Position N66,13.7 x W023,22.28. Wind – just dropped off.
We had a highly successful visit to Isafjordur, no one arrested and no one injured. Siggi and his father were marvelous. Siggi’s father, Jon, gave us a huge chunk of wolf fish to take to sea. That will be our super tonight then a nice fish soup for tomorrow. John caught his plane at 9am this morning and Sumara and Thembi did all those final jobs before finally setting sail at 1130. We will miss John as crew onboard Sumara he has been great fun and a great sailor. I hope Johns Children appreciate the highly inappropriate gifts they have been bought, if he gets them through customs that is.
Now we are chugging along off the North Coast of Iceland. The wind has just died but Thembi have called on VHF to say that the promised NE wind has kicked in and they are making 5.5kts. The weather forecast is good for this area (apart from fog banks) but there are gales a little futher south. There always seem to be gales near the South tip of Greenland. The ice charts are not so promising. The Norwegian one looks good but the Danish one shows a deep band of 6-8/10ths of ice stretching near to Iceland. Sadly Siggi says the Danish ones are nearly always correct because they use actual data from shipping as well as satelites.
We are expecting to meet with the ice edge in about 60 miles, then we will gently feel our way around it to find a possible lead in towards Greenland. It may be too risky to get enclosed by the ice. We will wait and make a decision when we encounter the ice edge. As Dan says “Its going to be fun”.
Finally I was thrilled to receive so many lovely comments on the blog when I managed to get online in Iceland. I am afraid I haven’t been able to respond to everyone with these limited facilities but I will once I get a good connection. Emails are also being read and forwarded appropriately. Thank you all so much!
Sent at 18.23GMT 19th July 2011
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