August 5, 2019 Anchored Sondre Upernavik 72 09N 55 31W
Past the Vaigat, the concentration of icebergs thinned. Most were hidden behind a merciless fog, but the radar warned of a steady five to ten within its range. What it could not see were the growlers that swung off from behind the larger bergs like comet tails. For these, I had to remain on watch.
By 3AM, the predicted N wind began to fill over what had been a flat calm sea. We were due another 50 miles of climbing before reaching Upernavik, miles that would soon become a slog. ...
Monte: I now know how felt your botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, when Cook refused his requests to stop and explore the land.
Randall: Oh? Do you not recall our recent visit to Fortune Bay, where we hiked the hills, smelled the flowers, and ate the berries?
Monte: Yes, yes, the berries were just fine, but two nights in one anchorage! Along this whole coast! It’s simply unsupportable that we have come all this way so as to do nothing but ...
Departed Fortune Bay at 1200 today. Aiming for Upernavik. Heavy fog right down to the water. Wind N at 5 knots. Temperature 50 degrees. Bergs are visible at less than half a mile, and from what I can tell, they are the size of city blocks. We pass four or more an hour, but they are ghosts in the mist.
By 1800 fog has lifted, but we are pushing into a stiff NNW wind, and Mo is plunge diving. When our average speed falls to two knots, I turn to the E for an anchorage, Kuanit, just ...
One cannot have too many books aboard. By way of a proof: this morning I would like to know why my anchorage on S Disko Island is named Fortune Bay. I can guess it is something to do with whaling, but not a single volume on the shelf answers the question, and the only hint comes from Andrew Wilkes in his sailing directions, ARCTIC AND NORTHERN WATERS:
“Fortune Bay is a ragged bight with many islands and rocks, lying 5 miles W of [the village of] Qeqertarsuaq. Many of ...
Departed Sisimiut at 1900 hours and motored due north overnight for Disko Bay. Another uneventful passage of 140 miles, remarkable only for utter calm and a sea so smooth that boat motion was imperceptible.
Disko Island came into view in the late afternoon of the next day, as did the progeny of the glaciers that surround it. One big berg at first and then a train of them, slowly making their way toward dissolution in the open sea.
Anchor down at the E end of Killiit (Fortune Bay), S Disko Island, at 2000 hours. 35 feet. Rocky, ...
The leak came from between the engine and the transmission and was black as coal. At its height, there were but five seconds between drips of this indispensable fluid, and upon arrival in Sisimiut, I found that we’d drained ten percent of the engine’s lube oil into the bilge in twenty hours.
“That’s a lot,” said my friend Gerd from his office in Florida. “It sounds like a rear seal failure; shouldn’t be too bad a job. First you remove the universal joint so you can push the propeller shaft back; then the bell housing and gearbox ...
It’s Mo’s third morning in Sisimiut, and I still haven’t made it much past the Seaman’s Home and the chandlery near the harbor.
Luckily, Greenland is such a place that everywhere one turns is an exotic scene.
Here are a few such to keep things going while I work to stop the engine’s oil leak…
Rafted five deep along the inner wall of Sisimiut Harbor. It’s nice to have the outer berth until it’s time to go into town. Crawling over so many boats to achieve the pier is quite a slog. Awaiting the return. View from ... Read More
Mo and I departed Nuuk in the late afternoon for the short climb to Sisimiut, Greenland’s second largest city, population 5,500.
The leg was uneventful, a mix of fast sailing and fast motoring on a fast north-setting current, except in two ways.
One, at 1800 hours on July 26, 2019, day 251 of the Figure 8 Voyage, Mo and Randall crossed 66 30N latitude and thusly sailed inside the Arctic Circle.
This circle carries several definitions, “the line above which trees do not grow and the ground does not thaw” being less common than “the parallel of ...
Editorial note: Hi readers. Most of the time the team behind the scenes don’t comment on Randall’s posts. However home for us, and Randall when he returns, is very close to Gilroy, California. You may have read the news of the tragic shooting at their annual festival this past weekend. We knew this post was due to go live today and Randall and I had a long discussion on if we should post this update at all. But we decided that we’ve shared all the other preparations and you readers should know.
For everyone involved in this project, gun ownership ...
It feels like a place perched at the edge of the earth. Here snow-capped mountains rise right from the water’s edge and granitic rock lines the port. Small fishing boats come and go as long as there is light–and at this time of year, there is always light–while the load of ship-sized trawlers is craned into the humming fish plant. From Mo’s cockpit, I am overwhelmed by the smells of fish and the tar used to keep the antique fleet afloat, all of which are suggestive of a frontier town.
Randall Reeves grew up reading about and dreaming of the sea. He learned to sail on the rivers of central California and interviewed world-famous solo sailor, Bernard Moitessier, for his college radio station, an event that changed his life. Randall’s blue-water sailing began in 2006 when he crewed on a 40-foot boat for a 26-day, 3,000-mile passage from Hawaii to British Columbia where “everything went gloriously wrong.” He was hooked. In 2010, Randall departed San Francisco for a two-year, 12,000-mile solo-loop of the Pacific in a 30-foot sailboat. Randall crewed the Northwest Passage in 2014, a grueling 65 days over an ice-strewn 5,000-mile course aboard one of only seven boats to complete the Arctic run that year. Randall’s preparations in 2016 have included long passages aboard his new Figure 8 boat from Kodiak, Alaska to Hawaii and back to his home in San Francisco, a total of 7,000 miles. Randall is a licensed Master of vessels to 50 Gross Tons
