May 26, 2002
We left the Potomac on the 19th, and arrived on Cape Cod after
a slow passage of seven days. Unfavorable winds pushed us as
far out to sea as Hudson Canyon. We followed the edge of the
continental shelf hoping to see whales. Instead, we spotted a
good number or sharks, a big hammerhead among them, and a very
large sea turtle. Tomorrow we'll transit the Cape Cod Canal and
sail north across Stellwagen Bank, again hoping to see whales.
May 29, 2002
We spent a full day and a night crisscrossing Stellwagen Bank
and didn't see a single whale. When thick fog rolled in we gave
up and sailed north towards Maine. Early in the evening the wind
died, the sea flattened out and everything became very still.
Then we heard whales breathing, with long, low puffs. We couldn't
see them, because of the fog, so we motored slowly towards the
sound, turning off the engine several times to listen and get
a bearing. Finally we saw, less than twenty yards from the boat,
four humpback whales slowly dropping below the surface and
coming up again to breathe. They were quite undisturbed and maybe
even curious, at one point crossing right in front of our bow.
There were several more. We could hear them all around us in
the fog. We silently drifted among them for an hour and a half,
until it was completely dark.
The next day a tiny bird with a yellow back landed on our rail
and nervously hopped about the boat until it found a sheltered
spot under the dodger. He was far from home; we were 25 miles
off shore. The whales find their way each year from Puerto Rico
to the Gulf of Maine, but this little bird got lost in the fog.
He flew away several times looking for land, but returned
to the boat, like Noah's dove. He stayed with us until we approached
Portland. The fog was so thick that we couldn't see Portland
Head, even though we passed it within a hundred yards.
I write this update in the Peaks Island Public Library. In a
day or two we'll sail towards Nova Scotia.
June 7, 2002
We reached Nova Scotia after a three day passage, but we didn't
get as far up the coast as we had hoped. Soon after we rounded
Cape Sable the radio broadcast a gale warning. Rather then push
on to Halifax, we took cover in Shelburne Harbor. And we are
still there. After the front passed, another low settled offshore,
causing a north-easter, the worst possible wind for us.Canadian
customs formalities were decidedly informal. All we had to do
was call up and tell them we are in the country. No paperwork
was required, except for our shotgun.We are docked among the
local fishing fleet. There is one other sailboat here, the American
ketch Tamara. Owners Mark and Nancy are on their third voyage
to Labrador, and have been very generous with advice on navigating
northern waters.I am sitting in the public library again. Outside
the wind is blowing from the north-east, it is raining hard,
and we do not know yet when we can go back to sea.
June 13, 2002
We left Shelburne on the 8th, but the next day a new storm forced
us into Lunenburg harbour. Then we finally got a break and a
strong following wind carried us well beyond Halifax. The wind
eventually became light and easterly, which in this part of the
world always seems to mean thick fog. We managed to motorsail
around Cape Canso and are now on Cape Breton Island, the north-easterly
tip of Nova Scotia. Cape Breton is famous for its poverty and
its folk music, but the first thing that struck me was the silence.
On a windless evening I hiked to Jerome Point. Chuck stayed on
the boat, and at a mile's distance I could still hear him talk
on the cell phone.I am writing in the office of a small marina
in the town of St. Peters. Tonight many of the local residents
are assembled in a restaurant on Main Street, where they are
engrossed in a mysterious card game called '45'.In order to reach
Cabot Strait we have to pass through the Bras d'Or Lakes, a series
of inland seas and fjords. Then we will have to find a good jump
off point for the crossing to Newfoundland. Cabot Strait has
a bad reputation.
June 15, 2002
We crossed the Bras d'Or Lake in a rising wind that eventually
forced us to furl the jib and put three reefs in the mainsail.
An easterly gale is forecast for tomorrow, so we are now hiding
in the small town of Baddeck. We are trying to be philosophical
about the weather, and the beauty of the region helps a great
deal. The lake and the fjords are bound by high and steep hills,
there are countless bays, coves and islands, and behind every
headland there is a new and often quite dramatic view.
June 19, 2002
Newfoundland! Exactly one month after leaving Tall Timbers we
sailed into Port aux Basques. We had already seen the coast the
night before. The snowfields on the mountains stood out clearly
in the evening light. We didn't want to enter an unfamiliar harbor
in the dark, so we hove to five miles offshore and waited till
morning. We had picked our weather well and the crossing was
smooth. We started out on a cold, but clear and starlit night,
and had moderate north-westerlies all the way.Port aux Basques
is a small community around the docks for the ferry to Nova Scotia.
Only one road leads out of town, across the mountains and to
the interior of Newfoundland. We are tied up along the public
wharf, between halibut fishermen and an old yacht that was impounded
for smuggling liquor from the French island of St. Pierre.Bare
cliffs and islands of stone make up the coast here. The landscape
beyond is dominated by an absence: there is not a single tree
anywhere. Even on a sunny day the light is slanted and soft.
The moors and barrens are pale green, and your eye is drawn to
the mountains in the distance. Cape Breton is a large and remote
island. After sailing northeast for two days we are now on an
island that is even larger and more remote. I am glad the world
is such a big place.So far out trip north has not been a very
fast one, but we had anticipated delays and are still within
schedule. We have a fair chance of reaching the Strait of Belle
Isle in time to attempt the crossing to Greenland.
Postscript June 20: We are stuck again. Gale warnings were issued
this morning for the eastern Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Strait
of Belle Isle.
June 24, 2002
After a wild downwind ride along the western coast of Newfoundland
we entered the Bay of Islands, a maze of fjords and inlets surrounded
by high, thickly wooded hills. We saw several orca's on the way,
but the most remarkable thing was the weather: on two consecutive
days the wind changed from flat calm to 25 knots within
an hour. Fast moving low pressure systems and high mountains
near the coast are apparently the cause of this.We are docked
in Corner Brook, which my father visited 50 years ago to buy
wood pulp for a Dutch paper mill. It is a faitly large town,
as a matter of fact the last fairly large town on the way north.
We have to check our supplies and do some serious shopping here.Everybody
tells us that the spring has been much colder than usual. The
ice conditions in the Strait of Belle Isle, however, are favorable.
They do not seem to be directly connected to the local weather.
Nico and Jana are due to arrive in Newfoundland tomorrow. Resupplied
and with a full crew we should be able to push on. The Strait
of Belle Isle is still 150 miles away.
A footnote: Before leaving Port aux Basques we had a pleasant
chat with the liquor smuggler. Smuggling, which the locals, with
a fine euphemism, call 'wholesale business', is an old and almost
respectable vocation in Newfoundland.
July 2, 2002
It was a field of whales I cannot find better words for
it. There were dozens of them, spread out over a large area.
They arched their immense backs out of the water before diving
down, and just after the backs disappeared the tails came
up briefly and seemed to wave at us. They came back up head first,
with their mouths wide open to drain the seawater, and the gulls
swooped down between the jaws to steal the krill. We were at
the southwest end of the Strait of Belle Isle. It was a bright,
sunny day, and the high coast of the Labrador stood out to the
North. We reduced sail when we saw the whales, and slowly zigzagged
among them, sometimes coming so close that we could see the barnacles
on their backs and flippers. And even at a distance we could
clearly hear their songs.
We reached the Strait of Belle Isle on the 29th of June, after
a fast sail along the coast. We made only one stop to wait for
weather. With Nico and Jana on board duties are lighter. The
children sail the boat during the day; Chuck and I do the evening
and night watches. We are now in the small fishing village of
Flowers Cove, and waiting of a southwest gale to lie down. It
had been blowing hard and without interruption for three days.
This morning the cod season opened, but even the local fishermen
stayed in. Flowers Cove is a good place to wait: fresh shrimp
and lobster are brought in every afternoon, and the harbourmaster
presented us with several pounds of moose burger and caribou
meat when she, almost apologetically, came to collect the Can$
6 docking fee.
The Strait of Belle Isle is free of ice on this side, but we
are told there are many icebergs near the eastern exit.
There is a lot of ice along the Labrador coast in general, but
the shrimp fishermen next to us on the wharf were clear of it
after sailing due east for about 150 miles. We plan to do the
same thing.
On the human level our cruise to Newfoundland is already a success,
I think. In the towns and villages we visited (Port aux
Basques, Lark Harbour, Corner Brook, Rocky Harbour and Flowers
Cove) the people have been extraordinarily friendly and helpful.
There were no exceptions. The kindness and hospitality of the
Newfoundlanders is so striking that even Chuck, who holds a dim
view of human nature, is mellowing a bit.
July 5, 2002
Ice! We saw our first icebergs while crossing the Strait of Belle
Isle to Labrador. They were not very big, but in the soft light
they stood out brilliantly against the gray sea and the Labrador
coast, which is, in a subdued way, remarkably colorful. The mosses,
lichens, berries and small trees on the mountains show many shades
of green in distinct patches, like a mosaic, and the bare rock
is tinted red and purple.To avoid a night of rain, fog
and easterly wind, we pulled into Red Bay, a hamlet that was
once a Basque whaling station. Many old whale bones still lie
on the beach on the west side of the bay. We saw live whales
too, some quite close to the shore, and also seals. The seal
hunting has been very good this year. Skins bring up to Can$
65.00 a piece. The hunt is still done in the old fashioned way,
on the ice early in the spring, with clubs.
July 18, 2002
We are in Greenland! We crossed the Labrador Sea in seven days
and made landfall near Cape Desolation on the 15th of July. For
a small boat like ours it was a fast passage, but it came at
a price. We sailed along the east side of a stationary low pressure
system. This gave us strong following winds, but also miserable
weather. We had four days of uninterupted cold wet fog, then
two days of rain, and when the low finally moved away, we were
hit by a south east gale that blew us thirty miles in the wrong
direction.
The weather improved when we approached Greenland. We sighted
the coast early in the morning. The steep peaks of the mountains
rose up out of a white fog bank, and the sun rose behind the
mountains. We started to see icebergs again, for the first time
since leaving the Labrador coast. They were much bigger than
before, and floated by like white cathedrals and abandoned ships.
We sailed north along the coast until we reached Nuuk, where
this update is written in the public library. Nuuk is a good
size town on the fork of two fjords. It is surrounded by glacier
coveered mountains. The harbour is busy and lively with trawlers
and the small motorboats the Inuit use to go hunting and
fishing. Greenland customs procedures were even more informal
than in Canada: we were completely ignored.
We celebrated our arrival with a dinner of musk ox and whale
meat. Both are readily available here, and very tasty. The next
day a southerly gale blew for twelve hours. We had to double
up our lines and hope that the old wooden trawlers to which
we are tied up wouldn't break loose. The storm dumped an incredible
amount of rain on us. We are now trying to dry out and plan to
climb nearby Store Malene mountain tomorrow.
July 22, 2002
Bad weather has kept us in Nuuk for almost a week now. Fog, strong,
gusty winds and continuous rain make it impossible to move on.
We try ro make the best of it, fix things on the boat, buy supplies,
and visit the library and the internet cafe. Chuck took a room
in a hotel for a couple of nights, where we could all take showers.There
are two other sailboats here. The crew of Blue Pearl, a 44 foot
aluminum cutter, is waiting for a spare part. They are trying
to make a north west passage from Greenland to Alaska. The other
boat is small like ours, and up for sale. The owners sailed from
Europe and got caught in the ice near Cape Farewell. They spent
a very scary 24 hours in their liferaft before they could break
free. They made straight for Nuuk, abandoned further cuirse plans,
and flew home.We are not giving up. As soon as the weather clears
we'll sail north to Sisimiut.
July 27, 2002
We crossed the Arctic Circle in the early morning of July 25th.
Large numbers of seals popped up their heads to look at us when
we left the fjord at Nuuk, and later four humpback whales swam
along with us, just off our bow. Whales are becoming a theme
of our voyage: when we approached Greenland a pod of at least
sixty black pilot whales stayed with us for almost two days.
The weather finally cleared when we reached Sisimiut. We had
not seen the sun in three weeks. Sisimiut is a pretty and lively
hunting and fishing community. We are tied up to an old trawler
again, and can watch the coming and going on the shrimpers -
some from Iceland and Russia - and the small powerboats of the
Iniut. From the outskirts of the village they arrive in the harbour
by bus, with their rods and rifles. Very few people have cars
here. There are no roads beyond the village. Almost everybody,
on the other hand, seems to have a boat and a snowmoblie or a
dogsled.
The view of Sisimiut is dominated by the tall, cone and dome
shaped mountains that rise up out of the fjords to the east.
The town itself is dominated by sled dogs. There are literally
thousands of them (2,000 is the official number) and they are
all tied up outside, around the houses, along the roads, and
on rocks and hillocks. Their barks, yaps and howls from a constant
background music, and at 12 noon they all howl together, in answer
to the fishplant's sounding of the lunchtime siren.
We had glorious weather yesterday and hiked up Nasaasaaq mountain,
a hat shaped peak on a ridge of bare, light gray rock dotted
with snowpatches and bright green mosses. It was already evening
when we started the descent, but we were not worried: it never
gets dark here. We are finally, truly in the Arctic.
August 2, 2002
When we sailed further north, a great white city appeared on
the horizon so it looked when we approached the Jakobshavn
Isfjord. Hundreds upon hundreds of immense icebergs formed a
wall that was visible from more than twenty miles away. The number
and size of the icebergs had been steadily increasing as we entered
Disko Bay. Even on the south west side there were so many that
they formed a landscape, with distances and a perspective, like
isolated farms on a plain. Close to Ilulissat the sea was white
and covered with smaller pieces of ice that had melted and fallen
off the big bergs. It took us six hours of motoring to reach
the shore, zigzagging and slowly advancing and backtracking,
with two people armed with boathooks on the bow to push away
the chunks of ice. We were afraid that the ice would block the
harbour, so we anchored in a cove north of town and rowed to
the shore in the dinghy. On the rocks some Greenlanders were
butchering a seal they had just killed. We hiked to a hill above
the Isfjord, where we could see the slow, rumbling, sometimes
thundering parade of gigantic icebergs, several miles wide and
as long as the eye could see.
August 6, 2002
We had fine Arctic weather, calm and sunny, and we sailed into
a sound at the north east side of Disko Bay. We passed the abandoned
settlement of Ata, and anchored in front of the Eqi glacier.
We kept a safe distance, but every time a piece of ice broke off
the face of the glacier, with the sound of a faraway thunderstorm,
we could first see and then feel the waves coming through the
anchorage. In 1950 a French expedition landed here. They left
behind a pile of rusted equipment, a hut, and a trail that leads
to the great ice cap that covers most of Greenland. We reached
it after five hours of steady climbing, first through hills carpeted
with green mosses, lichens and mushrooms, and then through the
morene, a bare land of rocky peaks, scree, and fields of gravel
and hard, pewter colored mud. The ice cap itself is an undulating
plain of opaque, light grey ice that at this latitude stretches
for more than 500 miles to the east coast of Greenland. There
is always a steady and very cold wind. Fritjof Nansen once crossed
it on skis. We only hiked up a couple of miles, taking care to
avoid holes and crevasses, and looked around in wonder.
August 11, 2002
It is strikingly quiet on the shores of Disko Bay. The ocean
swell is flattened by the icebergs, so there is no surf,
and there are no trees that could rustle their leaves or branches.
There is very little wind, anyway. We used the engine a lot,
and had to stop for fuel in the tiny settlement of
Rodebay, which in the 17th Century was a Dutch whaling
station. Now 50 Greenlanders and 300 dogs live there, in and
around cheerfully painted wooden houses on bare rock. All
the wiring, and the water and sewer pipes run above ground,
which gives the place a honest look. We refueled again in
Aasiaat, where we also bought fresh seal meat, which tasted
very good with the mushrooms we picked earlier. From Aasiaat
we took a partially marked inside passage through an extensive
area of fjords, islands and narrow leads. Here we encountered
several fin whales, the biggest whales we've seen so far.
The wind finally came back when we reached Davis Strait,
and we sailed back south under spinnaker. We are now in Sisimiut
again. Olina, who joined us in Ilulissat, flies home to Washington
tomorrow. The children, Chuck and I are getting the boat
ready for the passage back to Newfoundland.
August 12 - 28, 2002
We were two days out of Sisimiut when the storm caught us. We
had been motorsailing in a dying breeze and a gentle swell when
we first noticed small ripples on the water and then short gusts
from the south, dead ahead. Not an hour later the sky had
disappeared behind thick, dark gray clouds, and we were reefed
down and under stormsail. We were unable to hold our course
against the rising seas. Running with the storm was not
an option: it would have carried us straight back to the north.
So we dropped the mainsail and hove to, turning the bow
towards the waves and lashing the tiller. Then there was
nothing we could do but wait, and wait we did. We were
hove to for a full 24 hours, rolling and bouncing on very high
waves, and slowly drifting off course. Rain, spray and
breaking waves washed over the deck. We were all hiding
below in the cabin, and we all got seasick - fortunately not
at the same time. One striking thing about the storm was
the noise, not just of the waves banging against the boat, but
especially the constant howling and loud whistling of the wind
in the rigging. The storm ended after a day, but it took
another whole day before the swell subsided. Only then
could we resume our course.
The Labrador Sea is a lonely place. We were offshore
for ten days, and we didn't see a single ship. When it was foggy
we frequently put out radio calls to alert other ships to our
presence, and never received an answer. One night Nico
and Jana, who were on watch, called us up to see the Northern
Lights. The sky was clear, and across the whole immense
width of it was drawn a pale white curtain of light, with creases
and folds that changed as if a breeze was blowing through. The
lights remained in the sky for hours. It was very impressive,
but not frightening, because the light was so quiet, so completely
unlike lightning. We were never truly alone on the Labrador
Sea. The pilot whales visited us frequently, and even
when you were off watch, in your bunk, you could hear their high
whistles and squeals through the hull of the boat.
The 16th Century French explorer Cartier did not like the
barren hills and rocky coast of the Labrador, nor the bad weather,
the ice and the mosquitoes. This must be, he wrote in his
log, the land God gave to Cain. We met Cain's descendants
in the small settlement of Black Tickle, and liked them very
much. We had not planned to stop there, but a gale forced
us to take cover. The heart of Black Tickle is the fish
plant, and in the workers' bunkhouse we were invited to take
showers, do our laundry, and recover from the Greenland crossing.
We are now back in Newfoundland, very near the outpost
the Norse from Greenland established more than a thousand years
ago. Nico and Jana are on their way home to go back to
school. Dick Teachout joined us here to sail to Nova Scotia,
where we hope to arrive in about ten days.
August 30 September 12, 2002
The first gale, an easterly, kept us in St. Anthony on the far
northern tip of Newfoundland for two days. As soon as t he wind
calmed down we left, in the afternoon, and we managed to get
through the Strait of Belle Isle the following evening, just
before the next gale started. This one, a south-westerly, kept
us in port for three days. We left again on a good forecast,
hoping to reach the Bay of Islands halfway down the west coast
of Newfoundland, but another south-westerly literally stopped
us. The west coast is mountainous, wild and very beautiful, but
there are few harbours. We couldn't reach a place to hide from
the blow, so we hove to under storm jib. We were hove to for
eighteen hours before the wind clamed again, and veered north.
We had some great sailing after that, even hoping to get across
Cabot Strait in one big leap. Then gale number four forced us into
Codroy, a village that between the sea right in front and the
high mountains behind it, looks precariously small. Dick
Teachout, who sailed with us on this part of the trip, remarked
that Newfoundland seemed just as remote as 25 years ago, when
he first visited the island on a Navy assignment. When we finally
crossed Cabot Strait and approached Nova Scotia, we were
welcomed by gale number five. We were too far offshore to reach port,
so we tacked back and forth under storm sail, just trying not
too lose too much ground. We are now docked in Baddeck
on Cape Breton Island, where, to top it all off, we had a visit
from hurricane Gustav. The boat, and the crew, have taken quite
a beating on this voyage. We have had to make repairs to everything
from sails, standing and running rigging, water tanks, electrical
system, self-steering vane, and the toilet (twice). Fortunately
we could do most repairs ourselves. We have, so far, needed outside
help only once, from a diesel mechanic in Greenland.
Dick flew home yesterday, as scheduled. Chuck also left. He was
involved with the expedition from the very beginning, and has
been a tremendous help. Now that he is gone, I urgently need
new crew. I do not think it is safe to sail alone along
the busy east coast of the US. There are still almost 1,000 miles
to go.
Postscripts from Olina: Hurricane Gustav passed directly over
Sea Scout in Baddeck, Cape Breton Island, at 2 am on Thursday,
Sept. 12. Sea Scout sustained no damage. Jeffrey
Balkind joined the crew two dayslater. They left Shelburne
Harbor at the SW end of Nova Scotia on Sept. 22, and reached
Cape Cod Canal on Sept. 25. After crew changes in Marion,
MA,, where Charles and Eugene came on board, and in Jersey City,
NJ, Sea Scout approached Cape May, NJ, on Oct. 3. Then
they sailed throught the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal. Two
days later Sea Scout - with Geert, Tony and Ilya on board - sailed
fast past Annapolis, to reach Tall Timbers, on the lower Potomac,
on Sunday, October 6, afternoon.
Rockwell Kent: Artist in Greenland (1935)
From: Constance Martin: Distant Shores:
The Odyssey of Rockwell Kent
(Berkeley, 2000)
Illustration on top of page:
Edward Shenton
Letters to Due North from March 2001 to May 2002, when I was
preparing the expedition.
Stone men from the Boothia peninsula in Arctic Canada. Their
purpose is unclear, but was probably related to the hunting of
the caribou. Dorset culture (before 1000 A.D.)
Source: Cottie Burland: Eskimo Art (London, 1973)
A slowly growing list of essential books about the Arctic,
and a selection of Arctic links.
Sid Platt, a member of the Baltimore Watercolor Society, made
a painting for the Due North web site. When you click the little
picture, you'll see Sid's Arctic Light in full
A series of ice maps of the Strait of Belle Isle between Labrador
and Newfoundland. The Strait is the front door to the Arctic,
and opens only late in the season.
Veteran ocean sailor Chuck McDermott has joined the Due North
expedition. Chuck is also an accomplished artist. The pictures
in his gallery will take a few seconds to load.
Chuck lived in Greenport, an old whaling town on Long Island,
and worked for a while at S.T. Preston, one of America's first
ship chandleries. He made a lovely drawing of Preston's Dock.
The Log, May 19 - October 6, 2002
