Moonlight Sonata

Ahhhhhh!

I realize it's 3am, but this is the kind of night you dream about -- well, that I dream about -- as a sailor.

I went topside at 11:30pm, half an hour before our midnight watch, to see what the weather was like, figure out which clothes I would need for the midnight watch, and find out why we were still on a starboard tack headed southeast. Emerging from the hatch, I was greeted by a cloudless sky filled with a myriad of stars and a daytime-bright, almost-full moon. Not a manmade light was in sight from horizon to horizon: no ships, no oil rigs, nothing. And to further improve the scene, seas were calm and the wind was a nice and steady 20-ish knots. Oh yeah...it was setting up for one of those perfect midnight watches.

For the first hour of our watch, we continued southeast with the nearly full moon to the south off our starboard beam. The white moonlight reflecting off the water was bright enough to read by (almost) and served as a shiny, shimmering axis, a rod used by a puppeteer to control a marionette to guide us along our track.

It was really too bright a moon for deep-sky stargazing, but away from city lights all the big-name constellations and sky patterns were readily visible. Lyra, Cygnus and Aquila and the summer triangle of their brightest stars Vega, Deneb and Altair were slowly setting in the west signaling the winding down of summer. Off our stern, the Big and Little Dippers pointed the way north and showed us from where we'd just come. Overhead, all of the players from the Perseus myth were present: Perseus himself, along with Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Pegasus. King of the gods and planets, Jupiter blazed brightly in the southeast while just a touch north, rising in the east, the Pleiades and Taurus the bull heralded the coming of autumn...and winter beyond.

Just before 1am, we tacked over for the straight-line run toward Newcastle. And though clouds started rolling in at that point, it was no matter: the continued spectacular sailing -- seven-plus knots and right on the ideal track for our destination -- and the joy of an hour of perfect, dark skies kept the high intact. Even the Finnish sourpuss exalted in the conditions, especially when Polar Bear hit eight knots while he was at the helm.

The spell finally broke a bit, not long before we finished our watch, as the loom of the lights of Newcastle and an antenna somewhere along the coast came into view. As if to counter the intrusion, Orion began his climb out of the sea back behind us to the east.

Whew. Sorry about that. Sorry to wax rhapsodic to the point of sounding like a greeting card or one of those posters teenagers put on their wall when they hit their I-wanna-be-taken-seriously phase, but it really was a perfect way to wind up the trip -- that was likely our final watch as our ETA is 9:30-ish in the morning and we're not on again until 10.

It was the kind of nighttime watch I love and never get enough of; the kind that makes me want to head right back to the States, buy my own boat and take off. Relax, Mom...not that that will actually happen: I don't think I could get any boat ready to head to the Caribbean in time for a Nov. 1 departure, and after that it's getting a little late in the season.

But a night like this (along with yesterday's rollicking sleigh ride) goes a long way toward redeeming -- or at least helping me overlook -- some of the shortcomings that have occurred on this summer trip. Combine these couple of days with the sights and scenes of the Shetlands, the Lofoten, Iceland and Greenland, and some of the great people I've met along the way, and it really does make for a summer of adventure. Perhaps even the summer of my life.

THE Sailing Day of the Trip

So, two days out from being over and done with this summer-long journey, we wind up having what may have been the best day sailing so far.

It started with the fresh breeze out of Lerwick, which persisted south of the Shetlands. And contrary to forecasts -- not that they've been right once this summer -- the winds persisted through the course of my 6-9pm watch.

We maintained an eight- to 10-knot speed for the three-hour run, and though the Finns were, let's call them "directionally challenged" at the helm, we made a good, 25-plus-mile run. The sun went down in a blaze of pink cirrus clouds as the waxing gibbous moon rose in the southeast. And by the time we went off watch, we'd reached Duncansby Head, the northern tip of the mainland of Scotland. Even the Finns weren't scowling as much as usual.

On top of that, we even had a fly-by by a tall ship. The three-masted behemoth, with sails flying from all the yardarms, appeared on the southwest horizon as an amorphous shape -- an island where there wasn't supposed to be one. As it grew bigger and began to take shape, we could see the brilliant white canvas driving the ship downwind to the northeast. And as she moved past our stern, the lowering sun brightened the fields of canvas into a mirage, an image from a bygone era: a lone tall sailing ship plying a foamy, spray-soaked sea beneath a cloud-streaked sky that spoke of rain to come.

The ship disappeared into the haze on the horizon, as anonymously as it had appeared. Norway's tall ship headed home after a summer abroad? Seems a likely bet.

Our 3-6am watch that followed was, however, a tad anticlimatic as we came topside amid a field of North Sea oil platforms, ships servicing the platforms and a now-lessened wind that had us full-on motoring to the south. The lights from the plaforms were such that it felt like we'd gone to sleep in the middle of the wilderness and awakened in the middle of Times Square. On top of that, the flames spewing from the tops of the oil rigs recalled nothing more than the drive through the environs of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Oh well. 'Twas great while it lasted. In all, we covered about 176 miles in the 24 hours after leaving Lerwick. Now we're still full-on motoring but the wind has swung through our bow and is now coming from the southeast and building. My watch team is about to go on duty at 2pm, a watch that will run through 4pm. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to roll out the yankee headsail and maybe get our speed back up into the eights and nines (we're in the mid-sevens right now), and maybe even get in a bit of steering. Yes, with the Finns at the wheel we'll cover more ground than if we let the autopilot keep us on the straight and narrow. But if it placates them even a little bit, it'll be worth it.

Two watches to go, in all likelihood: 2-6pm and then 12midnight-3am. We should be nearing the River Tyne around 10am, the time we're supposed to be on next, which means everyone will be on deck and Boogie will be at the wheel. The countdown continues...

Down The Homestretch They Come

And of course, since the trip is almost over, the sailing conditions are now spectacular.

We left Lerwick this morning amid a nice westerly breeze. The island being to our west, that meant that the wind was moving us along nicely but the seas remained calm. And move along nicely we did: we were over 10 knots for a good chunk of the run south along Mainland Shetland, as it's known.

Now we're out from under the southern tip of the island, exposed to the open ocean to the west. And though the seas are rough and rolly, the sailing is still spectacular.

I should say "motorsailing" as opposed to "sailing" because we've left the engine running, which is giving the wind, and us, a bit of help. While the droning of the damned diesel usually annoys the hell out of me, not this time. For one thing, with the engine going, we're setting a torrid pace for our return to Newcastle and the completion of this trip. And for another, I like going fast so that little extra oomph is a kick in the pants after a summer of plodding along at five knots.

We're in the mid-nine-knot range now and the sun is shining and the sea is shimmering. We're on a close haul -- we're sailing close to the wind -- so the spray is cascading over the bow at times, exploding in a million diamond-bright droplets in the brilliant sunshine. The diamond stardust hangs in the air for an instant and then falls back toward the boat, where it gathers into rivers of crystal-clear water that course aft along the decks and back into the sea. And then Polar Bear surges into the next wave and the cycle is repeated.

I'm below in an empty saloon, heating up the chili that I cooked for yesterday's dinner -- a dinner we all instead decided to eat ashore in Lerwick (as I knew we would). But it was my watch's turn to cook so cook we did and now it'll be ready for this evening. Maybe. Because we're close-hauled, the boat is at a nice, steep 45-degree angle. Yes, the gimbaled stove keeps the big stew pot mostly level, but it didn't stop a lurch a few moments ago from launching the lid of the pot across the galley. I'll get this stuff cooked (though truth be told: it's not my preferred chili; I'm forbidden from giving it any bite like my normal recipe because apparently not everyone likes spicy food); it will be interesting to see how many brave the boat's heel and the rollercoaster ride to sample the fare.

My watch goes on at 6pm and we'll be topside until 9 (well, we'll see if the Finnish sourpuss is up there the whole time; if he gets to steer a lot, he just might). The wind over that period is forecast to ease a bit, and by the end of that stretch we should be nearing the coast of mainland Scotland, which should mean calmer seas. And then we'll head south along the coast in ever-slower winds, winds that are also supposed to move forward and be right on the nose for the final day's run into Newcastle.

But for now, it's a great ride. Strap in, hang on and enjoy!

And Still More Positive Vibrations

We've made the turn into Yell Sound and wow! Easily the best sailing of the summer so far. Talk about last-minute redemption.

The wind that had been on our starboard quarter is now solidly on our beam, and here in the lee of the outer shores of the mainland island of Shetland the water has calmed. But the wind is still running in the 20s and Polar Bear is reveling in the conditions, reaching along at nine-plus knots under bright sunshine. With the engine and generator off, the only sound is the wind in the rigging and the water racing along the hull; these are the conditions that make even die-hard powerboaters and landlubbers come to enjoy (if not love) sailing.

Boogie is letting each of the guests have a turn on the helm, trying to make hay -- or sailing time -- while the sun shines, so to speak. Even the Finnish sourpuss seems to be enjoying this run through Yell Sound.

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.

Division of Labor

Happy Labor Day to everyone back in the States. Hope you're enjoying the long weekend.

Here on the Norwegian Sea, we're midway between Iceland and the Faroe Islands...and we're sailing! And it's sunny! We started sailing right at the end of my 3-6am watch when Boogie came on and shifted course 10 degrees to accommodate the wind, an act that pointed up one of the challenges to this summer.

When people have asked what I do on Polar Bear, I say (only half-jokingly) that I clean the heads (the toilets). I'm only half-joking when I say that because in truth, we all clean the heads, just as we all clean the rest of the boat, we all cook, we all sail -- we take turns doing the various jobs required on a boat.

What we don't share in is decision-making -- which I understand since this is a commercial venture and it's Boogie's ass (and captain's license and career) in a sling if anything goes wrong. But this morning was the perfect opportunity for me to demonstrate a little initiative and the fact is: I haven't felt empowered to make anything beyond trivial decisions this summer, and that's not how I'm going to learn what I need to know.

An hour into my watch, around 4am, we were still plowing southeast into the wind, main and staysail up and engine running, when the fog finally lifted for the first time in days (though it seemed more like years). We'd been running a bit south of the rhumb line for a day or more, into a southerly breeze, so falling off the wind a touch (more toward the east) would have easily enabled us to sail at the same time it brought us back to our target course.

It's a move I'd hoped to make for many hours, but given the fog and whatever reasons Boogie undoubtedly had (likely based on the weather forecast farther down our track) I'd never even considered asking. When the fog cleared, though, I was really clamoring to make the course change (if for no other reason that to appease the Finns aboard who've been pretty ticked about how little sailing we've been doing on their vacation). But again: the lack of empowerment was, well, overpowering, so I kept on keepin' on, only to have the change made as soon as my watch ended.

The peace that settled over the boat as the engine was shut down was in direct inverse proportion to the frustration I felt at not being able to turn off the damned motor.

And it pointed up the fact that for me to learn what I need to learn at this point, I need to get out on a boat of my own and make my own decisions. If by falling off the wind I slow the boat's velocity-made-good to the point where I'm late getting in, well, so be it -- but of course, that's not an option on a commercial venture, except at the discretion of the skipper and his call on things such as the weather (which, it appears, will prevent us from getting to Newcastle on time, but that's another story).

We had a similar situation a couple of mornings ago as we made our way into Husavik: Polar Bear was close-hauled on a port tack with a broad bay ahead and Husavik directly off the port beam. I woke Boogie to ask him to make the decision: turn on the engine and head straight into the wind for Husavik or continue across the bay and tack back toward port later, extending the sailing but delaying our arrival at the marina. He opted for the engine; if it had been me on my own boat, I'd have continued to sail and opted for the later arrival. Again, a decision I didn't feel empowered to make.

I've learned a lot on this summer's voyage. Most of what I've learned has been about how to operate a boat -- by "operate a boat" I mean: the systems and the people-, time- and project-management in the daily routine of life on board -- and has come through osmosis as I've watched Boogie and Marlies operate Polar Bear. Navigation and handling the boat, however, have remained unattained goals, goals that were to make up for the money I was giving up by taking this summer gig. I knew I wasn't going to get rich on Polar Bear but I was hoping to get more tutelage and hands-on experience in many of the requisite seamanship skills. (To be sure: I have experience in all those areas, I was just hoping for more, and in more diverse situations, than I currently have.)

Perhaps I should have been more assertive, insisting that Boogie teach me more (as he's been doing on this cruise with one guest who's working on his captain's license), but I've always felt that my first obligation was supporting Boogie and Marlies' efforts to run Polar Bear for the benefit of the guests. As a result of that prioritization, for example, I missed a few nice photo opportunities. But more importantly, I haven't gained experience in certain key areas, areas I'll have to develop on my own back home at some point. And that shortcoming, in addition to the shortened season courtesy of Polar Bear's owner, has been a real damper on an otherwise spectacular summer.

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.

The Northern Lights Appear

Yup, another anchor watch. Quite possibly my last anchor watch of this summer adventure...and what a watch.

I came on watch just before 1am. Right at 1, I popped up on deck to see if the night had turned dark enough to see some stars. Saturn had been blazing in the northeast twilight when I went to sleep and there he was again, this time more toward the southeastern corner of the sky. Polaris, the north star, was visible, more directly overhead than I've ever seen it before. And several other stars were also visible -- mostly bright stars, as the sky to the north was still the deep orange of twilight. At this hour, night time had deepened to as dark as it was going to get.

But it was dark enough. As I turned to head below, I ventured one more look toward the east and there it was: the aurora. The northern lights, dancing overhead in a curtain of fluorescent green. A couple of curls radiated along a northeast-to-southwest axis, and a brief tinge of purple appeared. As with Polaris, this aurora was more directly overhead than I'd ever experienced it before, a testimony to the fact that this summer has seen me journey farther north than I've been in my life. Above the ridge to the west, just ashore of the anchored Polar Bear, another node of aurora undulated in the deep blue sky, keeping time to whatever unheard (by me) rhythm the universe was tapping out.

I quickly returned to the cabin to wake the German photographers (they'd asked to be awakened in case of an auroral display) and my predecessor on anchor watch woke his wife as well. Even Boogie popped his head topside briefly. I also grabbed my camera bag, but the display was all too brief: five, maybe 10 minutes, tops. By the time I had my rig set up, the northern lights were quiet again, and the stars shone on again in solitude. But oh...it was enough.

I get all choked up when seeing any fleeting and beautiful natural phenomena. Make it astronomical -- a hobby of mine since boyhood -- and throw in the latitudinal bias of the aurora and the northern lights are a treat I will never tire of. So to see the aurora in this particularly unique (to me) setting on the final night of our stay in Greenland, and toss in the fact that it turned on just as I was coming on watch and well, you'll excuse me if I don't feel more than a little privileged and honored to have been granted such a show.

I stayed topside for the entire hour, the frosted decks and chill air no challenge for the glow I was feeling from the brief appearance of the aurora. I shot a few twilight photos, and then a few of the sliver of moon as it rose over the ridge to the northeast after Boogie came on watch at 2am, and here I am jotting these thoughts at 3am. It's time now for me to head back to sleep, but wow. Wow, wow, wow. I am suitably buzzed at this evening's events.

What a Difference Five Days Makes

Polar Bear is motoring past Hurry Inlet, the north-south stretch of water that is home to Constable Pynt, about 16 miles up-fjord. The inlet looks much less filled with ice than it did on our last trip here, last Saturday.

As does the entirety of Scoresby Sund. We're headed back to Ittoqqortoormiit after a circumnavigation of Milne Land. It's been a trip of grandeur and incredible scenery, and one of never-ending changes.

The primary change is in the ice. Upon Polar Bear's arrival from Iceland, and a day later, upon our departure deeper into Scoresby Sund, the ice was a major factor. As detailed earlier, vast packs of ice crowded Hurry Inlet and the bay upon which Ittoqqortoormiit resides, making navigation a slow, tedious affair often requiring a lookout in the spreaders. Today, we've passed a few large bergs but beyond that, little ice. Perhaps the down-fjord winds of the past three days have blown all the ice out to sea, in which case we'll have to deal with it next week en route back to Iceland.

We were also forced to thread our way through a maze of ice -- large and small -- in Fönfjord yesterday. We had anchored in an exposed bay called Ankervig, site of an Inuit summer hunting camp and also home to a couple of Danish researchers. In fact, Ankervig was at the southwest corner of Milne Land and formed the intersection of Fönfjord and Rödefjord.

Rödefjord was so named -- Red Fjord -- because of the sandstone cliffs and islands along its western edge. In this landscape of black and white and blue, the Colorado Plateau-like red along Rödefjord was shocking; to observe white icebergs in blue water amid a backdrop of Utah red was jarring to the senses and made for some interesting photographs.

The families who had called Ankervig home for the past couple of weeks were busy harvesting musk ox from the hills above, and seals, narwhal and fish from the waters below. Fish dried in racks along the shore, just as they did in Native villages in Alaska and Norwegian villages in the Lofoten. A seal lay on the edge of the beach awaiting it's dressing out while beside it one of its cousins had already been reduced to what the humans wanted and what they were going to discard. And two Inuit men took turns sawing the horns off the skull of a musk oxen they'd taken earlier in the week. 

Meanwhile, the scientists at Ankervig were packing up in preparation for the twin-engine DeHavilland Otter that was to land on the flats above the tents later in the day to take them out of there. They'd been in Ankervig counting and tracking narwhals, which the locals said they saw (and harvested) regularly in that fjord. A couple of guests tried raw narwhal; the German found it to his liking while the Scottish woman was less than thrilled with the taste. As for the scientists, their work was in advance of -- what else? -- another wave of oil exploration (who else but the oil companies would pay for extraction via Twin Otter this far out?) here in Greenland.

I'll not go off on a tangent here, save to say that if this last pristine place in the northern hemisphere, a place forbidding and treacherous and beautiful and fantastic, can't be left alone, well, what hope have we as a species...and a planet? And I get it: we need oil. I need oil. I get it. Hell, Greenland alone probably couldn't supply all the diesel we've burned on this trip. But can't we limit ourselves even once? Hasn't happened yet so perhaps not.

I didn't get to ask any of the locals but I suspect they're all for the exploration -- and the money development would bring -- just as is the case back among so many of Alaska's Natives (witness: the North Slope Borough, Pebble Mine). And when the narwhals and polar bears and musk ox are gone, Greenland will revert to a lifeless desert, instead of an arctic desert where the tenacity of life serves as an example of what this planet can create and provide.

Sorry. Tangent over.

Prior to Ankervig, we anchored at the head of a fjord that broke off to the northwest from our main route around Milne Land. Harefjord offered a nice little cove with some gargantuan icebergs just outside; the bergs were stuck on the seafloor, too big to get into the cove and as such offered a bit of protection to our perch.

Harefjord was reached after a day's motor from our anchorage at Bøerne Øer, along the north shore of Milne Land wedged between sheer thousand-meter cliffs on either shore. The walls funneled a stiff headwind into our faces, but the resulting clear skies made for incredible vistas of granite and glacier and blue sky. The pattern was consistent if somewhat irregular: rock leaping out of the sea for a stretch of a mile or two, followed by the tumble of a glacier -- tidewater or hanging -- and then another wall. Along the north wall, the various layers of rock were visible in undulations that showed the tumult of this land over the millenia, in the grander time time scale beyond those of the glaciers present. Like some sort of saltwater, northern Grand Canyon, the trip down Øfjord was a glimpse into our planet's, and our universe's, past. Humbling.

We closed the loop of our Milne Land circumnavigation last evening at the Danmark Øer, the Denmark Islands. In a small cove named Hekla Havn we found a cabin, a couple of small skiffs, and a scattering of 20-liter plastic jerry cans, evidence of the locals' use of the area, presumably for hunting or fishing. I put the area to use for a quick clean, leaping from the lifeline along Polar Bear's beam into the surprisingly-not-so-cold water below. No, I didn't go for a swim, but after pulling myself into the dinghy alongside the boat, I opted to remain in shorts and get some shampoo, which I used to give myself a much need cleansing. And after standing there for a few minutes, wet beneath an overcast that blocked any warming sunshine, I realized that the water was bearable -- for a short while. I'd call it high 40s, Farenheit (8 or so in Celsius), and invigorating.

And now we're retracing our steps of five days ago, this time in reverse as we head to Ittoqqortoormiit, where we'll anchor and our guests can check out the Native village. The original plan for tomorrow was to head outside Scoresby Sund a bit to explore the pack ice where another boat had gotten up close and personal with a polar bear last weekend: the bear was on ice floes near the boat, at one point passing underneath the bowsprit. But with the ice now apparently gone, I have no idea what we'll do.

Regardless, we'll head back to Constable Pynt tomorrow evening so three of our guests -- the two German professional photographers and one British woman -- can catch their flight out on Saturday. As soon as they leave the boat in late morning, Polar Bear will exit Hurry Inlet and Scoresby Sund, departing Greenland and heading back across Denmark Strait, back to Iceland, the beginning of the final, southward trek to civilization and the end of this summer's journey.

Going to Eleven

We're motoring along in the fjord that forms the northern boundary of Milne Land, a large island on the western side of Scoresby Sund. And the fjord is, to put it mildly: staggering.

It's staggering in its beauty. Cliffs and spires in a dizzying array of colors ranging from the grays and whites you'd expect, through a spectrum of blues and blacks, and on to some improbable reds and yellows. The rock emerges directly from the water, displaying in arcs and folds the ancient forces that have shaped this land -- and the planet as whole.

Between the cliffs and spires, glaciers cascade from the unseen high country, some running in a straight line to the sea, others snaking left and right before ending in a trickle of water just above the water's edge. Hanging glaciers loom over many of the cliff faces, ominous in their defiance (however temporary) of gravity. And above it all, ice caps and fields crown many peaks in a fluffy, white-and-blue blanket, insulating the bare rock from the harsh elements here at 71 degrees north latitude.

In the sea itself, remnants of these glaciers float silently, streaks of fluorescent blue shimmer in the sunlight creating relief lines in the pure-white faces of the icebergs. And below the waterline, a kilometer or more of silent, clear blue sea -- well of the depth chart of the boat: unfathomable, literally.

It's an amazing place, Milne Land, and one we'll spend the next two days circumnavigating. We've now reached the northwest corner (after spending last night anchored at the northeast corner) and will head further west, up a feeder fjord where another nice anchorage awaits. Tomorrow we'll continue our progress around the island, dropping the hook in the lee of a smaller island at the southern entrance to this route around Milne Land. And on Wednesday, we'll head back seaward, to Ittoqqortoormiit and the rest of our week here in Greenland.

And Greenland has lived up to expectations: it's like Yosemite or the Rockies or Prince William Sound or the Lofoten...ramped up a notch. The scale is simply another level higher; Greenland goes to 11, as Nigel Tufnel would say. It's farther away; it's further north; the peaks are higher and there are more of them; there are more glaciers and there are icebergs; there are fewer people (ie: none, basically). Greenland is like the Olympics of land masses: faster, higher, stronger.

I'll still take Alaska, thank you very much, for two big reasons. One: it's home. And two: trees. OK, three big reasons: wildlife. If we should see a polar bear and/or a narwhal, well, that might change things, but I doubt it. Because thus far, we've seen a seal. One. A single, solitary seal. Something's missing from this Olympian, goes-to-11 landscape and it is life.

The scale obviously exceeds the human scale but it seems to exceed the scale of life itself, human and otherwise. I know life exists here -- there are plants, of course, and the people who exist here on a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. And even without that knowledge, my short period of time here is too small a sample set upon which to draw any conclusions. But the fact remains that Greenland's implacability goes beyond anything I've yet experienced. It seems...empty. Sadly so.

I'm wildly happy that I've ventured this far to see such a place. And I'd welcome the opportunity to come back (on my own timetable/plan). The impressions Greenland leaves, pro and con, are that deep. Olympian, even. I believe Nigel would agree.

Greenland...and 20 Days to Go

Kind of a strange afternoon, this. We're anchored in among the Bjørne Øer, the Bear Islands, up Scoresby Sund a ways. Boogie, Marlies and one guest just took off in the dinghy to chop some ice off of an iceberg. Boy Wonder and another guest are assembling one of the high-end collapsible kayaks. The rest of the guests are milling about the cockpit, and I'm in the saloon area typing away.

We arrived here after motoring for about 19 hours. We pulled the anchor and left Constable Pynt around 3pm yesterday and made our way south the 16 miles to the beginning of the fjord that opens on to the larger sound. It was a lovely motor with clear skies and a fresh breeze in our faces -- fresh enough, in fact, that if I'd been on a personal trip I'd have sailed and tacked back and forth down the fjord. But I'd have had to stop after about 13 miles: the wind had filled the mouth of the fjord with ice, not unlike what happened yesterday at Ittoqqortoormiit. Boy Wonder was again hoisted into the spreaders and he picked our path out through the floes.

After reaching Scoresby Sund, we turned right and headed west, deeper into the main fjord. The water was now open, with a handful of truly enormous icebergs scattered about in the deeper water. They were simply phenomenal creatures, these floating mountains of ice, with a temperament that changed with the light reflecting off their varied faces. And as the evening wore on, the light lowered and the shadows deepened, making for even more subtle and superb lighting.

Watches were divided into four, two-hour stints. I'm assigned to a team with two Finnish guests, a married couple, and we wiled away the 11pm-1am and 7-9am stands in idle chat, mostly about Finland. Nice people, and they were on Polar Bear here in Greenland last summer. Interestingly, the missus of the pair remarked last evening at suppertime that she was glad Marlies was aboard because last year the food was much less palatable (and in smaller quantities). And yet, they were back for more. Interesting...

Also interesting (to me) and perhaps to be filed under the category of "Euro behavior perplexing to this simple Yank" was when we were all eating lunch just today. Marlies was serving up seconds of hot dogs and the Finnish husband indicated he wasn't interested. I dispensed second dogs to everyone and then grabbed my empty plate, Marlies put a dog on it and I slid it back onto the table. Finnish Husband slid over in front of the plate and started dressing up the dog how he liked it. Hmm. I grabbed another empty plate from one of those guests truly not interested in another helping and Marlies handed me a dog -- for me. Never a word from the mister. Interesting...

Polar Bear arrived here in the Bear Islands at the northeast corner of Milne Land, an enormous (are you sensing a theme here? Everything in this land is on a scale unfathomable to the normal everyday back in Europe or the States). island within the Scoresby Sund fjord complex. We dropped the hook and drifted backwards to a pair of lines that Boy Wonder and a guest had secured ashore. Made fast to the three points, and surrounded on pretty much all sides by rocky islands, we're in a very solid spot right now.

So Boogie and Marlies and Alison took off on their adventure, Boy Wonder is rigging up another adventure, and we're all going to do a shore supper (cooked by Boy Wonder and I, as per Marlies' schedule) á la Lille Molla in the Lofoten. Since polar bears are a possibility here and since we don't have a rifle with us (yet another planning oversight by the owners), we'll stay close by and be extra vigilant, and we'll check any location out ahead of time.

Apart from the aforementioned, um, "interesting" behavior by the guests, this seems to be a fun, enjoyable crew. We're truly multinational, with Brits, Finns, Scots, Germans in addition to our Dutch, British and American crew. All but the Germans and a couple of Brits are in for the duration -- all the way across the sea back to the UK -- so they're up for adventure and they're up for sailing and they're up for pitching in to make it all work. 

And as for Greenland (or what we've seen of it so far), it truly is an amazing land -- after a summer of amazing places. As with aspects of the Lofoten and Iceland, I recognize a lot of the beauty here from my days in Alaska, and in fact, one of the dangers I've had to guard against all summer has been to keep from being too jaded given the superlative nature of my Alaska homeland. I think I've succeeded so far, and truth be told, the scale here is big even by Alaska standards -- for instance: the coast of Greenland is, yes, a lot like where Prince William Sound meets the Chugach Mountains, or the outer coast of the Kenai Peninsula...but it goes on for hundreds and hundreds of miles, from one horizon to the other -- but the danger is ever present. I've been disappointingly surprised by the dearth of wildlife thus far, and that's one area that Alaska has had it all over every destination we've been to this summer so Greenland is no different.

But I'm stoked to have made it here to this far-off corner of the globe and am looking forward to how the next week or so shakes out. Weather forecasts keep varying so one day we're likely headed back to Iceland the middle of this week, the next day it's looking good for us to be here until we drop a few guests off for next Saturday's flight at Constable Pynt and then some. Then it will be on to Iceland -- likely Akureyri but possibly Reykjavik or Ísafjörður, it depends on the wind direction -- where we'll drop off Alison (she's the friend of the so-called marketing person for the boat company) and then head on to either the Shetland or Orkney islands.

What I'll do remains to be seen, though it's 99 percent certain I'll stay aboard until the job's done in the UK. Or at least: until we arrive in the UK; I'll be damned if I'm sticking around to clean up the boat and prep it for winter after the owner's screw job.

But the possibility of jumping ship remains. Boogie's temperament seems to be drooping a bit; he's not his usual jovial, gregarious self. I don't know if he and I are wearing on each other after a long summer or if he's just had enough of the BS with the owner and it's coming out as frustration with everyone (Marlies included), but it can be unpleasant -- and a boat (even a 72-foot-long boat) is too cramped for there to be unpleasantness among the crew.

And on top of that, I'm getting more frustrated with the experience. The lack of sailing is a huge factor there; I'm tired of motoring and simply being a bus (or glorified RV) for a bunch of tourists. Yes, we'd still be that if we were sailing, but if we were sailing a) I'd be having more fun, and b) I'd be getting more of what I expected when I signed on. But that's not happening and it's like just one more step that delays the inevitable plunge/decision: buy my boat or not. A lot of that decision will be based on my experience and comfort level with the vagaries of owning a boat, and I'm not getting as much experience in that area as I had hoped or expected.

There are 20 days left in this summer's adventure. Twenty days in which to experience more of Greenland, hope for some more sailing, and then take the next step in this life. Hopefully it's a life of more stompin' on the terra.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

We're now in Ittoqqortoormiit. Well, we're in the small cove above which the colorfully painted wood houses that constitute Ittoqqortoormiit are perched. They cling to this rocky land that the world forgot. Third World? Forget it; we're talkin' 10th World. We are off the map here, for sure. Actually, there was cell-phone coverage in the bay so maybe it's not so 10th World after all. But why anyone would live out here is beyond me...and I love far-out places. But this is on-the-edge living in a good year; a particularly long winter must be brutal.

We made our way in this morning, weaving for a couple of hours through ice floes of all imaginable sizes and shapes. Only a few big, proper ice bergs -- and they were on the outer edge, out near the open water of Scoresby Sund -- but there were plenty of boat-killing pieces of ice. Slow going, with hand signals relayed from the bow to the helmsman at the wheel.

Once in open water close to the village, we had an open-air lunch in the cockpit. The sun shone brightly from a bright, clear, blue sky, with the only clouds down over the land south of the fjord, and it was, in all seriousness, comfortably warm enough, despite the presence of ice all around us.

Following lunch, Boy Wonder, Marlies and the two guests went ashore in the dinghy for a bit of exploration. Boogie and I were going to go after they returned but while the landing party was ashore, the tide and a light breeze started moving the pack of ice into the little cove. Boogie had to keep Polar Bear moving around the western edge of the bay to keep the boat clear and the shore party were summoned back.

They returned and now we're headed back out to Scoresby Sund. Slowly. The ice has indeed funneled into the bay that links Ittoqqortoormiit's cove with the fjord, so Boy Wonder was hoisted into the spreaders, from which he can get the bigger picture of leads in the ice and relay directions to the helm via radio.

The ice continues to be the amazing factor in our recent experiences. The varied shapes they adopt -- shapes that change based on the light, our position in relationship to the ice, the ice's position in the water -- are every bit a driver for the imagination as a sky full of puffy white clouds. One large berg recently evolved from a schnauzer puppy in a shoe to a castle out of Sleeping Beauty to a horse to a whale's diving tail...all in the space of a few minutes.

And the underwater shapes of the ice floes, now visible with the sun shining high overhead, has been equally fascinating -- but with the sinister overtones of what that below-the-waterline ice can do to unwary ships (think: Titanic). An innocuous flat pan of white ice can sport a jagged, knife-edged underwater blade that extends well out from its above-water perimeter. An unsuspecting boat might pass too near the floe and into peril, but with the overhead sun the cold-blue protrusion glows and winks as a natural work of art visible to the boat steering just out of the danger zone.

Not that we were in any real danger. Polar Bear's steel hull can handle most of the ice in this bay. Even the really serious underwater lances would likely just bounce and groan and push Polar Bear in opposition of the force exerted by the boat's motion. But there are a handful of major-league icebergs that we would have had to give wide berth to -- as did the 125-foot steel tourist cruise ship that left shortly after we arrived in Ittoqqortoormiit, leaving as the tide ushered the thickening ice back in behind it.

It's not like we would have gotten stuck in that thickening ice if we hadn't left a little while ago...at least not for too long. But better safe than sorry. And we have no idea what's going on ice- and weather-wise one fjord over to the west, the fjord where the Constable Pynt airport and our rendezvous with our final set of guests for the season will take place tomorrow.

We'll be losing our two current guests -- the friends of Boogie and Marlies who've been wonderful this trip, cooking magnificent meals (often) and being generally very cool. Here's hoping the 10 who take their places are equally as cool.

First Ice

Just came off the 6-10am watch. The monotony was broken up by periodic changes in the elements: drizzle for a few minutes, then dry for 20; a tiny bit of breeze for a bit, then dead calm; cold, down to freezing for half an hour; slighly warmer, mid-30s, for the next 30 minutes. But two interesting changes, in particular, appeared on this watch.

The first occurred around 10:45 when the surface of the ocean changed suddenly. We'd been motorsailing along in a calm surface that had a slight wind-generated ripple on it, when out in front of Polar Bear a line in the water appeared from horizon to horizon. Beyond the line: smooth-as-silk water with literally zero ripples. The wind gauges didn't register any change on either side of the line. Where the change was noticeable was in the course-made-good gauge: we entered a westward-setting current when we crossed that line -- to the tune of 20 degrees or more. A simple fix to that, but it was an impressively abrupt delineation in between two different parts of a single body of water.

The second big change occurred just before the end of our watch: ice. There, about a mile off the starboard beam, was a small bit of bright-white ice bobbing on the surface. I called below to Boogie and told him that I had a bergie bit in sight, and when he emerged on deck I pointed it out to him before remarking, "there's another one." This one, on the starboard bow and a few miles away, was much bigger. As soon as Boogie's eyes picked that one out, he noticed a few others in the same general vicinity.

So we've entered the realm of ice. Here begins the Greenland adventure...

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...