Cape Farewell Greenland Voyage 2007

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There are 20 of us, eight nationalities of writers, scientists, fine artists, journalists, musicians, film crew and Marcus Brigstocke bring comedy to the tragedy of Climate Change, melting ice and threatened wild life. Ahead, even for hardened sailors, is an epic arctic journey, 850 miles of ocean sailing during which the scientists will make ocean soundings using a CTD and two thirds of the journey is expected to be made close to the ice edge as we track south. We should see whales as this is their feeding ground, maybe even the threatened fabled Greenland whale whose numbers are now thought to be increasing from a point of extinction – these whales can grow to an age of 250 years, a point charted by the age of broken harpoons lodged in there skins.

We are carefully tracking an Atlantic low as it passes westwards just off the Iceland coast – so deep in depression that force 8 to storm 10 is forecast. We should be north of such systems but this years jet stream has been notably unstable which rises concern – we do not want to encounter seas of such magnitude.

Now everyone is waking, Anna’s breakfast, a walk among the glacier and then let the sail commence.

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6 am Monday and the Noorderlicht is calm as we anchor with a glacier off in the distance. On a chart of 1950 this same glacier reached four miles further out to sea from our anchor point.

Our epic urban journey of planes and hotels finished last night and the joy of being truly Arctic and on our own resonated throughout us all. Downloaded Ice maps show a 20% reduction of Arctic ice this year but most of this is in the Russian Arctic basin and the Northwest Passage of Canada. Off the Eastern Greenland coast the ice has advanced south driven by a summer of northerly winds blocking, we feared, our entrance to Scoresby Sund. The arrival of Ko de Korte, our expedition guide, brought good news. Yes there is 20% ice covering the entrance of Scoresby, but it is old ice, very dense and he thinks it is navigable. So now there is no plan ‘b’, we sail this afternoon crossing the High Arctic Atlantic, chase south along the sea ice and in 5-6 days we should be able to enter our point of destination.

David Buckland.

P.S. Yesterday in Longyearbyen airport we met the returning Youth Expedition. Full of stories of adventure and life changing activity, such a glorious team on young people hungry to continue their study and work within the Climate Change arena. It was a very emotional ‘crossing of paths’ and we all applauded their success.

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David Buckland
Artist and Cape Farewell Director (UK)

David Buckland, artist and director, started the Cape Farewell project 8 years ago. His initial work with mathematical modelers and climate scientists was driven by artistic inquiry but due to the frustration of the scientific community to get Climate Change debated on any major public platform, he created Cape Farewell to address just this issue.

Eight years on and now, thankfully, climate change has risen to the top of the western agenda but for David the steer is still artistic inquiry. Artists have always aligned their work, directly or obliquely, to the prevailing agenda of cultural positioning, whether it be religion, the enlightenment or self greed. Climate change is no exception but the stakes for humanity are very high, it is about our social and economic survival and will question very basic assumed values we have evolved over the past 200 years.

Questioning these is the driver for David’s artistic inquiry and continues to be central to the work he is currently creating whether it be voyaging with a collection of our best creative practitioners or exhibiting his video and photographic works in urban venues worldwide.