Shredded veils of fog drift past like dense plumes of smoke easing off the hazy cloak ahead of us. Lifting from the water as if weightless, they rise steadily over craggy basalt outcrops inland. We are motoring through the narrow passage that cuts through the archipelago of thousands of islets, islands, and off-lying rocks inland of Kap Thorvaldsen. Leading us to the northern side of the cape, this branched fjord cuts deep into the landscape and is a protected shortcut to the North.
Only some 20 m wide at its smallest stretch, the tides run fast with up to 4 knots at times and create some interesting swirls in the water that take the bow of the boat around. We are near high water, so we avoid being centrifuged, chewed, and spat out through the narrow channel.
Once through the squeeze, the fjord opens to the west and the mist gets thicker. The air has a definite chill to it now, brought on by the vapour dissolved in the air. Soon, the radar picks up some sizeable bergs in the passage. A huge tilted table disgorges sheets of waterfalls at its lower end, the spray glittering in the rays that oozes through the mist. Soon after, an extraordinarily stunning caldera comes into view. Perfectly rounded, with precipitous cliffs veiled in mist, and a narrow entrance into an alluring pool of turquoise-coloured water. A single gull paddles peacefully about.
On reaching the other side, the wind drops from 25 to 4 knots and we are surrounded by a thick layer of fog in a calm sea. A few skittish guillemots hurriedly flap to get away from us. A slight swell runs, as if we were ‘sat on the chest of a giant softly breathing,’ as our friend Carl once said when being becalmed on the ocean. We feel catapulted back to our recent Atlantic crossing, when we saw not a thing but different shades of fog for over a week. Getting philosophical, we wondered if we were moving at all, and if so, if we were just turning in circles around our own axis. Are the past weeks’ memories of Greenland but dreams?
Sailing through uncharted waters with some soundings sprinkled decoratively on the chart, we thread our way through bergs and islands. Slowly the brume lifts as we are surrounded by more and more land, mountain peaks peek out on top, and the radiating heat burns away the straggling remainders of the vapour. We leave behind the last charted depths and advance with satellite imagery and the depth sounder.
We pass close to an islet with an eagle roost with two chicks. Alex spots the young spreading their wings tentatively in the emerging sun. How long until the fledglings will flee the nest?
In the distance, two long tongues of the tremendous ice shield reach down to meet the sea. This is where we are headed: for the reborn land underneath the glaciers, released by the retreat of the ice. The bedrock and the glacial flood plains crisscrossed by an intricate web of meandering milky streams laden with glacial flour — rocks crushed and ground into fine powder by the passage of the ice.
We are off the charts, without a doubt.
Angie