Enough With The Northeast Wind

by John June 17, 2011
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Over the last 20 years I have sailed north toward Newfoundland from Maine or Nova Scotia more years than not and I thought I knew how to get it done:

We’re Here!

by Phyllis July 3, 2011
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[Written June 27th] Well, prevailing NE winds notwithstanding, we managed to get out of Port au Choix, Newfoundland on Sunday, June 19th, 4:00 a.m. Actually, though we had to motorsail straight into 20-25 knots for the first 12 hours, after that the wind freed us enough that we had a relatively comfortable passage to Nuuk, [...]

Part I Accomplished

by Phyllis July 6, 2011
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[Written July 3rd] Well, here we are in Aasiaat, after an overnight sail of 200 miles from our last anchorage. This first part of the voyage has been a bit under the gun: We had to get from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada to Aasiaat, Greenland, between June 10th (just after John’s daughter’s wedding) and July [...]

Things Are Different Now

by Phyllis July 9, 2011
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[Written July 1st] In a previous post I mentioned a few things that have changed in Greenland over the 16 years we’ve been voyaging up here: less ice, more English, more sailboats, earlier cruising season, and a busier capital city due to oil exploration.

Humpback Whale Encounter

by John July 12, 2011
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In the spring and early summer in the northern North Atlantic, a small herring-like fish called capelin comes inshore to spawn and many larger animals have a feast. During our trip north we had seen several pods of humpback whales feeding on the capelin, but only in the distance.

Another Day, Another Anchor Watch

by Phyllis July 14, 2011
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[Written, July 10] We are presently anchored in a small cove on the north side of Uummannaq Island at 70°N and I’m on anchor watch. This is our fourth “anchorage” since leaving Aasiaat three days ago. I put anchorage in quotation marks because these are not the sheltered coves that we appreciate so much in [...]

Part II Begins

by Phyllis July 20, 2011
Expedition Sailboat Morgan's Cloud anchored off a West Greenland village

[Written July 17] As I mentioned in an earlier post, getting to Aasiaat Greenland was Part I of our summer voyage. We are now well into Part II, which, as we have alluded to, is a science project. We originally met Grete, an anthropologist, when we were living in Tromsø Norway on Morgan’s Cloud. She [...]

Serenity Served With Coffee And Cake

by John July 24, 2011
A Greenlandic couple in traditional costumes

Phyllis and I were walking through a tiny (200 people) isolated community here in northwest Greenland today. A group of local people were gathered on the deck of a cottage, many in the traditional Greenlandic formal costume of snow white anoraks for the men, and brightly colored, intricately embroidered, bead-worked blouses with seal skin trousers [...]

A Brief Report From Disko And Uummannaq Fjords

by Phyllis July 26, 2011
Expedition Sailboat Morgan's Cloud anchored off a West Greenland village

[Written July 17] We have now been working on the science project detailed in an earlier post for ten days, visiting a number of villages in Disko and Uummannaq Fjords. As both of these are ice fjords and the villages were located in proximity to the hunting grounds—not on whether they had a good harbour [...]

A Science Project, The Crew’s Role

by John July 29, 2011
Expedition Sailboat Morgan's Cloud steams through ice in West Greenland

[Written on July 24th] The science project we are engaged in has pushed Phyllis and me hard. For us, 12 hour days have been the norm and several have stretched to 18 hours. Yesterday was typical. The morning starts early for me, as usual, with analyzing the weather (more on how in a future post), [...]

Upernavik And North

by Phyllis July 31, 2011
Expedition Sailboat Morgan's Cloud in an anchorage in West Greenland

[Written July 26th] At the end of my last post, we had just left Uummannaq Fjord and sailed north into the Upernavik region. As you would expect, things are getting more remote up here (we are presently at 73°23’ N, as far north as we are going to get this cruise, give or take 12 [...]

Anchoring Decisions

by John August 3, 2011
Chart showing tracks made by Morgan's Cloud in a West Greenland anchorage

[Written on July 30th] Last night, for the second time in less than a week, we got hit with much stronger winds than forecast, generated, we think, by the proximity of the Greenland icecap.

Science Project Wrap-Up

by Phyllis August 14, 2011
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 (Click on the photographs to see them larger.) [Written July 28th] Wow! The last month has flown by! We’ve visited 12 communities (the unlucky 13th community was blocked by 7/10th ice so we had to turn back two miles out); traveled 700 miles through ice-choked waters, a lot of them sparsely and some not at [...]

Voyagers And Greenlandic Fishermen—What We Have In Common

by John August 19, 2011
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As a visiting cruiser there are two ways to approach a different culture, like that of Greenland: Continually complain about the inconveniences and criticize the differences from the way of life back home, or embrace the differences and try and learn from them.

Baffin Island, Still Scary After All These Years

by John August 25, 2011
A mother polar bear and her two cubs on a rocky hillside in Baffin Island

[Written August 22] Sixteen years ago, during one of our first Arctic cruises on Morgan’s Cloud, we were fueling in Greenland prior to leaving for Baffin Island. The crusty old Danish skipper of the coastal passenger boat was on the wharf and, after severely admonishing us for even being in Greenland on a sailboat, he [...]

The Land God Gave To Cain Or Nunatsiavut?

by John August 30, 2011
Labrador's forbidding coastline

[Written August 27] I believe it was the explorer Cartier who christened Labrador “The Land God Gave to Cain”. Obviously he was no fan of Labrador’s barren mountains and often gale lashed and fog surrounded shores.

Labrador, A Cruising Destination, Not A Way Stop

by John September 18, 2011
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I first sailed to Labrador back in 1993, but even that visit was part of a cruise that included circumnavigating Newfoundland, which is enough all by itself for one summer.

Cruising, The Unexpected Fun Experiences

by John September 19, 2011
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We were tied up alongside a fishery wharf in northern Newfoundland when the roar of powerful engines brought us tumbling up from below to see two seine boats attached stern to stern by a thick line and both at full throttle.

Arctic Voyage Milestones

by John September 30, 2011
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I thought about titling this post “High Latitude Voyaging, It Feels So Good When You Stop” but we like to keep things positive here at Attainable Adventure Cruising (AAC) World Headquarters. Anyway, here are a few milestones that we have experienced in the last month.

An Arctic Voyage

by John December 12, 2011
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Two weeks ago we tied to the same wharf that we left here in Charleston on April 1st—an appropriate date when you consider that our summer consisted of: