A couple of icebergs had lodged themselves in the entrance to Hawkes harbour overnight, but luckily hadn’t blocked it off completey. We motored out into a dead calm sea.
Icebergs and sunset on a calm sea
Our next stop, Sisimiut Greenland a crossing of 850 nautical miles almost due north.
Master Chef Callum with a celebratory ham for leaving Labrador
We ended up motoring for the first 8 days of the crossing, before encountering strong headwinds off the coast of Greenland. With temperatures reaching a low of 2°C, 20kts of headwinds and a general state of wet (water coming through the air vents soaked our clothes and bunks). The waves kept flooding the chimney of our oil stove but we were still able to stay somewhat warm and dry.
Our trusty oil stove
One day we only made 20 miles in the right direction, with short steep waves forcing our bow down and making upwind progress slow. Our 26th birthday passed without much celebration dealing with these headwinds but later that day we got our first glimpse of Greenland. Towering snow capped peaks rising up out of the sea, their tops obscured by low hanging cloud. It was quite an impressive sight and cheered us up.
Our first sighting of the Greenland coast
Over the next two days the headwinds thankfully died off and we passed into the Arctic circle. We arrived in Sisimiut Greenland on the evening of day 12.
Sisimiut
Clearing customs in Greenland was the easiest we have experienced on this trip with a visit to the local police station. After some initial confusion about us being Canadian vs American, they had us cleared in no time.
Sisimiut is a cluster of brightly painted houses perched on a rocky outcropping at the base of large mountains with a population of around 5000.
Whale mural carved into cliff at Sisimiut
Whaling boat with harpoon gun
Sisimiut had everything we needed. Shopping in the local general store was an interesting experience as all the food labels were in Greenlandic
Greenlandic food labels in the general store
Along with a selection of rifles in the general store
Seal skin on a stretcher
Next day as Callum was loading the dinghy with diesel, he met a local Inuit family who offered to take us out fishing.
We spent a great four hours with them that afternoon, helping them set their gill nets in the fjord.
working the gill nets
Arctic charr and cod
They gave us an arctic charr and cod. They would have given us a lot more but we weren’t sure we could eat that much! They also said if we were there a little longer they would take us out caribou hunting. They did give us some dried caribou to try which was pretty good. It would have been an amazing experience to go out hunting with them but we had to head north up the Greenland coast.