Blog Archive

Thursday 3 August 2017

Wilderness Rendezvous

Wilderness Rendezvous 


  

With the anchor down and the lines safely ashore we were safe apart from the nudge from a nosy iceberg. We were all pretty fatigued by the complicated landfall that had evolved over the previous 36 hours so we were all keen to get some sleep before exploring the glittering landscape that surrounded us.

Our glorious restful sleep was interrupted by a radio message,

"SHIMSHAL, SHIMSHAL this is Alchemy".

It was Dick and Ginger Stevenson who who were also on passage from Iceland to Prins Christian Sund. They had known that we had diverted to Gredvig as this was the only tenable anchorage on this coast this early in the season. They were anxious to hear how we had got on. I explained that the density of ice and depth of the anchorage may make anchoring difficult but their only alternative was to heave to off shore and wait for the ice to clear in Prins Christian Sund. They chose to follow us in. 




It was a pleasure to meet and get to know Dick, Ginger and their crew Brian. I had corresponded with Dick for several years on the Forum of the Ocean Cruising Club but had only met briefly face to face before. We had both known that our cruising itineraries this summer were very similar but I don't think either of us really imagined that we would meet and get know one another on Greenland's wild east coast. In the end they managed to get their anchor set a few hundred metres away from us beneath a lovely waterfall cascading down the cliff. We will cherish the memories of walks ashore and suppers aboard with them and it is likely that we will be cruising in company for the next week until they plunge south for Newfoundland and we hook north for Aasiaat.



Greydvig is a flooded hanging valley on the northern shore of the narrrow fjord. The fjord itself is a massive conveyor of ice with gorgeous, gleaming sculptures progressing up and down with the tide. All shores are steep and made of glacier polished rock. The rocky terraces are generously carpeted with lichens and wild flowers. A scramble up the nearby ridge gives breathtaking views to the glaciated mountains at the head of the fjord. The ice in the anchorage dissipated quickly and, within a day of our arrival was more or less unrecognisable. We had been lucky in finding a perfectly safe haven in which to sit, in wonderful sunshine, and await the opening of Prins Christian Sund. Had we been a day or two earlier I doubt we would have been able to enter. 




With the information available as I write it seems like the coast is clearing to the south and that we may be able to continue on our way to Greenland's west coast in the next day or two. if not then there can be few better places to sit and wait. We have plenty of stores and fuel and have been able to re-fill our water tanks from the waterfall. There is one minor irritation and that is the mosquitoes that have left the skipper' legs peppered with urticarial monstrosities. It seems they can bite through tracksuit trousers!