Cape Farewell Greenland Voyage 2007

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As Wednesday night rolled on the wind got strong. By Thursday morning, it was almost impossible to stand up, let alone get dressed or move around the ship. By 10 o’clock all of us who had managed to get up and weren’t still lying in bed feeling sick and unable to move were lying on the floor, sliding from side to side in hysterics. Such a ridiculous situation every time you tried to move your balance was completely thrown. Even sitting on the seats, the waves and wet floor would bring you sliding down, so became obvious that the best bet was to stay down.

The watches continued as usual but with somewhat reduced in personnel. All of us when on deck were wearing harnesses to be on the safe side, managed to shoot a great bit of video of Matt parting with his breakfast over the side panning round to Brian receiving a huge wave straight in the face (watch out for this on You Tube). After our early morning watch 2am. tried to sleep but couldn’t, the wind had dropped somewhat and we were running on engine, this changes the whole motion of the ship. With the sails up -whilst at an angle the ship is held stable, when they are down the movement is not only up and down but also side-to-side. I tried propping myself in but just could get comfortable. In the end I resorted to lying up stairs with the bench pushed against the other and managed to wedge myself under the table -this stopped me rolling from side to side and finally I managed to sleep. Today the wind has dropped although is now coming at us fro the West to South West which isn’t so good for us as that is the way we are heading -so into the wind. Must admit I’d thought that the whole journey could have been as rough as yesterday, so we’ve been lucky. If clear skies tonight we should see the Northern Lights. Click to read the full post >

Ok this is completely crazy……no one warned me about this! I thought that the Spanish cruise last Oct would be preparation for anything, but this outweighs anything I’ve ever done in the name of work! Pitching about on a roiling sea (roughly sea state 7) at 4am in the morning trying to do a CTD cast (conductivity, temperature and salinity) whilst fighting the ever present sea sickness is certainly a novelty! However, the results we are getting are really good, which kind of makes up for not being able to eat anything for the past 48 hours (see above comment re. sea sickness!)

It’s a very humbling experience being out here in the middle of nowhere on a beautiful schooner attempting to sail between Spitsbergen and Greenland. We reckon that bar a few icebreakers, we are the northerly most ship in the world at the moment – certainly of the sailing variety. Already we have had to alter our course due to the ever changing pattern of sea ice that is currently lying off the east coast of Greenland. Today we were told by our skipper Gert that the is 10-40% ice cover across the entrance to Scoresby Sund, and that it is lying in a 10-20km thick band – the implications are that with the forecast southerly for the next couple of days, we may well be able to get into the Sund when we arrive sometime on Sunday. Click to read the full post >

These days at sea run together. Combined with the acute sense of seastupidity that now plagues the entire crew, we’re having a tough time collectively recalling one day from the next. It’s now Saturday night as I write, and even yesterday is hard to distinguish from today and the day that preceded it. A couple of highlights that do stand out:

— Waves rise as walls, aside the vessel, gathering and folding over themselves, flashing in a fleeting moment an iridescent tropical blue hue-the only touch of warmth in our cold, damp, dreary surroundings.

–A bunkbed discussion with Liam about what our friends back home in Brooklyn and Manchester respectively are up to, it being Friday night and all. We conclude, with some certainty, that they are likely having a better time than he and I, cooped up in our “zero gravity” cabin. We then figure that many of those Friday nights will be forgotten, but this one will likely be remembered for a lifetime. (We then agree that I’ll be visiting him in Manchester after the trip, and that we’ll be getting a proper drink on.on solid ground.)

Click to read the full post >