Newport, we have a window

For the past week we’ve been hunkered down  in a small northern cove of St. Anthony’s, Newfoundland. As mentioned before it was a small but persistent low pressure system which, having parked itself a few hundred miles away  to the east in the North Atlantic, kept us from starting this next leg, Newfoundland to Nuk, Greenland.  Two nights ago the weather charts showed a small high pressure system developing just north of us and yesterday morning’s charts showed it again, if not a bit larger. This was what we’d been waiting for eight days while anchored. 

For a few of those days we couldn’t get off the boat due to driving wind and rain (actually, we could have gotten off the boat but life’s hard enough; we would have put our Helly Hansen gear to the test.)  The day before yesterday was a bit dryer so we decided to take the large inflatable, head out of the harbor and take a look at a massive iceberg which was just outside the entrance.  I have no words to describe the actual majesty and power of the berg so will leave them at that.  We didn’t get too close to it but close enough to hear its internal cracking and groaning as it meandered south.  Once about 50 yards off of it, it was seemed that icebergs of this size are clearly in control of not only themselves but anyone who decides to take a large inflatable out to admire them.  These large ones show up on radar with no problem; it’s the smaller ones that lurk just about at water level that are our main concern. If the seas are large enough and these small ones don’t show up on radar it’s possible that Bagan could come bounding off the back of a wave and land squarely on top of one of theses smaller but more menacing type; a landing that could potentially hold as much finality as I’d like to imagine. 

Yesterday morning we downloaded the weather chats again and were ecstatic to see that the high pressure had gotten large and in doing so created a perfect weather window for our crossing.  And that’s just where we are now, around 200 miles out, heading for Nuk and thoroughly enjoying relatively flat seas, less than 10kts of breeze and only the occasional pocket of fog. Right now the ETA for Nuk reads 7:30 p.m. on July 13^th.  A lot can change this arrival date but for now life is good (hell, it’s always good) and we’re back on the road  to Nuk, Greenland. By the way, the ocean temp is 38 degrees and outside the air is 34.