Rounding the Final Turn: Iceland to Shetland

We're about five miles from the entrance to Yell Sound, the entry point into the Shetland Islands. We still have 30-odd miles to go to Lerwick from there, but by that point we'll have made it to the Shetlands and this leg of the voyage will be complete.

And it's been an interesting leg. Following the diversion to Husavik, it's mostly been a motoring or motorsailing journey (surprise, surprise). But in the last 36 hours or so, we've been sailing, more or less. For the past 18 hours, we've been rockin', actually.

The wind has been from the starboard quarter, meaning we've been running off before the wind on a broad reach. And once the wind shifted to that direction, it started building...and it built into the night until it was in the high 20s and low 30s. It made for a fun, but dark, 9pm-12midnight watch; the 6-10am watch this morning was still fun but with visibility, occasional patches of blue sky, and seas that had had all night to build. Big, rolling swells of deep blue, flecked with white manes, all beneath a powder-blue sky...it was a wonderful morning.

Thankfully. Because prior to that, the journey had been a real drag. Teamed up with the Finnish couple, it was a day or so into the trip when I realized: for the second time this summer, we have a Nordic couple in which the female is the stronger member of the pair. And in both cases, it was the male who'd brought the couple to sailing and the Polar Bear adventure in particular.

In this case, the fine gent took the fabled Finnish stoicism to an extreme: he pouted and sulked through every watch, spending the majority of every watch below in the cabin, and never lifted a finger to help with any of the assigned team chores. His wife, on the other hand, was topside for pretty much the entirety of every watch, no matter how cold and damp, and was tirelessly helpful when it came out turn to clean up the galley.

I don't blame the guy, really. He, and all the other guests on this trip, signed up for a sailing trip from Greenland to Reykjavik and on to the western isles of Scotland via the remote outcrop of rock known as St. Kilda. What they got, instead, was a delivery trip. Instead of savoring the journey and exploring new places, these guests got stuck on a trip where the be all and end all was to get Polar Bear back to Newcastle by Sept. 10. No time to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, and no time to dawdle en route. It's a go-go-go task, which mandated the excessive use of the engine and a reliance on the autopilot on pitch-dark nights. Bottom line: these guests got screwed. And they know it.

But they didn't get screwed by Boogie, Marlies or me, or even the weather. In the case of the weather, it is what it is, to spout that idiotic maxim of today; they knew bad weather was a likelihood on a trip in these waters at this time of year and they were OK with it. And Boogie, Marlies and I are only the crew; we didn't determine the course of this trip.

No, the fault lies solely with the aforementioned Alfred, owner of Polar Bear and the only one involved on the supply side of this service-oriented business with no regard for the customers. But I've been over his idiocy before so let's leave it at that.

However, for this silly Finn to pout like a 12-year-old is pretty asinine. We're out here in the middle of the sea, nothing's going to change the circumstances until we reach port. You might as well enjoy the trip as best you can -- and then beat the shit outta the owner once you're on land. OK, maybe there's no need to get violent but you get the idea: take it up with Alfred. In the meantime, get with the Monty Python plan and always look on the bright side...

And there was a lot of bright side, particularly in the last couple of days. The sailing was been a zippy, rollercoaster ride to the southeast and we've seen a bunch of wildlife en route. For the first time -- the FIRST! -- this entire summer, we encountered a pod of orcas. Woohoo! I dig orcas, having watched them back in Alaska quite a bit. Before I started preparing for this summer, I had always thought they were a Pacific-only species. So when I learned they were common along our route from the Shetlands on, I was stoked. And then...nothing. Not a one until today, so that was some small bit of last-minute redemption.

We also had bioluminescence on last night's sail. Swirling in the waves along the hull and in the wake behind Polar Bear, the little glowing blobs mirrored the brief starry skies we enjoyed early on, and then continued long after the clouds had obscured the skies. Always one of my favorite parts of sailing, bioluminescence is one of those magical special effects of nature that still make me feel like a little kid every time I see it.

Also notable on this leg were the gannets, pelagic birds we've seen since the start of the summer but not so often up in Greenland and Iceland. Ever since we neared the Faroes, however, their number and size have increased. In particular, I've seen a bunch of juvenile gannets that have been just enormous: wingspans that, on first glance, made me think of an albatross (which, it must be noted, I've never seen in the wild). If those are young of this year and they get that big in just a few months...yikes. They've been THAT big as they swoop and soar in circles on the wild winds, never alighting on the water but instead disappearing downwind, only to return (the same bird?) a little later on. Majestic. Like frigate birds of the north.

And then this morning we were engulfed by hundreds of fulmars, all gliding on the winds around Polar Bear and dotting the waters around her as she plowed through the swell. It was reminiscent of that evening we rounded the southern cape of Jan Mayen, with countless fulmars in every field of view. It called to mind Alfred Hitchcock, to be honest, but these birds seemed disinterested, at best.

Sure, the monotonous motoring and the damp, foggy skies were a drag, no doubt about it. But that's what you sign up for on northern waters. Deal with it. That this Finnish bloke couldn't see past his own nose was a bit of a downer. I was letting him drag me into his funk but the conditions of the past 24-plus hours snapped me out of the fog and back into the sunlight of a fun passage at sea.

So now it's on to Lerwick, where we'll spend the evening at the dock and then head out in the morning, bound for the final two-day run south to Newcastle.

Dateline: Husavik

So while my earlier remark was true -- I won't have a lot of time to explore Husavik, Iceland, on this visit -- I have spent a bit of time wandering. And since I know you're dying to ask, here are some impressions of this seaside burg.

* The whale museum is excellent. This former (and still, to a certain extent) whaling community has been transformed into a whale-watching community. The museum that commemorates the former and celebrates the latter is an interesting, educational, fun resource that will teach you all you need to know about whales and their relation with humans. Worth the price of admission.
* The culture house is incomplete to me. There was no one at the admission desk when I arrived, and no one showed up when I pressed the "press here for service" button. I wandered into the maritime-history section, which was open, and found it filled with history and information and educational resources. The exhibition on daily life in this region was, sadly, locked, and through the windows it sure looked like an area I wanted to explore. Color me disappointed.
* Husavik is still a fishing community. Cleaned up and made touristy, the town retains the very strong feel of a still-working fishing town. The smell of fish pervades the entire community, not just the dock where Polar Bear is secured. And fork lifts wander the town hauling huge crates of ice in one direction and fish in the other. Husavik may be transitioning to a tourism-driven economy but fish still drives the town for now.

And last but not least...
* The phallus museum remains unknown. I know this is just what you were looking for: a museum dedicated to male genitalia of the animal kingdom. I am not making this up. The brochures promise umpteen examples of whale penises, and examples of pick-the-term-of-your-choice from another umpteen animals. And before you ask, yes, there are (apparently) plaster casts of a few penises from members of the species homo sapiens who have bequeathed their members to the museum upon their death. No word as to whether this has made these generous donors more popular with the female of the species but you gotta give 'em points for taking (or leaving, as the case may be) one for the team. I walked to the door of the museum, intrigued, and read the brochure on the wall outside, but couldn't summon the willpower to fork over the equivalent of $12 for the entry fee. Sorry, there's only so much I'll do in the name of reporting for this here blog.

False Start

The good news is: we finally got some sailing in. The bad news is: it was en route to Husavik, a port on the north coast of Iceland, after a severe gale was forecast for the northeast corner of the island. So we're sitting here in port for about 12 hours or so, waiting on the force 8 to 10 weather to blow past.

We'd seen this storminess -- the remnants of Hurricane Irene, I believe -- on the forecasts for some time, but earlier prognostications had it well beyond the northeast corner by the time we got there. My watch last night -- I'm back on with the Finnish couple -- saw the wind start to come up in the final 45 minutes, just before 9pm. We had the mainsail (with two reefs) and the staysail out and though we were still motoring, we'd pulled the revs back more and more as the wind built. When we came back on 3am, the engine was off and Boogie had already turned Polar Bear around. We were reaching in anywhere from 5 to 25 knots of wind; the wind was up and down in crazily wide swings as we made our way southwest back to port.

Husavik is Iceland's premiere whale-watching town and is a tourist center that has also retained its commercial-fishing emphasis as well. I've not seen much -- Polar Bear was here in July, when I was back in the U.S. -- and I likely won't get much chance, but the view from the sea is quite lovely: rolling, green hills to the east while steep, alpine peaks line the western shore of the bay. Houses line the bluffs that form the north side of the harbor and and reach just a tiny bit into the hills behind. It's cute, to be honest, with the commercial fishing on the south edge of the port giving it a gritty edge. Put Husavik on the list for later exploration.

Migration

Quarter past eight in the morning here in Akureyri, and we'll be throwing off the lines in about an hour or so, heading for the Shetland Islands. With that in mind, gonna fire one off the cuff here...

Appropriately enough for Sept. 1, the climb up the hill to the pool complex this morning was filled with signs of the imminent seasonal change as flocks and flocks of geese poured across the sky. All V'ed up and honking merrily along, the flocks continued in a steady stream overhead while I took a final swim/hot tub (the slide was closed...dammit!).

Yesterday, the local youth nordic ski team was doing dryland training on the long stairway leading up the hill to the church overlooking town. And the woman in the tourist office at the harbor said that her shop would be closing after the visit of the final cruise ship of the season on Friday.

And now, sitting in the town square just off the harbor, the high overcast obscures the sun in a way that portends snow. It won't, of course (not today anyway; after all, I'm sitting outside in the town square and am quite comfortable.

But like the geese this morning, Polar Bear and its crew will be headed south very shortly, the short northern summer having come to a close...the very definition of bittersweet.

Return to Akureyri

We arrived in Akureyri early yesterday morning amid thick fog and placid waters. We tied up to the same dock we'd been at when we were here back in July and cleaned Polar Bear stem to stern. The harbor staff showed up and connected the water and electricity, the customs man came and went, and we were free to play.

First up was, of course, the pool complex. The hot tubs and steam bath were still soothing, the slide still wacky fun, and the facilities all top-notch. A restoring visit once again and I emerged squeaky clean after two weeks of alternating clothes -- one set for on-watch, one set for off-watch -- and regular tooth brushing as the means to maintaining sanitary living. And the earlier-described dip/shampoo in the sea at Hekla in Scoresby Sund was about it when it came to active sanitation methods. Manky? Not quite. But certainly not the height of stylish living, perhaps.

But Iceland is a stylish nation, after all, so I had to clean up, right? Home to just 300,000 people, it is, nevertheless, home ground for several high-end clothing companies that focus on stylish, functional outdoor -- and outdoor-looking -- apparel. One such company is 66 North, perhaps the best-known of Iceland's outdoor companies. I checked out their two stores here in Akureyri and found them both light years better than the store in Reykjavik. In the capital city, the 66 North store was more of a boutique with an emphasis on fashion and city wear. Here on the north coast, one store was an outlet, with bargains on blemished items and off-sizes, while the other store (in a small mall) was more mainstream...but its selection blew away that of the Reykjavik city. If I were in the market for stylish clothes (and had one of my more more tasteful friends here to counsel me), I could easily have spent a ton of money in there. As it is, I walked out with a pair of too-warm overmitts to replace the old Black Diamond versions I sold in my Easter garage sale in Anchorage, and which will come in very handy on the nighttime watches to come.

I hit up 66 North today, a brief respite from final preparations for our departure tomorrow morning. The boat's water tanks were filled, its heater fixed, the forward locker rearranged and packed, laundry done, and food stores put away. We'll head out in the morning bound for the Shetland Islands in what should be a five-day journey or so. The forecast is for every possible wind scenario: dead calm, raging winds courtesty of the remnants of Hurricane Irene; on the nose to dead aft and from both port and starboard sides. It should be an interesting journey, to be sure, and hopefully we'll get to do a bit more sailing en route to Lerwick than we've done pretty much all summer. It's been an overwhelmingly engine-driven summer...not at all what I signed on for. If you know any wind dances, we could use 'em about now, thanks.

To Build a Fire, 2011

We're about 120 miles from Akureyri now, and up until last night it had been a brutal passage. By "brutal" I don't mean difficult: the conditions haven't been life-threatening or anything like that. It had been a brutal passage due to tedious conditions that resulted in fatigue, tension and just general malaise.

For instance, right now we're motoring over a smooth but rolly sea. There's a thick blanket of cold fog surrounding Polar Bear, drenching every last surface -- deck, sail, body -- with a thin but pervasive bone-chilling layer of wetness that sinks deep inside the cabin and the soul.

And we've been motoring since we left Constable Pynt, almost two days ago. It was a bright, sunny, breeze-on-the-nose motor south in Hurry Inlet, but as we neared the broader waters of Scoresby Sund, things got interesting. A fierce wind blew from the east-northeast, steadily in the mid- to high-30-knot range with gusts even higher. In response to that, the seas in Scoresby Sund were heaped up into a choppy maelstrom of steep waves and blowing spray, again, pretty much from the direction we were trying to go. Polar Bear's already underpowered engine struggled to move us at much over 2 knots. And the pack ice that had been outside the sound had blown in on the wind and waves, turning our path into a slalom course through icebergs, growlers and bergie bits. It was a lousy way to start a passage, ruining the upbeat mood that had permeated the boat upon our departure.

We turned the corner at Kap Brewster, exiting Scoresby Sund and entering the open seas of the Denmark Strait. There we found a large, steady swell out of the southwest formed by the storm that had recently passed so it was all locally generated and, as in Scoresby Sund, short and steep. And southwest was our desired path in order to head south past the pack ice before turning southeast to Iceland. But with the wind out of the south and southeast, we had a choice: motor into the seas and rock like a bucking bronco or motor into the headwinds for a somewhat gentler ride but at really slow speeds.

On top of the in-your-face conditions that made everyone at least a little queasy, the wear and tear of almost two weeks in the cold had begun to take effect. Continually low temperatures had made fatigue a constant, and I, for one, could do nothing when not on watch but sleep. The cocoon of my bunk was so welcoming that whenever I came off watch it wasn't more than three minutes before I was safely and warmly ensconced in my sleeping bag. With others in a similar state, esprit de corps was waning.

So it was that despite calming seas, I went into last night's midnight-3am watch dreading another three hours of monotonous engine droning and cold, wet air. And upon exiting the companionway hatch and standing in the cockpit I found myself surrounded by, yes, a droning engine and thick, cold fog. But I looked straight overhead, right up the mast toward the zenith and was rewarded with a clear view of the W of Cassiopeia. To the south a bit, off our starboard beam, the bright stars Vega and Deneb were visible in a clear, night sky. And off to the north, off our port quarter, the Big and Little Dippers (the latter with Polaris, the pole star, at its tail) were also visible. And that's when the magic happened.

The fog eased slightly and a bolt of green shot across the sky from north to south. From the horizon off our port side to the horizon off our starboard, a grand, waving curtain of green danced before the solar winds as the aurora again appeared at the start of my watch. In short order, other cliffs of shimmering green undulated in rhythmic swells, punctuated by occasional globs and pulses of bright auroral glow.

For a good half-hour we were all treated to a magnificent show of the northern lights, and occasional displays occurred for another two hours, until the glare of morning twilight grew from the dark northern edge of the sea to engulf the entire sky. Any queasiness I'd been feeling? Gone. And the malaise that had plagued the journey from Scoresby Sund was gone, swept away by the energy I generated bouncing from rail to rail to maximize my view of the magic light in the sky. At 3am, in the broadening glow of day, I went off watch feeling refreshed and invigorated, and though I once again headed straight to my bunk to sleep, the pall that had weighed on my eyes and my psyche was lifted. A few more watches to go and we'd be in Iceland, but in the meantime, I'd had my taste of northern magic and was greatly refueled.

The northern lights last night were a lifesaving fire that warmed the inside so much that the outside and the soul were brought back from the edge. I hadn't gone into frigid water and I wasn't trying desperately to build a fire that would save my life, but the conditions didn't seem that far off. Thanks to this fire, the numbness that had been creeping deeper and seemed ever more deadly were banished.

A Bumpy Reentry

Motorsailing along on north-northwesterly course under overcast skies through which a weak, northern sun is trying to burn. It's dry. It's also cold: in the low 30s. Boogie and I are on watch, which means he's down below at the navigation table snoozing.

It's too cold to write in the cockpit so I'm sitting on the top step of the companionway, out of the light breeze (created mostly by the forward motion generated by our engine) in the little cuddy that slides over the hatch. This watch, with its montonous gray sea beneath a gray sky amid the drone of the engine, is a far cry from last night's.

We got underway yesterday a little after 7pm in pretty calm conditions. After motoring around the spit of land that is Ísafjörður, we raised the mainsail (with two reefs) and turned out toward the sea. Boogie and I started our watch at 9pm and at first, things seemed like they were going to be great.

There was a decent wind out of the northeast so we were clipping along pretty nicely under reefed main, staysail and yankee. Just before 10pm, the sun emerged from below the thick clouds as it set in the northwest and the sky exploded into a canvas of reds and oranges and even, on the fresh snow that had fallen overnight up high, the pink of alpenglow. The sheer walls on the west side of the fjord, with their interspersed greens and browns, looked a lot like Hawaii, and the seas, while a bit lumpy, were nowhere near as bad as expected. The comforting beacons of a couple of lighthouses winked at us from behind, up the fjord, and as we exited into the open sea two more appeared, one on either side.

But things started going south, so to speak, shortly after it got dark around 10:45. Fortunately, we were off watch at midnight so it was only for an hour, but for that stretch of time I was in another world. In a not-so-good way.

For starters, I was fighting seasickness. It was one month to the day yesterday that I left Polar Bear in Akureyri. And in that time of shore-based living, my sea legs had softened. We loaded up on a pasta dinner before leaving the dock and while I knew I might have been better served doing without, I opted in on the meal. As a result, I felt dizzy for much of that final hour-plus on watch. I never heaved up dinner -- never really got close -- but that might have been a relief.

Between the swells running in from the northeast (sidenote: I gotta believe that last evening was the time to be surfing at Skálavik given the cleaned-up-yet-still-big conditions), the darkening sky, a surprising fatigue that set on once we were out in the fresh breeze and, the gathering cold (as I mentioned: a new dusting of snow was visible on the high points of the fjord...in mid-August), my head was swimming -- to the point where I could not, for the life of me, steer a straight course and I even began hallucinating a bit. Lights on the horizon, ominous shapes in the water near the boat...I was seeing things out of the corner of my flickering eyes. Fighting to keep my eyes open, fighting to stay on course, and shivering in the chilly summer night all made for what was undoubtedly the most challenging watch I've had this summer.

Fortunately, the next watch came on right around midnight, at which point I retreated without hesitation to my bunk. I stripped off my outerwear, crawled into my sleeping bag and was out pretty quickly. I awoke around 3am when the shifts were changing again but managed another couple of hours of sleep before Boogie and I took over at 6am.

I guess it was just the bumps of reentry because I feel much better now. Not great, mind you, but I'm seeing clearly and my head is no longer swimming.

In fact, it's now a wee bit monotonous. The wind has dropped further so the sea is a shiny black, smoothly undulating surface. The sun is shining a bit more forcefully as it climbs above the clouds in the southeast but it's still not enough to warm things up. And off to the west, blue sky is visible on the horizon. No ice yet, but we have now reached the area where we'll have to keep an eye out.

Iceland Got Real Surf!

The recent stormy conditions may have kept Polar Bear in port, but they did one very nice thing: they built up a bit of surf. As a result, yesterday I finally got to enjoy some actual surfing in the Greenland Sea. Last week it was fun paddling around in the small waves -- and even standing on a couple of little rollers -- but it wasn't really surfing, per se. Yesterday was.

No, there are no photos. All three of us -- Maik, Danny and I -- headed over to Skálavik, a bay on the tip of the peninsula north of Ísafjörður open directly to the expanse of the Greenland Sea in the late afternoon. On an incoming tide we shared head-high surf with the biggest seal I've ever seen in my life. We surfed the beach break in the middle of the bay, paddling out from the east corner of the bay where a rip current made the work pretty easy. The current drifted us west, past where a stream rushed into the bay from a gorgeous waterfall farther up the valley, and into a shifting lineup. It was really hit-or-miss with what you'd get: between the current, the shifty beachbreak peaks and a strong sideways wind, more often than not you'd get sectioned on take off and nothing but whitewater on either side.

Which wasn't too bad on the sets, which were overhead by a foot or two. And on the couple of waves that actually presented a bit of section, well, that's what it's all about. Ahhhh!

In all honesty, the surf wasn't great. The chop was challenging and the close-outs were a drag. But the joy of dropping into an overhead wave? Well, there's little else that approaches that. And to be out in such a beautiful location with just two other friends (and our new seal friend who'd pop his head up every now and then), well, it made the chill worth it. A nice way to wind up our time in Ísafjörður.

And They're Off!

It's 12noon on Tuesday, 16 Aug., here in Ísafjörður, Iceland. The wind calmed overnight (although it's picking up again) and the rain is just spitting a bit now. And in today's news: Polar Bear is departing Ísafjörður in about three hours. And there was much rejoicing.

As detailed earlier, we're going to head out of the fjord here and turn left (west) to ride the strong winds outside toward calmer conditions nearer the Greenland coast. Once we're clear of the heaviest stuff, we'll turn north and head for Scoresby Sund. We'll hope for relatively benign conditions there -- not too much wind and/or ice -- so we can round the cape that protects the southern flank of the sound. If there's too much ice, or if there's too much wind with enough ice that combined there's sufficient danger, then we'll turn around and be back in Iceland (likely here in Ísafjörður) by Saturday. We should know, based on weather reports and satellite photographs of the ice conditions, by late Wednesday whether we can get into Scoresby Sund.

We spoke with the family of the skipper of Aurora, a charter sailboat based here in Ísafjörður (that we saw off Jan Mayen several weeks ago), who's been in Kulusuk for a couple of weeks now. The skipper said he's never seen so much ice and the locals in Greenland said there's more ice than there's been in 45 years. So...we'll see what happens. (The irony is that Polar Bear could have made it the week before I rejoined the boat had Boy Wonder not skedaddled for the UK, but let's not get into that here.)

I'll be stoked if we can make it to Greenland. To see such a unique place would be a rare, if not unique, experience, hopefully surpassing even all that I've seen on this trip so far.

But more importantly, I'm anxious to get back to sea. Yes, I've been back on the boat for the past week, but I haven't really been on the boat since I left in Akureyri in mid-July. Being tied to a dock is nowhere near the same as being at sea. That rhythm of daily life on board, the sounds and motions of the boat moving through the water, the way the universe is reduced to the 72-foot length of Polar Bear and the sea from horizon to horizon...these are not remotely replicated when in port. In port, the rhythms of life are driven by shore life and the hours kept by the town in which you're docked. Being on a boat in port is just living in that town in a very small, damp apartment with a lousy bathroom.

At sea, though, the boat becomes a mobile castle, a bulwark against the harsh-yet-beautful environment that conveys you to ever new sights and destinations. The beds are sumptuous, the food extravagant and the bathrooms, well, they're still not exactly plush. And the clarity that comes from being on a watch system -- you're either on or you're off -- enables one to be remarkably productive and still be refreshed at all times.

So, yeah...I'm looking forward to casting off the lines this afternoon. Once we depart, we'll be out of contact until we return to Iceland, be that in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I will, of course, post once we're back in range. Talk to y'all then...

Custer Had a Plan, Right? Part Two...

We awoke this morning (Sunday, 14 Aug.) to Boogie looking at the weather reports and forecasts for the region. And here's the plan that resulted: We're here in Ísafjörður until Tuesday evening, at the earliest.

We have a chart for our original destination, Scoresby Sund, and will make for that port...but the weather charts indicate that the ice and wind conditions in the area of Scoresby Sund won´t open up until late Wednesday. And when we do head out to sea, we´ll head west first because the charts (and the conditions outside) show that swath of wind I mentioned a couple of posts ago: mega winds out of the north...but only about 70-100 miles wide. Inside of that area, closer to Greenland, the winds abate quite a bit. So we'll make for that mellower area then head north along the coast toward the mouth of Scoresby Sund.

The challenge is that we have two guests aboard (friends of Boogie and Marlies) who need to get out -- from somewhere -- on Saturday. On that same day we have nine or 10 (I forget exactly how many) guests due to meet Polar Bear -- again, somewhere. That "somewhere" would ideally be at Constable Pynt in Scoresby Sund, Greenland. That's where I was originally going to meet the boat after my American sojourn in July; that's where Boogie and Marlies' friends were going to fly in and out of; and that's where next Saturday's guests were going to join Polar Bear. So Constable Pynt is where we wanna be next Saturday. But if we can't make it in due to ice or weather then we need to be in a place like Ísafjörður or Akureyri or Kulusuk where there are regularly scheduled flights. But the chances of getting close to Greenland, being turned around by ice and making it to Akureyri (farther east in Iceland) are slim. And remember: we don't have a chart for Kulusuk, so that's out. So it's either: get in to Scoresby Sund by Saturday, or get turned around soon enough that we can make it back to Ísafjörður, again, by Saturday.

And right now, the weather is honkin' outside: a cold, biting wind out of the northeast is strong enough to put whitecaps in the harbor and decent-sized swells at the end of the fjords in the area; sporadic rain showers that chill to the bone anyone foolish enough to be caught outside; low clouds scudding by just below the tops of the peaks surrounding the area. Bottom line according to some locals: winter is back.

Great. So where am I going? North. Good thinkin', Luke...

In the meantime, before the weather completely crapped out we removed one of our headsails in advance of hoisting a smaller version so we're better equipped for the conditions outside. A few other tasks before the wind and rain made it more work than we felt like dealing with (since we weren't going anywhere soon) and I wandered off to the local establishment to catch the Chelsea-Stoke and Manchester United-West Brom matches on the telly.

After those matches, Marlies and Boogie and I took a rental car and wandered off south, in the opposite direction we went on Thursday. This time, we hit up Suðavik, about half an hour from Ísafjörður, to see the arctic fox museum (cute and interesting) and Heydalur, site of a true natural hot spring (nice and much better than the concrete pool we wallowed in on Thursday. A tad indulgent, yes, but worth it to see the other half of the Westfjords.

During our road trip it occurred to me that in all my talk of the "otherworldly" and "lunar" aspects of the local landscape, I might be giving a false impression. While it's true that such characterizations are accurate for the high country in the Westfjords, down along the coastline northwest Iceland is a land with enough shades of green to rival Ireland or Scotland. As you wind along the undulating, snake-like coastline, it's a light-green grassy patch here, a dark green creekbed there -- and everything in between. It's when you get midway up the mountainsides that the green starts to alternate with the black and brown of rock (before giving way entirely to rock higher up).

Another interesting (to me) observation: given the nature of the coastline here in the Westfjords, driving distances are almost exponential progressions over straight-line distance. Look at a map for this area: it's just one fjord after another, undulating in and out, for the entire circumference of the peninsula. There's one road that rings the Westfjords (a couple of others here and there, but not many others) and that road runs in one side of an six-to-10-mile-long fjord then back out the other, equally long side of the fjord. You'll be driving and you can see where you'll be in 20 miles -- just a half-mile away across the water. On top of that, Icelandic highways are NOT American freeways or German autobahns. In many places, they're dirt. Yes, dirt. And where they're paved, the roads are two lanes wide at best. In fact, for many stretches of today's ride the highway is one-and-a-half car widths wide; when you meet an oncoming vehicle, you slow down and sidle off your right tires to the shoulder as (you hope) the other driver does the same. Heaven help you if the other car is an RV or a semi... It's like Iceland said, "you know, there are these far-flung settlements...let's build a road to link them." They build this road over mountain passes and alongside the ocean -- wherever they could -- and they said, "that's good. We're done here."

And to be honest, I dig that. It builds in a sense of patience. A sense of "soon come," as they'd say in the Caribbean. "Island time" is not limited to the lower latitudes, it seems.

Anyway, so...tomorrow. Tomorrow, if this storminess continues (preferably offshore, and lined up north-south as indicated on the charts) I may be looking at some decent Greenland Sea surf. Same goes for Tuesday. The challenge will be access: Maik works (it is Monday after all) but I might be able to scare up a board and have Boogie drive me in his shiny rent-a-car (which he has until 5pm). So...we'll see.

But more importantly, we wait. We wait on wind here in Ísafjörður and environs; we wait on wind and ice just across Denmark Strait in Greenland. I'll update as I can. Thanks for tuning in.

Dateline: The Westfjords Region of Iceland

Boogie, Marlies and I got out of Ísafjörður on Thursday in a rental car. We explored the rest of the Westfjords region, of which Ísafjörður is the big city, and found a world of beauty, desolation, and fun. And as with the rest of the post-American Interlude period of this trip, the photos will have to wait until I get back to a Flash-compatible machine.

Our first destination was Látrabjarga, the westernmost point in Iceland and home to a huge wall of sea cliffs that are home to thousands of birds -- including nesting puffins that were reputed to be so tame that we humans could approach to quite close distances. It was a long drive of over 200 kilometers on regional highways, which meant that once we reached the village of þingeyri (pronounced something like "Thing-a-ree," with the rolled R that we Americans just can't do), a couple of fjords southwest of Isafjöður, the road turned to dirt. And dirt it stayed as we drove past the birthplace of Jon Sigurdsson, the "founding father", so to speak, of the modern Icelandic nation; past Dynjani, a gorgeous and oft photographed waterfall that is kinda the tourist symbol of the Westfjord region; and past several villages, warm springs and tourist destinations in their own right.

And the terrain in this part of Iceland remains, well, lunar: broad rocky plains topping flat mountain with small ponds scattered about like puddles on a sidewalk after a rain. White cottony plants fringed the ponds and small, low grasses and moss grew between the rocks. Sporadic growths of past-their-prime summer flowers appeared in a handful of places. What roads there are (and they are few) are dirt, rocky two-lanes that are either climbing up to steep passes or descending from steep passes. It is, as I've written, out there, so much so that at the top of one pass the solar panel powering the weather instruments was arranged vertically so as to maximize its exposure to direct sunlight.

But when we got there, Látrabjarga lived up to the hype. We got so close to puffins, crawling out to the edge of the cliffs, that at one point a bird appeared at the mouth of its burrow so close to Marlies that both she AND the puffin shrieked. I got so many up close and personal photos of puffins (again: I can't post photos to this blog since I'm on an iPad; there's a photo on my Facebook page and I'll post photos when I'm back) that by the end of the two hours or so that we were there, I was more than happy to have eaten puffin a couple of evenings earlier.

That´s right: Icelanders eat puffins. Yes, I know puffins are just SO cute. But you know what? They're also tasty. And they are very plentiful. If you're wondering: no, they don't taste just like chicken; puffin tastes like other game birds I've eaten (wild duck, pheasant), just stronger.

After Látrabjraga, we explored a beach on Patreksfjord that rivaled the Caribbean for white sand and turquoise water, a renowned red-sand beach on the open sea known as the "endless beach" (it's really 10 kilometers, which is still quite long, and a good half-mile or more wide...it's big) and one of the warm springs we'd passed earlier: a concrete pool on the edge of a fjord fed by a PVC pipe of wot water bubbling up right out of the Earth. We also wandered around the waterfall, Dynjani, before wandering back to þingeyri, for dinner, and on to Ísafjörður.

It was a great day with beautiful weather, fantastic views and interesting wildlife, all in an otherworldly setting. Again, I have photos to share but they'll have to wait till I get back to the States and can sync up my iPad to my laptop.

Didn't Custer Have a Plan Too?

Sitting in the bar/restaurant across the street from Polar Bear watching the Icelandic soccer national championship match on TV. It's not exactly Liverpool-Sunderland (which I watched earlier) but in contrast to that consummately professional English Premier League match, the action has been fierce in this one: two crossbars hit in the past five minutes along with another point-blank save, and the yellow cards are a-flyin' (and rightly so).

I'm sitting here because as you may have surmised by the publication of this post, I'm still in Ísafjörður. Boy Wonder arrived on the morning flight from Reykjavik sans chart for Kulusuk so the current plan is to put to sea tomorrow and head west in an attempt to not beat into the fierce northerly winds that are forecast. We'll head that way for the hundred-or-so-mile width of the heaviest swath of winds and then turn north along the coast of Greenland to our original destination (and a place we have a chart for), Scoresby Sund. Hey, it sounds like a plan...

And since you're dying to know: the score is 1-0 to the team in orange at halftime.

Welcome to a Goat Rodeo...Polar Bear Style

Finally chilling out after a busy Friday here in Ísafjörður. We got Polar Bear mostly ready to go tomorrow by stowing the two inflatable dinghies, washing the boat down, cleaning the interior, doing laundry, moving some of the berths around to accommodate incoming guests, etc.

But the Polar Bear goat rodeo continues. The weather forecast is still more moderate than it was a few days ago, and while a run due north to Scoresby Sund/Ittoorqqortormiit/Constable Pynt is still out due to heavy winds and seas in the forecast for that area, the drive to reach Greenland remains so strong that now we're going to head west-southwest to Kulusuk but...

...but we don't know if the guests arriving tomorrow can get a flight out of Kulusuk next week.
-- No worries. There are several daily flights to Reykjavik from Kulusuk tomorrow so that's OK

...but (and this is my personal favorite) we don't have a chart for the Kulusuk area.
-- Despite being told to get a chart in England yesterday, Boy Wonder called this afternoon to say the chandlery in Reykjavik was closing today (Friday) and wouldn't open again until Monday, so his plan to get a chart en route was out and could we do anything about a chart? And did we really need a chart? Legally, yes, we need a chart, and Boogie won't go without one, regardless. Boogie spoke with the harbormaster who checked with an ancient local who used to sail to Kulusuk regularly to see if he still had an old chart lying around...no luck. Then he tried a friend of the skipper of a local boat (Aurora, a boat we saw at Jan Mayen way back when, now currently in Greenland with guests) to see if he had a chart lying around...well, that friend-of-the-skipper is playing in the band at the bar/restaurant across the street from Polar Bear so we're going to check in with him later, see if there's a chart in his car or something.

The bottom line is: if we don't get out by midday tomorrow, the weather is forecast to get nasty enough that we'll be here for at least a couple of days. We'd still get Boogie and Marlies' friends to Greenland, and we'd get there for next week's guests, but it'll be close AND we'll be hanging out in Ísafjörður for another couple of days...which wouldn't bother the surfer in me (see yesterday's post), especially since my wetsuit boots and gloves arrived this morning from home (thanks, Mom!). I'd also get to check out opening day of the English Premier League (a lot of Man U and EPL fans here in Iceland, it turns out). And frankly, the three of us had such a great day yesterday -- we rented a car and spent the day touring the Westfjords region -- that the guests could have plenty of fun in the interim.

More on that later...either in the next day or so, or after we return to civilization in a couple of weeks. Either way, I'll get at least a quick update posted tomorrow if we're heading to sea.

Perspective, Baby

I sure as hell can't complain about the weather on the trip this summer. Sure, we had some nasty, cold crap on the Norwegian Sea as we headed to Iceland from Jan Mayen, but that's to be expected out there. Whenever we've been somewhere, we've only had a wee bit of unpleasantness. Other than those couple of rainy days in Lerwick, Shetland, we've enjoyed crazy-good conditions pretty much the entire time (and we had plenty of crazy-good days in Shetland, too).

And that streak continues to this day, which finds me sitting here in the sun in Ísafjörður in a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. Seriously. I'm getting sunburned. In Iceland. At 66 degrees north latitude. I mean: really?! I've been simultaneously watching a small boat working the light breeze on the waters of the fjord and taking in the snow-dappled mountainsides ringing the southern, western and northern boundaries of town. It's probably in the mid-60s officially, but in the direct sunlight, it's seriously toasty. 70-plus? Seems likely. Ahhh!

Boogie and I took advantage of the weather and ambled out for a run this morning. We covered about 5.5 miles at a leisurely pace, and got to see some of the town in the process. After the run, I grabbed a swim, sauna and hot tub, and shower/shave at the community pool -- EVERY town in Iceland, no matter how small, has a pool (many of them heated geothermically)...it's kinda the national pastime -- and then we did some chores on Polar Bear, chipping away at the to-do list for the Greenland run...

...which now looks more likely. Yesterday's grim weather forecast has moderated considerably and it's looking like we'll head north Saturday morning. Ironically, I welcomed the initial forecast because it meant two things: one, that we'd be stuck in port while, two, the surf was big. Even Arctic Surfers, a tour company down south, called out the forecast for this area for the weekend, but alas. It's interesting (to me, anyway) how my perpsective changed over time: as a sailor, I was bummed by the forecast and then I realized that as a surfer, I was stoked by that same forecast. With the forecast easing, the surfer in me is now bummed, but the sailor/adventurer who wants to see Greenland is stoked. It's a no-lose situation, I'm well aware, but I must confess to having looked forward to some big waves hereabouts. Perhaps come September...

Fun in the Sun in Iceland

Well, since we're here in Isafjörður for a few days, Boogie, Marlies and I are mixing in a bit of fun with the chores required to prep the boat for our run to Greenland. That included breaking out the big dinghy yesterday -- complete with a 65-horsepower outboard -- and running the eight miles or so upfjord to the small island of Vigur. It's an old farming island that's been in one family for generations and now makes a living from tourism.

Visitors make the run from town and wander the island, seeing how farming once provided a living and taking in a bit birdwatching. A flock of eiders reside on the farm and are so tame that two of the ducks followed us as we wandered around all around the place. A ton of puffins make their home on the island too, but they're a bit more wary of humans than the eiders. Still, you could sit among the puffins' burrows and hear them just underground -- they sound like cows off in the distance -- and eventually they'd emerge close enough to see up close (but I still couldn't get any good photos, dammit!). Arctic terns hovered overhead in great numbers, screeching at the interruption (managed to get a few good shots of these aerobats). Guillemots and gulls round out the avian residents on Vigur; there were also a couple of sheep around, too.

After wandering a bit, visitors return to the cozy little farmhouse and enjoy some tea or coffee and some homemade pastries. The pastries, in particular, were magnificent -- especially the pie made from the farm's own rhubarb.

It's a beautiful spot and the solitude must be fantastic. And when you need the amenities of town, Ísafjörður is just a 30-minute boat ride away. Ironically, as secluded as you'd be on Vigur, the road from town back to the rest of Iceland snakes by on the thin strip of land between the steep mountains and the sea just a half-mile in places from Vigur. So you can hear traffic -- admittedly, a couple of vehicles an hour at peak times, it seems like -- from this little bit of nirvana.

The other irony about this part of Iceland is the topography. With the flat-topped mountains and the chossy rock, I was reminded overy strongly of parts of the Colorado Plateau in the western U.S. -- albeit with green streaks running up the sides of the mountains and a green foundation at their bases. Think of, say, Grand Junction, Colorado, or Moab, Utah, or even Monument Valley or some part of Arizona, in the spring, during that brief couple of weeks when there's some low-level green present among the red and brown rocks. There are no trees here, as there, and, of course, you need to ignore the sea that dominates the scene here in Iceland. There's a reason NASA sent the early astronauts to this island in the North Atlantic to prepare for the moon landing: it's definitely a lunar landscape.

I'd post the photos here but I seem to have made a grave error: I left my laptop back in the States when I returned to Polar Bear. I'm using my iPad alone at this point, but the Blogger upload tool is, apparently, a Flash-based tool so...I'm up the creek with regard to posting photos. Sorry, folks. I've used the Facebook email-a-photo tool to post a photo of a tern and a video from the dinghy ride back over on that site...best I can do until I figure out what works on Blogger (anyone with any ideas is welcome -- nay, begged -- to email a solution).

And I have time to implement any solutions sent along: the current plan is to wait here until Saturday, when Boy Wonder and two friends of Boogie and Marlies are due to arrive. And while Ísafjörður is a charming little town, there ain't much to do. A hike here and there; I might rent a bike...beyond that, umm... And naturally enough, when looking at the weather forecast this morning, Boogie discovered that next week's weather is expected to be brutal: winds in the 40- to 60-knot range (with higher gusts) and right on the nose. With weather like that, there's no way we'll make Greenland. The perfect condition for the run across the Denmark Strait is right now -- but we're only three crew at this point and you really need four to be able to handle the ice and weather (read: fog) conditions that one can expect in that bit of water. Boogie is on the phone right now with Boy Wonder, in an attempt to change the plan enough to enable us to reach Ittoqqortoormiit and Scoresby Sund. So stay tuned...

Northern Aloha

Upon my arrival in Isafjördur yesterday, Boogie and Marlies introduced me to Maik, a young German guy working in the restaurant across the street from where Polar Bear is tied up. Maik, it turns out, is a surfer here in Iceland and in true surfer fashion he immediately let me know that I shoulda been here yesterday, as the saying goes. But there was still a little swell so Maik offered to drive me out to a break not far from Isafjördur after he got off work at 5pm. Marlies and Boogie joined the expedition and we loaded into Maik's Toyota pickup truck for the ride to Saebol, a "village" on a cove two fjords west of Isafjördur.

Yes, surf in Iceland. Think about it: it's an island in the middle of the ocean...of course, there's surf. The south coast of Iceland, open to the entire expanse of storms and swells from the Atlantic Ocean as it is, has well-documented surf. But surf here on the north coast of Iceland surprised me, so I was excited at this unforeseen development. But isn't the water cold, you ask. Sure, but no colder than New England or Alaska. And like those two other places where I've surfed, crowds aren't a factor when surfing Iceland. Count me in.

The "highway" out of town was little more than a narrow two-lane road but at least it was paved. It ran through a tunnel several kilometers long heading west -- actually, it's two tunnels in one: there's a fork in the road in the tunnel -- IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOUNTAIN -- that provides access to the first fjord west of town -- and emerged near the top of the fjord that is home to Flateyri, a top that was flattened by an avalanche a while back. Upon reaching the next fjord west, we turned off the pavement and on to a single-lane dirt road that required Maik to lock the hubs on his truck.

Up we climbed on this numbered, regional highway, and crested the ridge atop a pictureque green valley running north down to the sea. A steep descent brought us to Saebol: two small farms, a dirt airstrip and a small alabaster church overlooking the water. In the farm beside the church lived Betty, a friend of Maik's who taught at the university. How she gets in and out of that valley in wintertime is beyond me. It's snowmachine (snowmobile for non-Alaskans) country, for sure. But given the avalanche terrain all around the head of the valley...yikes. But in Iceland, the highway department apparently plows the dirt track twice a week. Hell, there was good cell coverage right along the beach -- at the bottom of a valley home to a couple of people. Talk about having your cake and eating it too: solitude but all the amenities.

At Betty's, we met up with Danny, a Canadian attending grad school for marine-resource management in Isafjördur. Fortunately, Danny had a pair of wetsuit boots that fit me since I had apparently neglected to put mine in my bag with my wetsuits when I left the U.S. on Thursday. Whoops. Danny also had a longboard I could use which was also good since the surf was small and onshore.

But dammit...it was surf! And it was surf on the Greenland Sea. It was a beautiful hour or so of surf in a stunning setting of cliffs ringing the fjord, the green valley at our backs, the small white church on the bluff -- all with new friends. The essence of a surfari, for sure, and a great way to start this second leg of this summer of adventure.

Dateline: Isafjördur

I flew to this small city (+/- 3,000) in the northwestern part of Iceland yesterday morning. Isafjördur is a lovely little town and is set, as its name suggests, in the bottom of a fjord, so steep walls tower over the settlement on three sides. The mountains are, like much of Iceland's topography, flat-topped and are made up of dark rock with small, bright green plant life streaking about three-quarters of the way up. At the bottom of the fjord it's Ireland green formed by grasses and fields -- but no real trees. There are scattered groves that have been planted by the residents, but no forests.

At the head of the fjord, to the west, there's a road that leads to the rest of this region of Iceland which is known as the Westfjords. The region comprises a peninsula jutting out of the northwest corner of the island, and its fjord-pocked coast is one continuous series of undulations. But it's remote out here: since fjords ultimately end in a high wall, that road out of town tunnels into the mountain to reach the next fjord. The tunnel was built in 1996 -- which means that up until 15 years ago, travel from town to town around here was via the rough, dirt tracks over the mountaintops. And that's just in the summer. In the winter? Whole other ball game. Now I know why everyone here has beefy four-by-four vehicles despite the high cost of fuel. It's out there here in the Westfjords, that's for sure.

On the east side of Isafjördur there's a huge dike running diagonally up the hillside between the town and the slopes. It was built to protect a residential area from avalanches; in years past, slides have wiped out houses and ski lifts (they moved the lifts farther up the valley as a result; houses were a little tougher to move). The dike is 25 or 30 feet high and a good quarter-mile long, and there are also a series of man-made conical hills, also 25 or 30 feet, upstream from the dike. That's how big the avalanches get around here. A couple of fjords over, there's the village of Flateyri which was buried by a slide in 1995 that wiped out a bunch of houses and killed 20 people. So yeah, it's out there here in the Wesfjords.

And yet there's a reportedly good hospital here in Isafjördur and a university too. There's also a pro or semi-pro soccer team: a Reykjavik team was on my flight yesterday, coming up here for a match. Cruise ships call regularly and there have been steady stream of European and North American tourists wandering town. The houses here are charming and brightly colored, with beautiful flower gardens out front and in windowsills. And the town is home to several high-profile music festivals annually.

So the combination of out-there and civilization makes Isafjördur a pretty neat place. And on a summer day like today -- brilliant blue sky with not a cloud in sight, temps in the mid 60s -- it's not only charming but quite idyllic here. I suspect winter is a different matter but for now it's wonderful.

Which is good because the Polar Bear soap opera is ongoing. Boogie and Marlies offloaded a group of Russian photographers the day before I arrived. They were unable to get through the ice to Greenland (a couple of hundred miles away) and this week's scheduled group wasn't interested in NOT getting to Greenland so they canceled. As a result, Boogie and Marlies and I are staying here, watching the weather and ice forecasts, and waiting for Saturday when a couple of friends and Boy Wonder will arrive and we'll give Greenland another go. Boogie was hoping to head west to Akureyri or Husavik in the next day or two in order to give us a more westerly track to Scoresby Sund but Boy Wonder emailed today saying the ice report indicates that we'll have a better shot running straight north from here rather than from farther east. So...we'll see.

Another Dose of Humility, Please

Sitting in the lobby of the City Centre Hotel in Reykjavik. It's midnight on a Friday and the scene up and down the street outside is, to put it bluntly, rockin'. Alas, I have an 8am flight to catch so I'm behaving: a couple of pints of Guinness and now I'm getting ready to turn in.

This town really is incredible: small enough to be digested in short order; interesting enough to keep someone busy for a very long time. I did the culture/history thing today: museums. Under an overcast sky that occasionally spit a few raindrops, I hit the Culture House and the National Museum. In the latter, I got a detailed rundown on the history of this island, this nation, this people. It was fascinating and very well presented, and I quite enjoyed myself. To be honest, I don't think I gave myself enough time for the National Museum -- there was just so much to digest.

The Culture House, on the other hand, was spectacular in an understated manner...especially if you're into the written word. The emphasis at the Culture House is just that: the written word. So the focus is on the published versions of the Icelandic Sagas and Eddas and other national treasures that set this small island's culture apart from more mainstream European history/culture.

Upon entering the main display at the Culture House, I got a little upset: everything was just a reproduction of the books that contain these amazing stories dating back more than a thousand years. BUT...in the back corner of the main room there was a little sign saying: "This way." And for those who followed...wow. Real, live, actual books that were almost a thousand years old (from the 1200s in some cases), under glass, protected from ultraviolet light and humidity and other degrading impacts. Stories that were written down so they'd survive from generation to generation -- and all gloriously crafted, with beautiful calligraphy and gorgeous illustrations. It was truly awe-inspiring, especially to one who bitches about how writing with pen-and-paper is just sooooo trying...how he writes more easily on a keyboard. Boy, did I feel like a big wuss. It was a truly humbling experience.

It was a fitting send-off. Tomorrow morning I'll jump a flight to the northwest part of Iceland, to Isafjördur, where I'll rejoin Polar Bear and we'll head to Greenland. Maybe. Yesterday, on the flight over the southern cape of that mystical land, I saw quite a bit of ice so we'll see what happens (last week, Polar Bear was turned back by the ice). I'm hopeful of reaching Greenland via boat but again: it's not up to me. Either way, we'll give it a shot. And assuming we get through, I'll be incommunicado for the three week-long trips on the schedule. My next connection to the modern world will come upon our return to Iceland in late August.

So enjoy the rest of your summer. I lived in Alaska, but even I've been shocked in the change in the light at this latitude in just two weeks: it's pitch dark out now whereas when I was here last, it was a pleasant surprise to see the moon in an otherwise daylight sky. The lesson is clear: light and summer (and a few other things...) are fleeting. They are to be savored, made the most of. Because it's a long time till they come 'round again...