Day 8 – Departure, an early start:

Waking up at 3:30 in the morning is definitely no fun, but considering that the next five days will be a cruise into the largest accessible fiord system in the world, helps, that it will be on a two mast sailing ship with seven sails, having been totally reconstructed just a year ago. Her name is “Hildur”, and thus sharing name with two of the family members owning North Sailing. Her home base is in Húsavik on Iceland.

On the way to the boat we ran into Ruth a local Nurse, also joining us on this trip into the fiords.

We are greeted on shore by Heimir the Captain of the ship, a proud man and as the rest of the crew probably a very gifted sailor, living of the rough weathered coasts of Iceland tend to make good sailors.

We were introduced to the boat, the company North Sailing and the rest of the crew. All in all the ship and crew made for a very good impression. We had the owners, their parents, and a lot of other seniors from the company on board, including the guy who rebuild the ship.

Our route for day one would take us to Hekla harbour on Denmark Island, with a short stop at Nerlerit Inaat to pick up the senior executives flying in.
As we settled our gear and dressed up in waterproof foul weather gear, we studied the forecast and it was not looking all that good and we prepared for the ride of our life.





Starting out from Ittoqqortoormiit was fairly quiet, but as we neared the side fiord leading up between Liverpool and Jamieson Land, things started to turn to the worse.
Wind picked up to nearly 30 knots coming straight at us and making it an engine trip up fiord.
Waves grew steadily bigger and started to show teeth. The ship handled well though and regularly sent huge sprays of water over the ship soaking everything from the stern to the wheel in the back.

As we reached Nerlerit Inaat things quieted down a bit and we managed to load the people, which gave the rest of us a well needed break from the waves.




As we set out from Nerlerit Inaat things turned from bad to worse. And within 20 miles with the sails up, wind roared from 30 to 40 knots and waves grew huge. It was some very rough ours and quite a lot of seasoned sailors got seasick.

As we reached Milneland Island towards Denmark Island, weather turned from roaring to dead quiet and while still heavily overcast, the water turned to mirror like. It made the sunset we saw close to Viking fiord Nothing short of amazing.

At around 0300 hrs “Hildur cast anchor in Hekla Harbour and everybody hit the bunks.
A very rough and very long day had come to an end and it had been a learning experience for at least a couple of us.