Month: June 2023

Passage notes, Friday, 16th June 2023, dog watch at 0430UTC

The ocean surface is of mercury breathing the softest breath, a metallic reflection laid out all around us. The clouds let through enough light to wash everything in a bizarre silver light. A subtle balance of light and shadow, of bright and dark. A world dipped in liquid lead.

A serene scene adorned with the occasional group of resting sea birds. The brighter fulmars and the darker shearwaters mirror the contrasts of their surroundings. They bob silently on the water, resting, preening, sleeping, waiting patiently for the wind to return.

As we approach, they paddle into the distance, some in unhurried demeanour, others with more urgency. Unfolding their wings, they hold them in suspension at the brink of flapping, maybe waiting for a puff to lift them off? All the while treading the water and continuously taking bearings of the nearing boat, they seem in two minds whether or not to take off to get out of our way.

I wonder where the threshold lies for each bird as an individual? There certainly are noticeable differences. Unrest starts with one and spreads through the group, catching one individual after the other, but for the odd one out who can’t be bothered. In contrast, the next group seems to be at ease, watching us chug past. It must be quite an effort for them to alight in total calm, they seem to much prefer swimming once the air stops flowing, denying them a lift.

Everyone is at rest — the atmosphere, the ocean, the sky, the birds — and a delicate equilibrium seems to have set in. Though rudely interrupted by us as we rush onwards on a beeline towards the far side. I feel out of place as the intruder, and long to join their austere silence. To take the same rest from our perpetual movement that has descended around us. To live to the same heartbeat as everyone around us. Maybe go for a dip and a swim in the cold water before climbing out over the side of the hull, lobster-red, vigorously alive, to take a hot shower.

Memories of the past well up. On our passage from the Southern Caribbean to the Azores in 2020, we had two days of similar calm, little motion in the water. A stillness that was not absolute, but sent the boat rolling slowly in the last remainders of the glossy swell. The horizon to the West was lined with what appeared like a wall of towering cumulus foretelling the unstable squally air just over a hundred miles away.

Then, we stopped to dive into the deep-blue water. Not cold, but with a fresh edge to it that we hadn’t felt on our skin since entering tropical waters months earlier. The sea out there halfway between the tropics and moderate latitudes is of such intense blue luminosity, it beggars belief and overexposes on the camera.

Plankton and sargassum float by in water crystal clear as gin. Light shafts break the surface and play in ever-changing patterns, scattering the light, illuminating the water from within to its intense glow. The rays converge towards the depth, seemingly endless, but in reality only 4 or 5000 metres to the ground.

The undulating light lures me down. With the water so clear, I couldn’t tell how deep I had dived down on one breath-hold. The light didn’t diminish, there was no reference of my movement, and it seemed I could see forever into the distance. Only when I turned, the boat seemed far far away on the distant surface in an astonishing display of light and colour. Punctuated by highlights of glistening sparks whenever a wavelet focused the light into a point.

Shearwaters were then on their annual migration to northern waters, to where we now meet them again, and we had some magical moments watching them and swimming with them. My thoughts take a full circle and return to the present. I watch the birds. The boat sluices through the water.

An arctic tern called out insistently this afternoon. A surprising clear sound. I stepped outside to watch her. Most sea birds seem quiet while on the water or soaring the winds, so hearing the tern’s bell-like chirping call, I was drawn to observe. Circling the top of our main mast, she called out and apparently trying to land, but what little swell there was thwarted her efforts and pulled the mast top away from her in the last moment. Trying time and again, she seemed a little more agitated each time. Suddenly, she broke out in a loud chatter of complaint and rushed away on fast wings, only to have second thoughts and return one last time.

Later, we spotted minke whales in the mirror of the sea, two companions going roughly the same direction as us. We could put into action our new observation logging tool, embedded in the electronic logbook that Alex and I hacked together only half an hour prior. As a temporary solution for logging animal observations, it appears to work sufficiently well. Meanwhile, a young developer works on a dedicated plugin for the same purpose, which we hope to receive soon, as we will enter waters full of promise of whales soon.

Angie

Passage notes, Thursday, 15th June 2023

The sun is out, shyly hiding behind a gradient of subtle blues and greys, and the temperature has risen at a surprising rate. The closer we get to Greenland, the warmer it gets. A paradox. But only until we reach the swift East Greenland Current that brings cold Arctic water, mottled with sea ice, icebergs, bergy bits, and growlers. We expect a precipitous drop of both the water and the air temperature then. The days of ‘summer’ are counted.

Satellites have monitored the extent of sea ice coverage and icebergs since 1979. The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) creates ice charts from Sentinel satellite images. These charts are maps showing the extent of the ice, its concentration or density as well as the nature or type of the ice in each area using the “egg” code, so called due to the shape of the symbols used to encode this information. They allow the experienced navigator to decipher what conditions to expect in which area.

The ice belt in the vicinity of Nunap Isua (Kap Farvel), the southernmost corner of Greenland, can be over 100 M wide in June, as the ice charts this year confirm. We must double this cape to reach the SW coast with a good offing. Not only due to the ice, but also due to the weather, which can be dicy near the cape, as near all big capes.

Ice belts are landscapes adrift. Currents and winds shift and swirl a continuously morphing mandala of frozen matter. A change in the wind direction or strength, tidal or ocean currents swiftly alters everything, and an area that was open water yesterday might be choked with ice today.

Ice comes in two basic types: sea ice, which is frozen sea water that forms, grows and melts in the ocean; and glacial ice, which originates from the land and calves off glaciers as icebergs, often with spectacular displays.

Glacier ice comes in an infinite variety of sizes and shapes, from cathedrals, spires and pinnacles, tables and domes, to arches, wedges, blocks, or even cradles. True bergs can be anything from 15 m to over 200 m in length, smaller bergs are called bergy bits, and even smaller ones that are often mostly submerged and float just a little above surface level, are growlers. Small is relative – they might still be about 5 m long. We don’t want to collide with any of them. The sea ice, likewise, has many appearances that tell of its age, formation, conditions and history.

We are curious for our first glimpse of ice. Who will spot the first berg, when will it be? Will it sail towards us, slowly peeling out of the mist? Or will it lie sedate in a long heaving petrol-green swell under a deep-blue sky, reflecting and refracting the sunlight like a prism? Will we happen upon it in darkness, and will the sea breaking around it glow with the fluorescence of plankton?

How thick will the ice cover be? Will there be dense bands of pack ice? And just how tired will we get keeping a tight ice watch at all times? It relies on two people – one on the lookout, the other to manoeuvre the ship. One person is outside elevated on the pilot house to raise their horizon and be able to spot the ice in the water. The other inside at the wheel, poised to take over from the autopilot with a moment’s notice when ice is spotted ahead.

In anticipation, our thoughts overtake us, our imagination travels ahead. Today, we are still four days out from the ice. We motor as we have run out of wind. The silence of sailing is interrupted by the hum of the engine.

It’s not all bad: this is the time to heat the boat with the excess engine heat, to reduce the moisture inside, to make fresh water directly from the sea with the desalinator, and to have hot showers! Those are a delight. Each of us take turns to have a hot shower outside in the cockpit while contemplating the waves and watching birds bob about in the remaining swell. We’re all feeling a little lazy today with the lack of sunlight and having just filled our bellies with several rounds of delicious Breton galettes! Nevertheless, one of us just has to start and the other ones will follow suit.

A basic thing like a shower becomes astonishingly precious and delightful when at sea. Sailing sharpens the appreciation for the little things. A floor that isn’t constantly bucking under your feet, forcing you to hold on tight at all times, a bed that doesn’t lurch from under you, a tea mug that can for an instant be set on a surface — not too long, mind you — become a source of bliss. Things taken for granted morph into things to be intensely grateful for. A joyful and gratifying state.

Angie

Passage notes, 14th June 2023, a bright morning

What a morning to wake up to! The sun is out, the sky has cleared behind the occlusion, the sea has come down, and Atlas jogs along with the crisp gennaker billowing out.

As I slowly open my eyes, I see bright sun patches traversing the cabin in synchronised movement with the boat. Highlighting first the onion basket swinging peacefully overhead, then Richard’s face who is slumbering on the other side of the boat right underneath, now the wood stove resting in the centre of the boat. Finally it comes over to our side of cabin, momentarily blinding me, as if to say, ‘Good morning, it’s time to get out of bed,’ before it continues its migration across.

Stepping out into the cockpit from the pilot house, the warm sun rays and the bright light of a splendid day greet us. An utter transformation from the past week of uniform grey. By then, we had been jokingly wondering if we were even moving at all. Every morning ground-hog day. We woke up to the same landscape, the same dull sky, the same colour of the sea, and just a little variation on the movement, too little to really count as a change.

Arnaud, our skipper, in a philosophical mood, asked some days ago: “Can we prove we are not going in circles?” And in fact, we couldn’t. For all we knew, we might be. The light had no direction. It had been days since we had last seen the sun, or any other celestial body. Our surroundings had become uniform, light grey above, fading from and to twilight during the morning and at night, the water with a pale blueish-green complexion. Suspended in what seems like timelessness.

This morning. A change. The sun. It feels like summer has arrived, and energy, zest, vibrance, and contrast have returned to our lives. A fresh breath of cool air, the sun warming our bare skin on our arms as we slowly spoon our breakfast and sip the hot coffee. It feels like having traversed a high glacial plateau shrouded in mist, and come down into the summer valley on the other side. ‘We’re going to Greenland after all,’ says Arnaud as he returns from the foredeck and steps into the cockpit with a bright smile.

The ocean moves like a flag billowing in slow motion, the colour has poured back into the water while we were asleep. The waves and wavelets have rounded soft shapes now. High cirrus clouds adorn the sky, and a rim of low stratus is still visible on the horizon. The occlusion has brought a longed-for change.

Angie