900 Miles to Greenland

July 3

Currently we sit in St. Anthony’s waiting for a weather window that will allow us to cross the 900 miles to Greenland.  The three components we’re watching are fog, ice and wind, all to be found on weather charts that we can download from the internet.  It’s a bit of a witches brew in that when we get wind from the NW, that tends to dissipate the fog but also drives more ice down from the north.  On the other hand, when the wind blows from the SW it helps drive the ice to shore but also brings in the fog.  So one of the questions we look at is; do we want to be in large ice fields that we can at least see, or less ice that doesn’t become evident until we’re right up on it.?  That’s one of the questions. The other is the wind. Do we sneak out of here on the back of a large high pressure system to try and take advantage of some diminishing breezes and if we do will the developing low right behind it give us more than we bargained for?  In either case there seems to be a component developing on the west side of Greenland which promises to deliver 25 to 30 kts winds out of the north, against a knot and a half north-setting current, which equals our old friend “chop”, big, steep, closely spaced chop. In most cruising situations a boat can simply sit and wait for just the right opening, that’s all part of the profile of casual cruising.  Yet this trip isn’t really about cruising and sight-seeing.  We have a very specific time window for getting into and out of the Passage. If we have to wait too long on this side, the ice in the Passage could very well shut it down before we get there, or worse, while we’re in it.  To say that none of us are feeling this pressure would be a non-truth, to one level or another we’re all aware of the consequences of the timing at hand.  The plan is to leave bright and early tomorrow, the 4th, hopefully we won’t be celebrating with any unplanned bangs or booms.