Reckoning in Ice, page 19
We had our main meal around midday. I relieved Paula from her night watch at 10 a.m. and she would go below for an hour or so. But often she would relieve me for about half an hour during my watch so that I could cook the dinner. We shared the galley as we shared all other jobs, but in rough weather standing over the galley stove was the one thing that tended to make Paula feel sick, so I took over this task as often as I could.
Navigation was not difficult for there were no particular dangers. On leaving Scotland I went outside the Orkneys to avoid the Pentland Firth and then stood almost due west for a point about 100 miles south and equally far west of Cape Farewell, the southern tip of Greenland. Ice coming from the east of Greenland is liable to extend south-westwards from Cape Farewell in a great tongue. I had no means of knowing precisely how far this ice spread, so I was determined to keep well away from Cape Farewell, to give it a safe berth. My chief anxiety was lack of any landfalls –the North Atlantic here is an empty ocean. We should see nothing of Cape Farewell because we had to keep so far away from it. I got sun sights on most days, although some of them were not very good. But I felt that I could trust my navigation more or less, and I was helped by radio beacons from Iceland and later, from Greenland itself.
It was a problem to know exactly when to turn north to make for Frederikshaab. Twenty-two days out from Peterhead I reckoned that we had come about to the right spot, but with no check from any land since we had cleared the Orkneys I was naturally bothered – navigation is a tremendous act of faith. On the evening of the twenty-second day I picked up a radio station from Nova Scotia and I was able to check what seemed to be its bearing by picking up a station at Julianehaab in South Greenland. All seemed to be well. With my heart somewhat in my mouth I changed course through ninety degrees.
Navigation now began to be troublesome. We had not only to make northing but to close the coast as well – and what a coast! The chart, which I spent much time poring over, was a nightmare of offlying rocks and skerries. And where was the coast? At any time now we could expect to meet ice, which might extend ten, twenty, thirty miles from the coast. Accurate navigation was imperative. I prayed for sun.
The long northern night was ending, and this was a major help. It was light now quite late into the evening, and getting light again when Paula relieved me at 4 a.m. A few weeks later there would be virtually no darkness – it would be light enough to read at midnight. But the benison of daylight was liable to be overcome by the curse of fog. We had been lucky in meeting no prolonged fog, but we had been through some bad patches lasting several hours before they cleared.
I studied the introduction to the Admiralty’s Arctic Pilot. It was not cheerful reading, informing me of the dreadful danger that underwater spears of ice can inflict on a ship’s hull, and adding sternly,
‘Constant vigilance is necessary when navigating in an area where ice is suspected . . . There are few positions more dangerous than being in the vicinity of bergs in thick weather, as a berg may be unseen through fog or rain until it is close aboard.’
The Pilot, however, also offered much helpful advice. In particular, it told us to watch out for ‘ice-blink’, the reflection of distant ice in the sky, and for any sudden lessening of the normal ocean swell, which would be a sure indication of ice to windward.
In Paula’s 4–6 p.m. watch on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth day she called me on deck. ‘Would you say that was ice-blink, Richard?’ she asked. Away to the north-east there was certainly a strange light in the sky. I consulted the Pilot. In a clear sky, it appeared, ice-blink was to be seen as a luminous yellow haze; on an overcast sky it was more of a whitish glare. As always seems to happen when you are trying to work out things from books, our sky was neither clear nor overcast – it was just patchy with cloud. But the Pilot also observed comfortingly that ‘ice-blink, once seen, can never be mistaken.’ I read this to Paula, looked again at the sky and made up my mind. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think it’s a true bill.’ There wasn’t much wind, and we were moving quite slowly, making just under three knots. There was no reason for changing course – we had to meet ice at some time, and make our way along the edge of it. I told Paula to keep going as we were, and asked her to call me again if she saw anything else.
About half an hour later she did call me. ‘Fine to starboard,’ she said. ‘There’s something there – it might be a ship.’
There was a speck of some sort on the horizon, but it was too far to make out what it was with the naked eye. I got the glasses and looked carefully. It was not a ship – it was more like a rock. But if we were anywhere near where I reckoned we were, there weren’t any rocks. It was much too far from the coast. ‘Paula,’ I said, ‘you should have a prize. I think you’ve spotted our first iceberg.’
We were both excited. I went below and got a box of chocolates which we’d been keeping for some special occasion. ‘Your prize,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘Well, I’m not going to eat them all. But it’s a nice thought.’
I entered the time and our estimated position in the log, and wrote, ‘Iceberg observed by mate.’
We seemed to take ages to come up to it. Gradually we overhauled it – it, too, was moving with our wind, but Gudrid, a well designed vessel under command, was naturally faster through the water. As it took shape, we became more and more impressed by its size. Actually, this was not a particularly big berg – later we saw many far greater monsters – but it was our first, and it seemed huge – at least as big as a six- or seven-storey block of flats. The Pilot advised the passing of icebergs to windward, so we did, and gave it a wide berth.
Just before it fell dark we saw a palish line on the horizon, like a low shore. That must be the pack, I thought, and changed course to stand away from it during the night. We had made a few miles on this tack when it got very dark, and I decided to heave-to. I knew that there were icebergs about, and to avoid them we needed first to see them. I shipped the Seagull outboard and ran it for a few minutes to make sure that it would start. I felt that we might need it in a hurry.
At first light I let the sails draw again and we began to close the line of pack. I decided not to turn in when Paula relieved me, and stayed in the cockpit with her. With daylight we could see the ice clearly and we stood in until we were perhaps half a mile off it. One imagines ice – at least, I had imagined ice – as a vast expanse of flat whiteness, billiard-table flat, like ice on a pond. This was like a line of rough dunes, hummocks and low cliffs of ice tumbled together. And it was far from quiet. It grumbled and groaned, and every now and then made a loud crack as some irresistible pressure shattered whatever underwater wall of ice stood in its way.
What we had to do was clear. This was the pack ice moving slowly northwards along the west coast of Greenland. We could outdistance it and hope to reach open water leading to the Frederikshaab fjord well before the ice got there. We should at least have several days in hand, possibly two or three weeks. No one could tell. Small bergs and outliers of ice were now well up the coast, but the pack moves slowly. It is carried inexorably by the current, but it can be held back by wind. Wind, of course, may also accelerate it. Barring major accidents, we should get into Frederikshaab all right. Whether we should be able to get out again was another matter. Well, we would face that problem if or when we came to it.
The ice was not yet very far north. During that day channels or leads of open water began to appear in it, where it was not yet solidly impacted and the sea was able to break through. By evening we were beyond the line of pack and saw only isolated bergs. We were not much north of the latitude of Cape Farewell itself and had still some way to go. I wanted to get closer inshore to identify, if I could, a landfall, but I decided to heave-to again for the night, to have the light of a full day in hand before we drew any nearer to that forbidding coast.
In the morning the wind was coming from about NNW, and we were close-hauled. It would hold back the ice, I thought, but it would also delay us. I freed the sheets a bit to make more easterly, directly towards the coast. By mid-afternoon high land began to appear, though it was still some way off. With evening the wind veered, and I took advantage of the shift to turn away from the coast again.
Our twenty-seventh day brought some of the best weather of the whole passage. The sky was cloudless, the sea a brilliant blue, and the small bergs and patches of floating ice that kept us on tenterhooks all the time gleamed brilliantly white in the sunshine. I got good sights, and was soon able to confirm them. In the clear light the coast ceased to be a blur of land and took on shape. One cliff-like mountain stood out, conspicuously higher than anything else near it. I consulted the chart and pilot book and decided that it must be Mount Kungnat. This rises to some 4,450 feet and is the highest peak on quite a long stretch of coast. Its position (61.13N 48.26W) fitted nicely with what I had calculated to be our own position and I felt a thrill of sheer happiness – twenty-seven days at sea, and we were actually where I thought we were. I put my hand on Paula’s shoulder. ‘We’ve almost come through,’ I said. ‘You are the best mate in the whole world.’
We had about seventy miles to go, which we could hope to do comfortably in twenty-four hours. In fact the passage from there to Frederikshaab took two and a half days. Our fine day was followed by a night of fog and a harsh change in the weather. The fog was dispersed by a bitter wind that headed us, blowing, it seemed, straight from the North Pole and bringing flurries of driven sleet. We crept on, but I dared not stay close to the coast, and we were forced to stand well out to sea again. For half a day we were actually driven backwards by the northerly gale. The whole of the twenty-eighth day and the morning of the twenty-ninth were miserable. The wind, however, at last backed and by noon on our twenty-ninth day it had become a gentle westerly. I got a sight which showed that we were not far off the entrance to the fjord that would take us in to Frederikshaab. So we stood inshore again, to be confronted by an absolute maze of rocky inlets. Which could possibly be ours?
I was looking for a lighthouse on an islet called Satuarssugssuak and near it, to the eastward, there was supposed to be another rocky islet with the almost equally difficult name of Kingigtuarssuk, on the summit of which, according to the pilot book, stood a cairn. The channel, it seemed, lay between these two islets. But any of a dozen different skerries could have been either of them. I could not doubt the pilot book, but we saw no lighthouse – we never did – and how to identify a cairn in a landscape that seemed a mass of rocks and stones was beyond me.
Well beyond the entrance to Frederikshaab – some thirty miles or so northwards of it – a huge glacier came down to the coast. I felt that we could at least identify the glacier. I was considering sailing on north to fix our position from the glacier, and then turning round to come back – a diversion that would have taken at least another day – when Paula called excitedly, ‘Look, Richard, there’s a boat.’
Sure enough, there was a boat. Through the glasses it seemed to have about four men in it. It was about a mile away, but it had seen us and was making for us. As it came nearer we could see that it was an open fishing boat, double-ended and painted bright blue. It had an engine and was soon almost alongside.
A short, smiling man, looking exactly as I had imagined an Eskimo to look, stood up and held out a fish, apparently offering it to us. We did not particularly want the fish, but it seemed churlish to refuse it, so we nodded our heads. The boat came closer, and the man threw the fish expertly into the cockpit. In return I threw back a tin of cigarettes, which were received with obvious pleasure. The smiling man said something, but whether it was in Eskimo or Danish I had no idea. I said, ‘Frederikshaab? Frederikshaab?’
My accent was doubtless appalling, but they understood and the smiling man pointed ashore. Unhappily, his hand covered such a wide arc of landscape that it was no help in showing us the channel. Saying ‘Frederikshaab’ over and over again, I made signs suggesting that I should like to follow them in. It took a little time for sign language to work, but they were intelligent seamen and gathered my meaning in the end. They went ahead slowly, and we got Gudrid under way again and followed. By now there was practically no wind, so I shipped the Seagull and we went on under power. They had far more power than our outboard, but they were gentle and tolerant, and took care not to out-distance us. While Paula steered I handed the sails. Then I ran up our Danish courtesy flag to the starboard crosstrees.
With a guide to show us the way there was now no difficulty, and we were soon safely inside the Kangerdlunguak fjord, at the head of which the settlement of Frederikshaab is situated. It is not a long fjord, and about a mile brought us to the little harbour. There was a quay with no other vessel moored to it. Our guides waved to us in the most friendly fashion, and went off round the quay towards an inner harbour. I brought up Gudrid by a ladder on the quayside and made fast. Paula and I solemnly shook hands.
A party of chattering children came running along the quay, and some of them began clambering down the ladder to come on board. I shouted to them to go back – not that I minded showing children the boat, but there were too many of them, we had no common language, and we were not yet cleared. I had no wish to begin our stay in Greenland by falling foul of the authorities.
The children went back up the ladder, but they did not go away. I felt that I had better go ashore to try to find the harbourmaster. Paula stayed to guard the boat while I went up the ladder.
I did not have to go far. The harbourmaster was already on his way, and he met me at the top of the steps. He was a Dane, with the sea stamped all over him, and like most Danish seamen he had quite good English. He was as friendly as the boatmen, and appeared delighted to see us. He said that he would like to come on board, so we went down the ladder and back to Gudrid.
The harbourmaster bowed politely to Paula, and I took him below to show him the ship’s papers. He was not greatly interested in the papers, but he was interested in Gudrid and kept saying, ‘Norway yacht – good for English sailor –yes?’ He showed no particular surprise when I told him that we had sailed from Scotland – that man understood boats. I got out a bottle of whisky and Paula came down to join us.
I asked about Customs and clearance, but he indicated that no one was going to be fussy about an English yacht. There was a police station in the settlement, and we should go there with our passports, but there was no need to bother about that now. He himself would take us round in the morning.
He told us a little about Frederikshaab. It was not like Julianehaab to the south and Godthaab to the north, the site of one of the ancient Norse colonies in Greenland, but was founded as a Danish trading post in 1742, partly as a result of Moravian missionary enterprise on what was then a rough coast of whalers and sealers of all nationalities. The boatmen who met us were not Eskimos – they were the descendants of Greenland Eskimos but there had been much admixture of other blood from the whaling fleets of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They were not now called Eskimos – they were Greenlanders.
While we were talking in the cabin, a bunch of children swarmed on deck. The harbourmaster rushed up and shouted at them. It sounded as if he was threatening them with at least the fires of hell, but maybe he was merely telling them to clear off. Anyway, they went, and the harbourmaster suggested that we should move from the quay and secure to a buoy, which he pointed out to us. There, we should be safer from the inquisitive.
We had more whisky and then he said that he would tell the policeman about us, to ensure that we were not troubled during the night. He went off, promising to come out in a dinghy for us in the morning. We cast off, and the outboard soon took us the couple of hundred yards to the buoy. We were both extremely tired – too tired to cook our fish. I opened a tin of baked beans and as soon as we had eaten this unexciting supper we turned in and went to sleep.
IX
THE RECKONING
I SLEPT FOR ten hours – Paula for close on twelve. It had been luxury indescribable to turn in with Gudrid at rest and safely moored, to drift into sleep knowing that one would not have to get up. For the first night since we had left Peterhead we slept without the Tilley lamp alight.
I dressed quickly, and looked across Gudrid’s tiny cabin at Paula, sleeping on the port settee. Her dark hair framed the little bit of her face that was not snuggled into her sleeping bag. What a superb mate she was! Thirty days of propinquity in the cramped quarters of a 25-foot boat had deepened our relationship, deepened rather than expanded it. Ours was still essentially a working partnership. Apart from long philosophical conversations in the cockpit in the small hours, when I stayed up after she had relieved me, we had had curiously little time together – when two people are working a boat they seldom can be together, for one must be on watch while the other rests.
I moved quietly to avoid waking her, and went on deck. It was a bright morning, though I was glad of two pullovers. The fjord was still, and the little settlement of brightly painted houses looked like an illustration from a child’s picture-book. About a cable from us was another buoy, with a beautiful 50-foot pinnace or picket boat belonging to the Danish Navy lying to it. No one seemed to be on board.
We should need our dinghy, and I began unlashing the Avon. It wanted some more air. The pump was in one of the cockpit lockers, so I could get it without disturbing Paula. After fettling up the dinghy I put it in the water, and in doing so put my hands in, too. It was ice cold.
