Iceberg Straight Ahead, No Port, No Starboard!

We woke up at 6AM this morning (Sunday, 9/2) and this is what we saw in the front and sides of the ship.  Holy Titanic -- where’re the life boats?!

Ah yes, before I get to the icebergs let me tell you about the adventure we had leaving Iceland.  Our ship was due to leave Reykjavik on Thursday night around 10:30PM.  We were in our stateroom getting ready for bed (as you know we are real party hounds, thus the late hour) and we watched out our window as we cast off from the dock. I looked out 10 minutes later and we were back at the dock all tied up again.  The captain came on the PA and said he tried to get off the dock using the side thrusters on the ship and two tug boats but the wind blew us back to the dock.  The wind was blowing a steady 50 miles an hour with higher gusts.  He said the wind was forecasted to blow that strong or stronger the rest of the night and he felt it was too dangerous to attempt another launching that night.  He said we would remain at the dock in Reykjavik until the wind subsided and changed directions, forecasted for the next day.  The winds abated and changed directions late Friday morning and we were able to cast off and head for Greenland, a two-day cruise away.  We were 13 hours behind schedule but with the wind at our backs and the peddle to the metal we arrived in Greenland only 3 hours late!

Now back to the icebergs.  Evidently there are always a lot of icebergs around Greenland.  Wouldn’t you think Iceland and icebergs would go together and green trees and fields with Greenland.  Well they got it bass ackwards.  One day out of the port of Qaqortoq, Greenland an ice pilot from Denmark gave us a presentation on the ice fields and ice flows around Greenland.  He had been a commercial sea captain and had been sailing from Denmark to Greenland for over 40 years.  He was on board to help the captain get our ship through the ice flow to Qaqortoq and back out!  We did learn that there are three types of ice that make up the icebergs in the North Atlantic.  The ice comes from 1. the winter ice from last winter (only about 10 feet thick) 2.  ice from the polar icecap (frozen salt water) and 3. ice from glaciers (frozen fresh water, the hardest type of ice).  Icebergs from polar ice have about 70% of the berg underwater. Glacial icebergs have 90% of their ice under water.  So in the photos above and the additional ones below you are seeing only 10% to 30% of actual size of the icebergs.

The photos do not do justice to these icebergs.  The photo on the bottom right the bergs were taller than our ship!

We tendered into Qaqortoq.  The city has a population of 3.400 and I think our ship  carries more passengers than that.  Plus there was a smallercruise ship already in port before we arrived.  Eighty-five percent of Greenland is covered in ice over two miles thick.  All the settlements are along the coasts of the island (the largest island in the world).  A total of 57 thousand people live on Greenland which is close to the size of Alaska.  Below are some photos of the town.