The following article will be written in English for the better understanding for our friends from the SV Northabout. The Northabout is a british aluminium boat built for expeditions in the Arctic waters. It has already done the North-East and the North-West Passages and has recently crossed Greenland’s 80° by sailing along the westcoast. It is skippered at the moment by Mike whom Uli and Astrid met in Nuuk and with whom they made an appointment back then to meet again down at Kap Farvel shortly before leaving Greenland as they wanted to leave towards Ireland at the same time as we wanted to depart back to Germany.
We had been messaging with Mike during the last weeks and he wanted to leave towards Kap Farvel soon to meet us around the 24th of August for the promised Beach Party. Luckily Mike had a stop in Qaqortoq so we were able to order some groceries. We calculated the use of some things quite wrong – such as Coconutmilk and Chillipowder and especially butter which was needed in a huge amount due to our massive production of Angelica butter– and we were urgently in need of a new back up battery as one of our batteries broke down.
As Mike messaged us on 22nd that he would be now leaving Narsaq we didn’t expect him to arrive before Friday. While our climbers reached the summit in the early evening on Thursday and were looking down the Fjord they were able to see a surprising situation: a boat approaching LUNA’s place which seemed familiar to Astrid. It was then that she called back Uli to spread the news that the Northabout must have been racing during the last 24 hours to reach LUNA as fast as possible and that she was now approaching the bay. Shortly afterwards (with enough time to clean up the boat as Uli and Eshana were just messing around with dandelion and Angelica which they had collected earlier that day) the Northabout went alongside the LUNA and Uli and Eshana got to meet Rupert and Graham who were the Crew next to Mike for the Crossing.  They were invited over for dinner and spent a nice evening in excellent company on the Northabout while they were waiting for the climbers to return safely from the mountain. As Uli actually promised to catch some Arctic Char for the meeting and was quite unlucky with her plan up to now, Mike decided to bring out the net to increase the possibility of having grilled fish for the next day. Fortunately, a couple of hours later there were already two fishes in the net and when Astrid and Uli went to take out the net the next morning it turned out that we did not only have enough fish for everybody for a great dinner but that we were lucky and caught an Arctic Char! As the weather forecast looked good to start a crossing early on Saturday morning it was planned to sail over to Augpilagtoq on Friday to drop Gunther and Gunter and to have our beach party over there. But as it happens quite often the weather did not take notice of our plan and decided to come up with some strong wind up to 40 kn on Friday which forced us to return to LUNA’s place shortly after leaving it.
We therefore decided to invite our friends over for dinner. Astrid and Carola wanted to pick up some dandelion and a few more mushrooms and were accompanied by Graham and Rupert who had a hard time to reach the LUNA. As Graham told us later on he had the impression to be blown out into the fjord and off to the weather station in Prins Christian Sund. Finally they managed, by paddling around the whole bay and reached LUNA with a downwind drift finish. We then put on our outboard engine to make water taxi service easier.
Instead of the beach party we expected our guest early in the evening on board LUNA and served grilled trout and Arctic Char. Which was as Gunther said the best fish he had ever eaten. We finished our dinner with pudding desert and a little sip of Whiskey and said goodbye to our dear friends. Early next morning we took back our outboard engine and waved goodbye, as NORTHABOUT was lifting it’s anchor for an early departure. Although we had hoped to catch up with our best racing skills, we did no manage. After dropping off Gunther and Gunter in Augpilatoq, we went down Prins Christian Sund. The weather had settled down, sun came out and we had a wonderful last day in Greenland. We really hope to meet again soon the crew of NORTHABOUT, maybe in Irland or other place in the world and we wish them a safe passage.
(Eshana, 25. August)