Never Bring a Pocket Knife on a Rubber Boat

By the end of the Lee Cruise, I was starting to go stir crazy. The oceanographers had their buoy releases and retrievals to set a tempo for our slow march at sea. They had daily success and failures, a sense of energy expended and work accomplished to mark the passage of time and set apart each day from the other. Looking at their sleep deprived faces, I knew any objective comparison would find me very lucky to have an automated instrument, but I was bored out of my skull and my motivation had bottomed out.

Typical view

Before leaving, I'd harvested a lot of haphazard advice about combating cabin fever. Go outside (also helps with sea sickness). Work out. Develop a routine. Find some hidden corner of the ship where you can get away.

All excellent tips. But as we approached Nuuk in October for the final time, I was beyond coping strategies. I wanted to be on solid ground. I wanted to be anonymous. I needed things to be easy, surprising and pleasant.

A welcome change in scenery

We finally pulled into the fjord on a clear, sunny and calm afternoon that encouraged a lot of shore watching. We wouldn't dock until later that evening, after we had idled in the harbor for a few hours as the previous occupant of our spot was saddled with engine troubles. I resisted every urge to do a neat swan dive off the bow and swim the few hundred yards to shore.




Once we eventually docked, I teetered off the gangplank before the mates could even secure to the ship and practically skipped up the hill from the shipping yard to downtown. We had nearly a full week on shore ahead of us. Now that Ruth's cruise had wrapped, she was in vacation mode and suggested a few activities for the upcoming weekend to take in the sights. I desperately needed a break from anything research or ship related, so I was eager to tag along.

Nuuk Village

We'd both just read Wild, Cheryl Strayed's memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and were interested in hiking into the foothills outside Nuuk. That Saturday, we took the short bus ride to the other side of Nuuk and tried to find the trail head.

Misty foothills outside Nuuk

After spending half on hour stumbling over slick mossy rocks, we realized we'd missed the trailhead badly. Though, without any trees or shrubbery to obscure our sight lines, we quickly found the trail. Strolling along, there was a peaceful lake and a few bubbling waterfalls. Looking behind us, we could see out past Nuuk into the harbor and many small islands dotted across it. It felt incredible to feel my leg muscles exerting themselves and to breath fresh Arctic air. We stayed in the hills long enough to see the mist layer peel back towards the sea revealing the small, clean fishing village.

Hi Mom

 Though Ruth and I hadn't met in person before the cruise, it was comforting to talk with someone who recognized the details of my life in San Diego especially being so far from home. Because everyone on the boat was so friendly, it was easy to forget that you were living with a group of perfect strangers and the toll that it can take.

As we clambered down back to the bus stop, I noticed no one else on the trail seemed nearly as tired as I was. There were joggers on their easy weekend trail runs or families on their post-breakfast strolls. Everyone was either the blond offspring of meaty Scandinavian explorers or the ruddy descendants of native Greenlanders. Even the children in their impossibly cute one-piece snow suits sprung over the rocks and moss with surprising ease.

As several more adorable, fluorescent marshmallows toddled past me, I chuckled at my earlier eagerness. Then, remembering that I got to have a beer for my troubles, I cheered up considerably.

Why are all fjords so beautiful? 

Ruth (SIO) and Sofia (LDEO)

That evening several of us went out for a memorable night at the local Greenlandic brewery. Over the course of the night, Ruth managed to convince the crew to take us out on a liferaft for a free tour of the fjord. Luckily they remembered their promises on Sunday morning. Sofia, another friend had just arrived for the next leg of HiWinGs and her cameras had been in place since Woods Hole, so the three of us all gathered in the main lab to don Mustang survival suits for a bone-chilling, breathtaking ride into the fjord.

The waves in the fjord weren't outrageously big but choppy enough to make it a white knuckled ride in the small Zodiac liferaft. Despite the freezing cold, it was pleasing to go very fast in a vessel for a change. The Knorr is large and slow, designed to weather storms and deploy large scientific instruments. This makes it the nautical equivalent of a pick up truck. The Zodiac was more like a sporty motorcycle, both in terms of speed, lack of comfort and exposure to the elements.

Shipwreck!
The owner paid $1 for the ship but still managed to skimp on a proper
mooring and lost it in the first storm of the season.

We spent several hours jetting around the fjord exploring a local shipwreck, small icebergs and soaking in once in a lifetime views. Sitting in the front of the raft, Ruth had inadvertently volunteered herself as iceberg sample collector.

All of us were frozen solid at this point and our hands were barely functional. Paul extended the unsheathed blade towards Ruth. At the last moment, he stopped with the knife outstretched over Ruth's open palm, to remind us that if anyone dropped the knife, it'd likely puncture our raft and sink us within minutes. We nodded and Ruth stoically accepted the pocketknife. Paul inched us closer to the icebergs to have a better angle, the thin rubber layer grating against the rough surface, and Ruth started hacking away.

Unfortunately, in all the formality of the moment, she forgot that someone also needed to catch the ice after it'd been knocked loose and her sample promptly fell to the bottom of the fjord. We tried again, this time successfully grabbing a few hunks of ice. Ruth gingerly returned the knife and I realized I'd been holding my breath for the last two minutes. We zipped back to the Knorr, eager for the familiar comforts of hot chocolate in the mess deck and perhaps even the fiery heat of the engine room. The little tour reminded me how safe the ship had kept us for the past month and how extraordinary the conditions we sought were, in the overall scheme of things.

Nuuk shipyard

I felt refreshed and human again. A feeling I prayed would stay with me well into the next and longest leg of our journey.

I spent the rest of my time in Nuuk writing postcards, catching up on a backlog of Internet cat videos and tried to set a record for consecutive meals eaten at the local Thai restaurant. The rest of the HiWinGs team soon arrived with their instruments and supplies to get ready for our five week journey in the North Atlantic.