Friday, September 1, 2023

Denmark Strait - Sailing from Iceland to Greenland

Aug 8 - Denmark Strait

Today we sail across the Denmark Strait towards Greenland, following the same maritime route used by Norse settlers more than 900 years ago.

After breakfast we had a team presentation & mandatory Zodiac meeting. Nothing new for us so we could skip that.

Just before lunch they had a presentation of all of the shore excursions and a port talk on Ammassalik by Bernd. Bernd told us that this is one of the most remote places that few people visit.

Before leaving home we learned that the charter flight had been changed so early that they would have no excursions on our last day of the cruise. This morning they told us that the charter flight now had changed, and they could offer the excursions again. We would need to rebook them as they all had been cancelled in their system. So, the first thing we did after the talk was to hit the shore excursion office to take care of that.

After lunch we had some free time before the lecture at 3:00 called Introduction to Greenland by Dietmar. Then it was Tea Time and another lecture at 5:00 called Introduction to East Greenland by Thilo. (west Greenland is visited much more than the east)

Today we spotted some Humpback, Sei and Sperm Whales! Not great photos, but fun to watch. Sperm and Sei were new for us.








The Sperm Whales blow out the front




Black-legged Kittiwake





Then we had the Captain’s Welcome Cocktail, and he made his speech and introduced everyone. Appetizers came around quickly and plentiful.

Then on to the Captain’s Welcome Dinner. While there was some repetition in the foods (they normally don’t have back to back cruises as most of the season they just do Iceland and then at the end of the season they do one back to back with Greenland followed by one more Greenland (this year’s schedule)), there were some new creations mixed in with the ones we had last cruise.

After dinner Arndis did her set of Icelandic songs which we enjoyed hearing again.

Tonight, we got to set the clocks back another hour to get caught up with Greenland for our first port of Ammassalik tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Big Buddha, Po Lin Monastery & Tai O Fishing Village - Lantau Island, China

Lantau Island, China – February 15 On previous visits we hadn’t gone to Lantau Island so that is what we planned for today. We grabbed the...