Cape Farewell Greenland Voyage 2007

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It’s Wednesday, the sun is shinning again and the mountain scenery of Greenland gets better by the hour. Last night we even had a showing of the Northern Lights courtesy of a relatively clear night. Though we are now focusing on aspects of art, filming and writing – it’s a positive hive of activity aboard the Noorderlicht – we did also get some exciting science. This was the sort that could have kept us on Greenland a bit longer than planned – the sea freezing. We passed into Turner Fjord, a passage between a mountainous island and the mainland more than a fjord really, to look in awe at the glacial terrain elegantly explained by Carol as we went. Part way through the sea took on a slightly slushy consistency, a precursor to the sea freezing.

When a freshwater pond freezes, because the temperature of maximum density (4 deg C) is above the freezing point (zero deg C), a thin layer of very cold stable water sits at the surface as the pond cools towards zero and it freezes slowly from the top down. We have all seen that thin layer of ice that slowly builds up on a pond, lake or even puddle. It causes little problem for vessels in it’s early stages.

When the sea freezes, because the temperature of maximum density (-2.8 deg C) is below the freezing point (-1.9 deg C) for average salinity levels, convection in the water keeps going until the entire water column is close to freezing. This means that when the sea freezes it does so very quickly (hours) and this is why ships can get iced in at sea with little warning.

As we passed into the slush Gert decided to do a quick (15 minute) circle of the area. On the first pass it was slush. By the second it was 2-3 inch ice which was developing very quickly and the ship strained to pull out. One more circle and we would have been there for the winter! We moved on out of Turner Fjord rapidly and realised why, according to the “pilot”, that no one had visited it in the past 70 years. From here on we will be checking the sea temperatures before dropping anchor for the night!

In answer to Tom’s query about Arctic monkeys – the only type of monkey we find up in this part of the World is us – lol. As for Polar Bear pictures? We’ve yet to see the elusive creature but will do our best. With more cameras on board than at an international fashion show trust me, it will become the most photographed bear on the planet.

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It’s the scale of the landscape on East Greenland that humbles and disorients. I’m feeling downright tiny and frail, more like a lone lemming on the tundra than a member of a culture capable of remaking the land and altering global climate.

We’re motoring now through a deep channel called Turner Sound, found on few maps, looping around a mountainous island that appears to be slightly smaller than Switzerland. Our guide, Ko De Korte, with decades of East Greenland experience, tells us that this strip of coast south of Scoresbysund is the widest uttermost wilderness on Greenland, which puts it among the two or three wildest places on the planet. That mariner’s guide The Arctic Pilot, Vol. II tells Captain Gert Ritsema that Turner Sound was transited fifty years ago, but as to what manner of vessel it was or what the mariner should expect once in the sound the book does not elaborate. If any human ever set foot ashore around here, he couldn’t have gotten very far inland because the mountains plunge nearly vertically into the frigid water. Their layered black basalt flanks, mostly covered in snow, are gouged by ancient river courses, and the deep valleys between them scoured by glacial action.

A white gyre falcon, curious apparently, orbits Nooderlicht’s masts, while we humans stand about on deck shivering, snapping photos, jaws agape, exclaiming (sometimes profane) utterances in lieu of cogent statements about the dizzying magnitude, the sheer mass of the landscape. How can we express it, anyway? Facts and figures seem irrelevant measurements of these mountains, metaphor inadequate. How can there actually be such a place as East Greenland?… The sun is shinning incongruously, the sky azure blue, and we’re not used to that after our grim, eight-day crossing of the Greenland Sea.

But now some foul weather seems to be forming out east, and the ice bergs, calendar-photo beautiful an hour ago, are taking on a menacing air. If we’re to go for a walk on the flat margins of the glacier dead ahead, we’d better hurry. Nooderlicht’s anchor chain clatters through the pipe as the shore party gathers gear, and we’re ready…. No, wait, we’re not going. The fjord is freezing fast. No one aboard has ever seen salt water freeze so fast. We must move on or remain until summer returns.

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