Cape Farewell Greenland Voyage 2007

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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.

If the first day of our voyage is at all reprensentative of the trip to come-and I have every reason to believe that it will be-then I’m going to have a lot to learn about expressing awe. It’s a simple exercise to take something finite and describe it in great detail; it’s terribly more difficult to forge an account of something as massive and moving as this place. But we must try.

Flying from Oslo, our crew was collectively jolted from the weary fatigue of travel (this correspondent tallied up six airports in the 36 hours prior). The sense of shared bewilderment of 20 relative strangers upon landing in Longyearben was nearly as stirring as the scene into which we touched down.

A beautiful day blessed our arrival-not common for this place, according to David-with a mat of clouds keeping temperatures comfortable, if still below freezing. A jaunt through town yielded the group many a precious souvenir score-mugs were purchased, a couple of savvy travelers posted cards, and a run on canvas shopping bags (branded with the ubitquitous Longyearbyen polar bear, who we fortunately never met in the flesh) impressively left the local supermarket sold out.

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I’m counting Sunday as day 1 of our voyage. After a long 24 hours of travel we made it on-board the Noorderlicht in one big, sprawling group, plus luggage. I was up all night squeezing my final few hours of good, reliable internet access in Oslo. Stupidly. Now I’m exhausted, but finding energy to talk to the rest of the crew on flights and waiting rooms rather than catching up on sleep. We flew through Tromso with it’s dry, red hillsides, then on to Svalbard which was vast and beautiful from above. Black/grey earth and highlights of snow, mountains, ridges and bays. Everyone was completely awestruck. Amy and I rapidly tag team photographed as we descended into Longyearbyen. It’s a different world up here, a different sort of place.

Onto the Noorderlicht and our luggage together looked so excessive, littering the upper deck. Longyearbyen  sits fairly uncomfortably in it’s landscape, with the look of a small border town. Mining, science/teaching and tourism are the main industries here. Each year around half of it’s 2000 strong community move on and are replaced. We cleared the town out of Longyearbyen canvass shopping bags, had a drink at the Wham playing sports bar, then headed back to the boat where we set off straight away to moor overnight 4 hours sail away, near Trygghamna. As the sun set we were all on deck to watch a postcard pink sunset with a vertical band of light cutting up into the sky. Beautiful, but apparently warning of bad weather ahead. Hmmmm not so beautiful.

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After a long day, and many months of preparation, we’ve all made it to Oslo and the Greenland Voyage is finally away. Tomorrow morning we fly out direct to Longyearbyen where we take over from the Youth Expedition and board the Noorderlicht. The current ice maps for our route are “interesting”. What this means for us we’re not sure at the moment. Our first step tomorrow is to analyse the latest satellite information available, and I’m sure we’ll be posting more about it soon…