Cosmic support

Fri 19 July 13: Lord of the Rings: Greenland version

An update from Tom at about 2240 off Greenland: As I write this we’re a mere 20 miles from the Horn of Upernivik Island, a face which has taken on almost mythical proportions in our imaginations while we’ve been travelling over 4000 miles to get there. We’ve just rounded a corner and spotted the entrance to the fjord that will lead us there – ETA is four hours. The psyche onboard is tangible: none of us have had much sleep in the last 24 hours. I’ve been non-stop faffing to get everything ready, contingency plans, comms, rendezvous arrangements, beta, cameras, packing… All four of us climbers are keying ourselves up and occasionally stopping to cackle manically at the looming walls, mountains and glaciers that are appearing out of the clag. What if it’s too hard for us? What if it’s covered in ice? What if it’s not actually there at all?

The British weather has come to Greenland, drizzle and thick fog are the order of the day. In a way it’s a good thing because it gives us an excuse to establish a base camp and sleep properly while it clears up. For some it’ll be the first proper bit of sleep in days. With only half as many useable bunks onboard as there are people, we’ve been doing 4h on, 4h off, a very disorienting routine in 24h daylight. We’re due to arrive at the Horn at 2am, but times of day don’t seem to mean much any more.

The landscape conjures up the heavy brass and drum themes of the Lord of the Rings films. We’re pretty sure there aren’t goblins in the mountains, but that’s about as much as we’re prepared to commit to. We’re not even totally sure about that. Only about 10 people have actually set foot on this 1200m face and none has got to the top. This is now.

Sat 20 July 13: The climbers are ashore!

74 days and 4,421 nautical miles after first setting out from Chicago we successfully achieved our first objective – landing the climbing team ashore at the Horns of Upernivik.

Shortly after midnight, Cosmic Dancer was to be seen carefully  threading her way through the icebergs guarding the entrance to the Pakavsa, the narrow fjord that separates the Horn of Upernivik from the mainland. Ahead of us an amphitheatre of jagged glacier clad peaks opened up on all sides, with the sheer rock face that forms the Horns of Upernivik presiding over them all at the head of the fjord. It was both awe inspiring and intimidating at the same time.

Entering Pakavsa, Sat 20 July

At first the climbers were like kids in a toy shop at Christmas, excitedly enthusing about the seemingly endless range of climbing “goodies” that surrounded them on all sides! However, this was soon replaced by a more solemn, contemplative mood as the full enormity of the challenge lying ahead of them slowly but surely revealed itself.

A couple of hours were spent motoring around the Horn, observing it from all sides, whilst they eyed up and discussed the relative merits of various lines up the face and possible routes down.  Eventually the time for talking came to an end, a decision was made as to the best landing spot, and the task of ferrying the team and their equipment ashore started.

By 0400 the job was done. With depths of up to 500 metres in the centre of the fjord, and still over 50 metres deep within stepping distance of the shore, there was nowhere for Cosmic Dancer to anchor. It was time for the climbing and sailing parties to go their separate ways.  Clive and Angela headed back 20 miles south to the closest safe ice free anchorage on the small islet of Qeqarat, leaving the climbers to set up a base camp perched precariously on the steep scree slope that lies at the foot of the Horn.

Ian, Jacob, Tom & Peter, with the Horns of Upernivik behind, 20 July

The first planned rendezvous with the climbing team is in 96 hours time when Cosmic Dancer will return to the Horn. If the climbers have succeeded in reaching the summit by that time, we’ll pick them up and move on to a new challenge. If not they will be resupplied with food and we’ll return in a further 96 hours for a second rendezvous.

As those of us left on Cosmic Dancer do battle with the voracious mosquitoes on Qeqarat, we wish the climbers all the best on the Horn and hope that we will have good news to report in 96 hours time.

Relieved sailors! Clive & Angela, 20 July

Postscript: In the past 12 hours we have found a novel use for the high/low wind speed alarm on our new chart plotter. If the wind is blowing above 10 knots we know it’s safe to open the hatches and sit on deck. However as soon as it drops below this level, the alarm sounds, we batten down the hatches and seek refuge behind the mosquito nets that guard the companionway before the little blighters can get to us!!

Sun 21 July 13: Summer reaches Upernivik

Clive writes on Sun 21 July: The 36 hours since we dropped the climbers ashore have seen us enjoying some stunning weather and scenery. They couldn’t have had a better start for their climb, and the forecast suggests this will continue for at least the next few days. After the at best indifferent weather of the past six weeks this has been a fantastically welcome break.

While the climbers have been doing their thing on the rock, we have taken advantage of the perfect weather to explore Uummannaq Fjord. Our first stop was on the wonderfully isolated island of Qeqertat, where the only thing to disturb the peace was the occasional thunderous crack as yet another iceberg outside the anchorage broke up and collapsed into the sea.

From Qeqertat we headed north east to scout out some possible future climbing opportunities on the Alfred Wegener peninsula, before turning south to Uvkusigssat where we are currently anchored off a small fishing settlement. En route we simply couldn’t resist pulling alongside a passing iceberg and chipping off some thousand year old ice for the evening G&T – there have to be some advantages to going sailing in the arctic!

The only thing to disturb the peace tonight as we lie at anchor is the occasional sound of the many husky sledge dogs ashore breaking into a barking frenzy – this really is a world apart.

View from the anchorage at Uvkusigssat, Sun 21 July

Fri 26 July 13: Engine gremlins

Clive writes on Friday 26th about some recent difficulties: It was only 3 days ago that everything was rosy in the Cosmic Dancer garden. We had successfully dropped the climbers off at their primary objective, the weather had at long last given us a break, and we had just enjoyed two days of relaxed cruising in some of the most stunning scenery in the world.

However, as we are rapidly coming to realise, in Greenland nothing runs according to plan for long and there is always something lurking round the corner just when you least expect it. In this case the “something” turned out to be a mechanical problem combined with an unavoidable truism that is sailing in Greenland,  namely that a “good” sailing wind is about as rare as hens teeth. There is either no wind at all, or there is too much wind, and if the latter, it will invariably be blowing from the direction you least want it to.  This time it was the former.

We had just set out from Uummannaq on a blissfully calm windless Tuesday evening for what we thought would be a relaxing, straightforward 8 hour trip under motor for the first of the planned RVs with the climbers. We were two hours into the passage when somehow something didn’t sound “quite right” with the engine. We opened the engine cover to find a big black pool of engine oil oozing into the bilges. The source wasn’t immediately apparent but it was enough to warrant shutting down the engine.

Other than the oil, there was no immediately apparent fault. The engine was still running, but the question was for how long? Was a bearing starting to fail and had damaged an O ring somewhere, or was it just a leaking gasket? Should we continue for a further 6 hours to make the RV and head into an ice-filled, totally windless, slab-sided fjord where we would be in real difficulties if the engine did fail altogether, or should we turn back and try and get it fixed in Uummannaq?

It was a tough call but in the end it was the knowledge that Tom, Peter, Ian and Jacob had enough food and fuel to last at least 4 days beyond our planned RV that tipped the balance. With little or no wind forecast for the foreseeable future, we concluded it wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest for us to risk getting stranded without a working engine far from any help and still miles away from the Horns. If we got back to Uummannaq, even if we couldn’t get the engine repaired,  at least we’d be able to arrange a pick up using a local fishing or seal hunting boat.

The decision was made. We reversed course and nursing the engine, slowly crawled back. At 0500 on Wednesday morning we finally dropped anchor in the harbour, exhausted, but relieved to have got there without further mishap. However, if ever for one moment we dared think that having got to a safe harbour our problems were over, then we were in for a disappointment.  The 48 hours we spent in Uummannaq were in their own way just as tiring and stressful as anything we weathered at sea – but that’s a story for another day. For the moment, suffice to say we have an engine that still moves us forward (providing we feed it with enough oil!!) and we are now en route to pick up the climbers from the Horn.

We’ve had a couple of snatched conversations with them over the satellite phone in recent days, but even that hasn’t been easy.  With sheer cliffs surrounding them on all sides, they only have “visibility” of a satellite when it is directly overhead, and that only happens for 15-20 seconds every 5 minutes or so, leading to some very interrupted and disjointed calls. We managed to establish that they wanted to delay the pick-up up time by a further 60 hours because they were “close” to summiting, but will have to wait until tomorrow to find out whether they were ultimately successful. Fingers crossed and hopefully we’ll have another occasion to “splice the mainbrace” on board when we all meet up!

Sat 27 July 13: Horn success

We have established two new routes on the huge main face of the Horn of Upernivik. “Cosmic Rave” E6 6a, c. 1000m (Jacob Cook & Ian Faulkner) and “Choss, the Universe and Everything” E2 5c/XS, c. 1200m (Peter Hill & Tom Codrington).

Peter on Choss, the Universe & Everything, Mon 22 July

Tom & Peter, Mon 22 July

Ian on Cosmic Rave, Thurs 25 July

Guess where? Ian & Jacob, Thurs 25 July

Jacob and Ian spent two days fixing lines up the first 400m of Cosmic Rave following the line of an attempt by George Ullrich & Matt Burdekin in 2010. They then went from base camp to the top of the fixed lines, all the way to the top and back down in a single alpine style push which took more than 30 hours.

Tom and Peter set off for a gentle bimble up one of the faces, expecting to be shut down by a forbidding overlap at 400m. After 42 hours they limped back to base camp having found secret (and occasionally loose) ways round every difficulty up the face and climbed the entire ridge above the face as well. The pair managed only a couple of hours’ sleep during their push.

We are now all back on-board Cosmic Dancer and sailing around looking for the next challenge. More to follow.

Mon 29 July 13: From the Horn to Uummannaq

Clive writes: After a pickup which took about 8 hours to complete, we set sail from the Horn around midnight on Saturday with a forecast wind of around 5-10 knots, fully expecting to be in Uummannaq by dawn. Within two hours we found ourselves beating into an easterly gale which sprung out of nowhere. We headed for shelter in Qeqertat, a place described in the pilot as “a totally secure and sheltered” anchorage, and the only one in a region notable for its lack of such places. Despite the description in the pilot, within two minutes of anchoring there we found ourselves dragging rapidly onto the opposite shore of the bay! A second attempt at anchoring in a narrow passage between the two islands proved more successful, but hardly relaxing, as we had to be at the ready to move within seconds lest the anchor should drag a second time.

By midday Sunday the storm had blown itself out and we were able to continue on. During this whole episode Tom, Peter, Ian & Jacob achieved another remarkable “first” – something that I have never experienced in over 40 years of sailing – they all managed to sleep through the entire gale!  It was only when we were about an hour out from Uummannaq, in what were by then mirror calm conditions, that Peter finally woke up and announced his return to the world of the living with the words “That was a great sleep, but I had this strange dream that we were in a gale last night”!

We made it to Uummannaq with about 2 hours to spare before the Irish yacht “Killary Flyer” departed on the long trip home, just enough time for our climbers to swap stories with theirs and buy some ropes off them to replace the ones that had been damaged on the Horn.

There is a deep depression forecast to cross the area within the next 24 hours, bringing with it 3 or 4 days of continuous rain and fresh to strong easterly winds. As we have already discovered Uummannaq is not a place to be when the wind blows from the east, so Cosmic Dancer will find a safer and more sheltered anchorage either on Ikerasak or Drygalskis Halvo. The climbers are setting up a base camp behind the small settlement, close to the sheer rock faces of the impressive mountain which constitutes 90% of the island’s area. The plan is for Cosmic Dancer to return to Uummannaq once the weather system has blown through, which should be on Friday afternoon. The nearby islands of Alfred Wegener Halvo, Agpat and Storoen all sport some impressive rock walls and buttresses, but the weather and rock conditions will ultimately determine which ones might be achievable when approaching from seaward.