(written by Nick)

Got in two days ago; no drama en route.

Back to where I left off in the last blog -

At Ammassalik, I followed the stream up into the mountains, looped around behind one, ascended a 2nd on the coast, crossing fields of snow, a 2000' climb. The  peak over the sea, the huge bergs beneath small, Ammassalik and its harbor Kong Havn greatly shrunken far below me, Teddy my boat nearly invisible. The Greenland coastal range fading into tinyness far off to the SW. 60 or 80 miles of icecap in view.

That night was our last in Greenland. Spent the night in the pub drinking & dancing til 3.30 am. Talked with a few Eskimos, found one who had lived in Pennsylvania 15 yrs; he said "Small world, huh?" in the most perfect American colloquial. I have his address & Email should I return, to hunt & fish with him. The Eskimos utterly shameless, cadging me for beer, occasionally for money, just because I'm 'foreign'. In the pub it was the Wild West - wonderful. Drunks asleep on the floor & dragged out by the staff, tussles & fights & men kicked out, plenty of lust (have you seen 2 Eskimos kissing? Very very closely & intimately, with their flatter faces & noses, the eyes so much closer - a pleasure to watch!),  contemplaters on the sidelines, ferocious cheering for the local football team,  wild dancing. Uninhibited & free.

We left the next morning. Passed through a last small icefield; had trouble getting through on the outside edge where the onshore wind had compressed the floes. This is where I got careless & hit 2 bergs hard trying to squeeze between them. Nice shallow ding a few feet aft of the bow, two foot across & half an inch deep.

The return from Ammassalik to Clifden took 12 days. Lots of calm or very slight wind - had to motor more than half the time. I had hoped for a SW or W gale approaching Clifden to drive us in, and what I got was a 3 day faint breeze right on the nose.

Lots of minke whales in the 60s latitudes. In the 50s a pod of respectful pilot whales accompanied us awhile, then lots of dolphins cascading in from all sides to share the joy of the world with us. Ben & Sam hung onto the bobstay under the bowsprit, inches above the water, and touched the dolphins on their backs & dorsal fins many times.

We returned from 24 hours daylight to day/night. Saw the stars for the first time in 6 weeks. Ditto phosphorescence - that of our wake, and that of the trails of dolphins zigzagging under & around the boat in the dark.

We came into Clifden harbor to a welcoming flotilla. Sailed up to the mooring, tied up, & had all aboard for hugs and a celebratory drink.

It is great to be back - my friends, my dog, Connemara the land, my house. The end of an adventure, now renewing my old/new life.

Ben transferred 1000 photos of the trip from his digital camera to my computer. I looked them over & I cannot believe that we were at some of those places. Greenland was a shocking jagged raging thunderous wilderness - I still can't get over it.

I have a 5' x 3' cloth map of Greenland, in Danish, 1953, which I took from the one room school at the abandoned Eskimo village, now hanging up on the wall. Inspiration for the future, perhaps?

Many thanks to Ben & Sam for joining me on this splendid trip & for helping me to make it happen.

I enjoyed very much doing this blog. I really liked the informal & unplaned partnership with Ben who put on all those great pics with great comments.

I now end my part in this blog.

Ice blocks our path coming out of Johan Petersen fjord

 Teddy at anchor off "Skull Island" - later a berg will sit on our anchor, trapping us, and a wind shift will push all these icebergs our way until miraculously they run aground in the low tide before they can crush us against the rocks, encasing us in an ice wall.

 View across the fjord from Skull Island.

 This is how it got its name. The island had several above-ground tombs like the one below.

 The Inuit tomb, here from above, looked very benign but contained a surprise.

 Trapped with an iceberg on our anchor, we had to do 24-hour watches to make sure the ice didn't move. As the tide dropped, huge chunks of the bergs would fall all around us, the sky resounding with explosive booms like artillery and the sea churning with waves. Here Nick fends off a piece.

 This is the offending iceberg that sat on our anchor, looking beautiful in the rising sunlight.

 The next day the anchor came up at high tide and Nick and Sam bashed our way out, and we left the fjord.

 Somebody call PETA.

 Huskies gotta eat; women need fuzzy slippers.

 This crazy lady kept sabotaging our foosball game by shaking the table; she just couldn't play nice. Quite a turnout at the local bar.

 Our final scrimmage with Greenland ice on our way back to Ireland leaves us with a pang of nostalgia and a dent the size of a watermelon in Teddy's steel hull.

 These dolphins swam with us for days. If you climbed beneath the pulpit you could pet them as they came up for air, which broke the monotony pretty well.

The only fish we ate on the way home came out of a can.

 Row of icebergs leaving Angmagssalik

 Salmon drying on a rack but nobody home

 Dogsled in abandoned Inuit village

 Anchored on an iceberg for the night; not recommended because these things move and can sneak up on you

 Ice cap

(written by Nick)

Back at Tasiilaq aka Ammassalik.

Last night we tried to get into Kulusuk harbor, 10 miles to the east. Totally choked with ice. So we came here.

We had a very intense few days in dense ice.

Went up the fjord west of Ammassilak island.

1st night at an abandoned Eskimo village, about 10 houses, most dilapidated. Church - school, graveyard behind, each grave a pile of rock on the granite, marked with painted white cross nothing more.

Moved up into a branching fjord & got within a mile of glaciers. The Greenland ice cap looming over us, a vast heavy striated whiteness spanning the horizon between & behind the nmountain peaks. It seemed crazy to try to anchor in the dense continially moving floes. So we anchored up against a floe in the middle of the fjord. 100 by 75 feet, our own little kingdom. i swam in the morning, then had coffee on the floe in just my boxer shorts until my feet could no longer take it. The sun shining, blue sky, no wind, the barometer stréady, wonderful.

We motored out, several x pushing thru solid blockages of small floes. Sailed across & up the 5 mile wide fjord, a splendid sail with much blue water between giant bergs & no clutter to dodge. Came to a small island a km square, a hunting shack on it. went around to the landward side, anchored, walked ashore. Two stone ruins, about a dozed small hollow cairns containing the bones of the eskimo dead. no crosses so pre Christian (1900), some very old, the cairns collapsed & overlain with slow-growing moss, others with bits of skull, two with nice skulls. One was a child. Such utter remote wilderness - the two stone ruins so well placed to overlook the vastness of the fjord shambolic with bergs, the jagged mts, the ice cap looming over all. Of course to the Eskimo this is his backyard, and the coastline & islands are littered with cairns and the bones of the dead, everywhere.

at this anchorage a wind shift pushed the ice down to us.  A berg moved onto the anchor chain in 30 ft water. Happenmed very fast! We were unable to reterieve the chain, figured this berg wopuld serve as bulwark against any other ice until the next high tide. So it proved, and retrieval on the tide was no problem.

My boat is of steel, a very tough hull. She takes a lot of bashing into the ice, no problem. I am very impressed with her. Splendid to have this, & it makes me so much more comfortable in ice.

tomorrow we set out for ireland. 1100 NM - be about 11 days - 100 miles a day being my average on ocean crossings.

food, fuel, laundry, this blog, then its on a walk I go.

Ben,s photos get better & better - he is really good at this. A discovered talent, I think.

 Sam with his prize cod. He came up with another cod in his mouth that was a meal in itself.

 All the West Fjords reaching out like fingers as we disappear into the Denmark Strait toward Greenland

 You always remember your first berg.

 This iceberg went on like this for miles.

 Sam spottin bergs in the fog, very tedious and anxious work.

 Spooking a sleeping sperm whale.

 Entering the first ice field.

Me and Sam going with the floe.

 Our first big iceberg creeps eerily out of the fog, it was about 200 feet high

 30% coverage, the ice got very thick and the visibility poor. We had to head south to make it out.

 Spotting from the side stay.

 Shroom bergs.

 Fog clears and we get our first sight of Greenland, the jagged black mountains go back in layers like shark's teeth. It looked like another world.

 Teddy at anchor in Kong Oskar Havn

 Sam and I hang out on an iceberg

 Angmagssalik, East Greenland

 Freshly skinned seal

 Junior dogsled team in training