Iceland, so we decided not to push our luck and sail from the Westfjords down to Keflavik instead, to let our previous guests leave and meet the guests from Pueblo Kawesqar on the airport of Keflavik, instead of Kulusuk as previously planned.
Usually the summertime lows pass quickly, and there is a few days window between each low. This time the massive low pressure system was simply pushed back over Iceland by the next low entering on the south side of it. We sent a message to Pamela and Francisco, offering them two choices: you can fly to Kulusuk and wait for us there, but we don't know when we will be able to pick you up – or you can join the boat in Keflavik and sail over when we can.
"We know of bad weather from Patagonia and we are up for the adventure",
replied Francisco, and so myself and our videographer Isley Reust met the Chilean siblings at the airport late at night on the 7th of August and brought them on board. Isley is a talented photographer who has been on board many times before during last years, and is also not unfamiliar to weather in this part of the world and how it can affect the crossing between Iceland and Greenland and the schedules of people.
The next challenge was, that Francisco's suitcase did not arrive with the plane. It is not an easy feeling to realize that you are about to take part on a sailing voyage of multiple days in Greenland strait and have only the clothes you are wearing. We looked at the weather and decided to stay another day, to avoid a band of bad weather on the coast of Greenland that was forecasted for Sunday the 11th. But the luggage was lingering somewhere, and when we heard it would first arrive on Friday the 9th in the evening, and we were worried to lose the weather window, we decided to sail. We borrowed Francisco enough gear to get him past the few days before he could get his luggage in Kulusuk – time was important as we were already a few days late from the start of our project. So off we sailed, in the noon sunshine of Friday, after visiting the Keflavik pool and soaking in the warm water and sunshine, before being surrounded by the freezing waters of Denmark strait for the next days.
The first two days were lovely. Sun was shining, there was a small breeze at first on the coast of Iceland that then died and left just a swell remnants from the previous weeks storms. We were making good progress, doing our 4-hour watches and time passing in it's strange 4-hour routine intervals and meal times. Our captain Sigurdur, who has been sailing in East Greeland for two decades and is a key person of this project, was leading starboard watch and 1st mate Már, a retired Icelandic fisherman had the port watch. Pamela turned out to be a tough sailor, who never got seasick and just immediately took over the galley. In addition to this, we find out she is an artist with diverse skills of carving and rope works, among other things. "Don't try anything too complicated, when we are moving a lot in the swell, easy recipes are just fine" I tell her when she wants to cook for us. Pamela does not speak English by choice, her language is Spanish only and she is proud of it, so she just smiled, shrugged her shoulders disregarded my advice, and soon amazing family recipes started appearing from the galley. Meat, potato and cheese casserole with an anchor-shaped decoration drawn on it with a fork was a wonder to our crew.
Sunday came, and we were getting close to the windy area, and decided to wait for a few hours not to stumble into the wind and ice in the middle of the night. According to the forecast, the weather would peak during the evening and start easing in the early hours of Monday, so we timed our arrival to the coast to around 2am.
Probably no surprise, that the forecast was slightly off, and we got the adventurous Greenland Strait experience after all. The wind was not too bad, 20-25knots and going down by the morning, but the seas in the area are affected by the largest waterfall on the planet that lays under the sea surface, diving down from a turbulent threshold of about 300m to the dark depths of more than 2000 meters. Water temperature had been about 10-8 degrees Celsius since Iceland, that is the warm southern oceanic water masses, but as we entered the weather zone, the water temperature dropped fast to first 3 degrees, then went back to 8 degrees and returned to as low as 0,5 degrees Celsius, as the tongues of cold-water currents mixed with the southern sea water. The waves got sharp and relentless with the cold currents, our boat took them well but there was more movement than usual, and despite our usual sea fastening, we got to go around the ship and fix a few things that normally did not move, but now decided to start shifting from their places.
The wind started easing only after 8am in the morning, after a long night of sailing 6 knots with just our mizzen and fore staysail. We found out that the only actual casualty of that storm was a box of lemons and limes, that was in the banana cooler box on the deck – the box had fallen over, the lid opened, bananas got a salty water soak and lemons and limes rolled overboard somewhere to the cold current. "It's a good thing we will not overwinter in Greenland all alone, this would mean scurvy in the old days", we think.
When the wind eased, we got the usual Greenland coast fog, and sail towards the coast still at a good speed of more than 5 knots with our small sail area. We did not spot any ice in the radar or with our eyes until we got so close to the shore that the fog lifted and we saw the mountains of the Kulusuk area, and the usual ice band around it.