Day 130. Thursday 30th July 2026
Confidence rating: We got here! But getting back 8/10
When we arrived there were no other boats, not even fishing boats. Then a fast fishing boat arrived and was immediately hauled out. It reminded me of the ferry to Fair Isle which hauls out on arrival due to the unprotected harbour. It was a bit unnerving but all seemed fairly calm and our anchor dug in at 9m so we decided we would be good for the night and opened a bottle wine and put on the cabin heater to celebrate the momentous occassion.
Early in the following morning Reindeer arrived. We had met them in Husavik and although limited in time they decided to make a break for Greenland via Grimsey. It was nice to have top quality company!
As you can see there was no sea ice but the occassional bergs came drifting by to entertain us.
We had all the usual tasks to complete: Pump up the dinghy, find water and diesel, clean the waterline, and find Mette to hire a rifle.
Although the settlement is apparently polar bear free (but the school playground had very robust fencing!) it is strongly advised to carry a rifle when going ashore anywhere out of town.
I had to sell my lovely H&H .375 calibre rifle because the Faroes authorities wouldn’t permit me to enter with it onboard. The rifle we have hired is of less calibre and 80 years old. We will test it when we arrive somewhere suitable and hope it works.
It is poor form to provision in these remote places. The population of the settlement is about 350. The large shop here had 50% empty shelves. No vegetables, fruit, butter or cheese. They were waiting for the next ship to arrive. They only get two ships a year. We bought some ice creams because it was so wierdly hot, almost 19 degrees!
In the afternoon, I changed the tube stack on my Beta 16 engine in the forlorn hope it would help to stop the overheating issue. Given a choice, I would choose a raw water cooled engine, solidly mounted with rod controls but these old fashioned things dont seem to exist anymore so I now need to fathom out why this heat exchanger engine suddenly boils all the coolant and spurts it out of the engine with alarms sounding. Ideas welcome, but we have gone through the usual culprits.
There was a mad scramble to clear up the boat after all the engine work because we had invited Reindeer aboard for a drink.
Today we will set off up the fjord towards Hekla Havn, maybe anchoring in Viking bukta en route but the ice charts are indicating that might not be possible. Hekla Havn is about 100nm up the fjord. This place is massive!
We are one of the few yachts without Starlink and we can’t get the sat phone to download grib files, so once we leave the only settlement we will be out of contact for a few weeks with no weather or ice infornation, just like Mr Scoresby himself.
I had better get the kettle on and then get on with some serious exploring!
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