Qarsitsiaat, Tunulliarfik Fjord, and Nasamiut

On Friday, August 15, we remained at anchor in Qarsitsiaat, with whitecaps on the water around us and the wind throughout the day between 20 and 30 knots. Even Peter didn't venture away from the boat. We all kept occupied in various ways. Enis worked most of the time. Shalako read and played sudoku on his iPad. Peter puttered around and rebuilt things. I cleaned and colored and read and studied the Spanish subjunctive tense. We collected 100 gallons of rain water in the tanks. We did our stretching. I decided that I would write a very brief post after we ate the pasta dinner that Enis was making. The day was totally uneventful. 

As Enis was in the galley, Peter thought he heard voices outside and went on deck to check. Indeed, there were two young men in a small open boat who probably came into the cove to investigate when they saw our mast sticking up over the rocky coast. Luckily, Enis had prepared a large meal because Peter invited them on board to join us. I quickly set two more places at the table, Shalako removed the outside fiddle rail and Enis got out two more bowls. 

These young men, Qillaq (age 30) and Niels-Ole (age 28) were very polite and friendly and spoke some English so we were able to communicate if we kept things simple. Peter would have liked to discuss wind patterns and anchorages and Enis was interested in fishing advice, but this was beyond what we could do.  However, they showed us videos of their killing of a polar bear (quite exciting!) and the seal hunt harvest and many photos of their families and their homes and edible parts of seals. We were surprised at how nice their homes were inside and by the fact that on this treeless island, they acquire Christmas trees that must come by boat from Iceland or Canada. 

When we asked them how they knew each other, we were told that Niels-Ole is married to one of Quillaq's sisters. (His parents raised a family of 10 children.) Quillaq, the father of 2, is a musician whose job is being the town church's organist, as was his father's. Niels-Ole, who has 3 children, and told us he does not work and seemed to shrug this off. We know that the Danish government provides significant support to the country of Greenland in terms of infrastructure, public education and health services, pensions, police and other typical state and municipal agencies, but did not realize that, if there are not employment opportunities, the Danish government offers long-term individual and family public assistance for fixed expenses and support, including heating, electricity and water. Since the Inuit population, which is 90% of the approximately 56,000 people of Greenland, still hunt and fish for much of their food, comfortable living must be possible with this public assistance.

Enis, Sherri, Peter, Qillaq, Shalako and Niels-Ole having dinner on Mantra

Quillaq and Niels-Ole

This two genial men were on board for about an hour. They were on their way from Nanortalik, where they had gone to buy a birthday present for one of their daughters, back to their village of Nasamiut. After boarding their boat, putting on a lot more layers and lighting their cigarettes (It appears that most men smoke here.), with no lights and no natural light under the cloudy sky, they departed for home. So, our uneventful day had a jolly ending.

The next morning, Saturday, August 16, we pulled up anchor around 10:30 with light winds, calm water, fog and visibility under 100 meters. The skies cleared as we motored along, passing icebergs of all shapes and sizes. With calm air, Enis decided to deploy the drone. Unfortunately, it immediately hit the mast, which was moving at 6 knots with the boat, and ricocheted to the port deck, where Shalako swooped it up before it went overboard. Without spare parts, it is probably beyond repair for now.

The drone's last brief flight

At 2:30, we anchored at the head of Tunulliarfik Fjord, surrounded by waterfalls, steep walls, icebergs and the greenery of the low tundra. Sunlight appeared above us, but we seemed to always have a large circle of fog around us.

Heading up the fjord

Peter at the helm with fog behind us

Shalako and Enis admiring the view from the bow--or posing for a Helly Hansen ad

Iceberg emerging from the fog

View from Mantra at anchor

After lunch, we took the dinghy to the beach at the mouth of a whitewater stream roaring with glacier melt and the previous day's rain. Intent on hiking up to the falls, we started out on river right, with the biggest waterfall high above us on river left. We never found a place to cross, it was sometimes difficult to find the narrow trail created by sheep and their herders, the dense ground cover made it impossible to know how far you would sink with each step, and the sections of scree and talus were challenging, but we managed to hike up beside the gushing blue-tinted whitewater as it tumbled over boulders and rock carrying glacial till. As usual here in the wilderness of Greenland, we were constantly awed by the grandeur of the mountain peaks, the deep U-shaped valleys and, this time, the rushing water of waterfalls and steep streams. At the same time, we stopped often to observe the beautiful and intricate details of the plants, fungi, lichen and mosses. 

Peaks, glaciers, streams and tundra

View of jutting mountain peaks from the beach

Enis and Shalako starting to hike

Enis, Shalako and Peter

Largest waterfall and raging river

Peter with sheep's wool, which we found clinging to bushes along the trail

Sheep's wool caught in the plants

Various shades of green and rust by a small stream

Peter pointing out one of many mushrooms

River carrying glacial till with wildflowers at the water's edge

Stopping for a snack

Starry saxifrage

Wavy hair-grass

Sherri with hundreds of bugs

Shalako sitting on the beach 

From high on the trail, we could see the fjord leading out to the sea and Mantra dwarfed by the icebergs around her.

Mantra among icebergs

Another photo from higher up the trail showing how much bigger the icebergs are

Mantra from the dinghy

Because there is absolutely no source of Diet Coke here in Greenland, I have started to ration to two cans of Diet Coke a day. I had only had one so far that day, so I became fatigued and also frustrated by the unrelenting aura of bugs swarming around my head. The bug hat kept them off my face, but they landed on the mesh less than a centimeter apart from each other, which was disorienting as I tried to find my footing. After tripping a couple times on dwarf tree roots and sliding on loose rock, I had to rest and then slow down on the way back to the dinghy. By the time our hike ended, clouds were appearing in the previously clear blue sky. We had hoped for a chance to see the Northern Lights again, but the clouds were completely obscuring the firmament by the time darkness descended.

Today, we pulled up anchor at 11:40 while the skies were still mostly cloudy and motored down the fjord to the town of Nasamiut, where our dinner guests lived. 

Towing the dinghy down the fjord

A rift in the mountainside

Icebergs at the mouth of the fjord

Nasamiut from Mantra on approach

We anchored close to the rocky shore and took the dinghy to a short floating dock where the small boats that the locals use for fishing, hunting and transportation are usually tied up. The only one there was just leaving as we arrived, which seemed unusual for early afternoon. 

We walked around the small town of a few hundred people and found the winding streets deserted. On a hillside above the road, we encountered a man and a woman smoking meat or fish. They yelled out, "Welcome to Greenland," but we did not actually interact with them. Bicycles and children's toys as well as spare engines and parts were scattered about outside homes. There were a couple of garbage dumps where large, heavy-duty white bags held trash, obviously awaiting the occasional arrival of a boat to haul it away using the small lift at the end of the small concrete wharf beyond the floating dock. 

Common yarrow

Church in Nasamiut

Small beach at Nasamiut

Houses in Nasamiut

The enormous number of swarming bugs could explain why people were inside, but the lack of any local boats on the dock was a puzzle. After we started moving again, we heard a pan-pan (emergency) call on  Aasiaat Radio, which tracks vessels in Greenland water; issues gale, storm and ice information; and maintains distress and safety channels. After the first broadcast, I listened carefully the next time and took notes. A local boat with two men and no GPS or safety equipment and no radio had left Nanortalik yesterday evening at 8 p.m. to return to Nasamiut but had not yet reached their destination. We feared that it might be our two new friends, since they were traveling on that route two nights ago. After several calls to Aasiaat Radio, I was able to confirm that it was not them. But we suspect that all the boats from the town were out searching, and we kept an eye out also.

We returned to Mantra and immediately pulled up anchor at 2:45 p.m, heading further east to another protected cove in Paakitsorsuaq Fjord. There were many large icebergs along the way as we motored under leaden skies.

Icebergs outside of Nasamiut

I was just beginning to write this post a couple hours ago as we were underway, when I was called up on deck. We had found our first seal in Greenland! It was an enormous bearded seal on a drifting piece of ice that allowed us to get quite close before it raised itself up and dove into the water, not to be seen again by us. Bearded seals, which are true (not eared) seals, are one of the largest seals of the Arctic and have a circumpolar distribution. Their heads are small in comparison to their body size, which can be nearly 7 feet in males and slightly longer in females, with males as heavy as 570 pounds and females from 600 to 790 pounds. Their distinctive features are squared-off short fore flippers and a dense array of thick vibrissae (whiskers) on the upper lip, short in the middle and quite long on the sides of the mouth and cheeks. These whiskers are straight when they are wet but noticeably curly when dry. The one we sighted must have come out of the water recently.

Bearded seal with wet vibrissae or whiskers

Bearded seal deciding to depart

Bearded seal diving into the water

To our surprise, we found that another, smaller cruising sailboat was already anchored here. Previously, except in Qaqortoq, there have been no other foreign-flagged sailing vessels. Peter and Enis have just left on the dinghy to say "Hi!" and also try their luck fishing for dinner. At last night's anchorage, Enis and Shalako had set off in the dinghy in quest of arctic char but were unsuccessful.