(15) St. John's NF to Greenland - Tuesday 08/07 to 16/07
Tuesday 08/07: We left St. John's with a slightly overcast sky and a steady SW wind. Soon we were in sea fog with very limited visibility between 100 and 200 meters. The AIS transponder showed lots of other traffic during the day however we were more interested in the fishermen and the ice bergs. We have a chart listing the positions of the latter but not the former and neither have transponders. So we sail slowly on with the rdar working overtime!
At dark we hove too and slowly fore-reached during the next six hours then on Michael's watch at 0300 we made sail again and carefully plotted a course to avoid the worst patches of bergs. The ice Berg chart is set out in squares each one about one degree of Latitude by one degree of Longitude and the number of bergs is listed in each. Higher up the coast (of Newfoundland) these numbers are large, 360, 128, 50 and so on. Our track would take us through a series of squares 6, 5, 5, 2,2,2 then hopefully into clear water! At the end of day 2 Mike and Matt our ice master agreed not to hove too at darkness but to motor slowly at about 3 kts during the hours of darkness.
On day 4 we suddenly emerged form thick fog into bright sunshine. What a relief to see the horizon again. The day got even better as the breeze built soon after dawn and soon we were all sails set on a beam reach and heading up our planned course... Champagne sailing!
By the end of the week we had made enough northing to be entering the land of the midnight sun (well bright sky at midnight) The log says 53 degrees North and 48 degrees West, and notes that the moon and the sun just below the horizon at Midnight on Friday 11th July.
To pass the time Matt and Rossco watch a movie on afternoons when the weather is light and we're motor sailing, they are allowed to consume power if the motor is running...
We play the usual games like guessing the Noon to Noon distance run. So far Rossco is champion having won the first 4 or five days in a row and is consistently in the first two. There's cheating going on, I just can't prove it!
Matt has been putting messages in bottles for as long as he has been sailing and continues to do so on this trip. He lets one a day go one at noon and I'm helping him keep up the supply of empties! He has a surprising number found and confirmed back to him, around one in 10 or so. A bottle set sail in Tasmania washed in Chile two years later and those he set sail in the Galapagos turned up all over the pacific including Papua New Guinea. Sort of a romantic thing to do! The other day we had the occasion to use an empty Jameson bottle, can't imagine how it got in that state, and I was allowed the honour of chucking it in the drink as it were.
It's now wednesday the 16th and we've been at sea for 8 days. We have no darkness now and although the sun dips below the horizon it remains light. Today we have been closing the coast of Greenland and are now for the first time in a while dodging ice bergs and small bergs or bergy bits again. These little bits can be a big as a London bus and that's the bit on top of the water! They are often very hard to see on the radar and we are constantly calibrating our visual sightings with the image on the screen when the visibility is good. In fog we have to slow down and rely completely on the "Green Screen" Today the visibility has been several miles so we are motoring (there's no wind) along at a fair old clip attempting to close the coast in case the next wind is a head wind! 1900hrs The fog is back and now we are back to the old routine, like playing battleships!
Dinner is cooking, a Michael special "rack of lamb" or rather several racks with lots of roast vegs and steamed greens... Can't wait.
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