While Svalbard is readily navigable and a good introduction to high latitude cruising, the east coast of Greenland is another level of challenge. Above the Arctic Circle, East Greenland is only accessible for a short period of time in the Summer and even this is not necessarily possible every year. The cold coastal current brings ice down from the Arctic Sea and in late July sea ice often extends more than thirty miles into the Denmark Strait. One of the prime destinations is KANGERLUSSUAQ FJORD , only two days motoring from West Iceland, located halfway between Scoresby Sound and Sermilik Fjord. It is the second largest fjord in East Greenland but remains almost completely uncharted. As one crosses the strait there are almost no charted depths, a few lines on the charts where surveys, some very old have been made. It’s true adventure, you are on your own and a long way from help and civilisation. The scenery is magnificent and while the Lemon Mountains to the east have peaks that have been climbed, the entire range to the west is un-named still!

Ashore there are no maps and the best information available are aerial photographs overlaid onto charts of the coast. With care one can attempt this with a glass fibre hull, such as Skycatcher, our old race boat. An aluminium hull might make one more daring, but yes, less cautious. South there are a vast number of fjords where there is less ice left to be explored.

While the east could be said to be somewhat challenging for a glass fibre composite boat, the west of Greenland is an entirely different matter. Rounding Southern Greenland or making passage from Newfoundland needs to be done with care as even in Summer this latitude is directly in the path of Atlantic lows. Once above Nunarsuit Is. at 60N for the most part conditions improve although we were caught in a 50kt + storm in the same area last year. A well-found boat is both necessary on this coast and to transit the North Atlantic at any time. Inshore is mostly ice free, except around the exit of fjords fed by glaciers. Unlike the east, this coast is populated with the occasional small permanent or Summer settlement.

Yachts with shallow draft or a lifting keel can motor for the 200 miles of predominantly sheltered inshore passage through the outer islands to Nuuk. Seamanship still has to be of a high order, although the Danish Hydrographer’s charts appear modern, GPS co-ordinates are unreliable, reefs are charted out of position or are simply not on the chart. It’s not the comfortable cruising of Maine, Scotland or Norway, but it is rewarding. The scenery and fauna are even more spectacular. We arrived from St Anthony, Newfoundland in our 30’ sloop Santana, confident in our ability to adjust our plan day by day. Use the RCCPF as a source of information for good pre-planning.

The Northwest Passage is one of the longest, most challenging and in parts some say the most monotonous of journeys that a smaller yacht can make due to the distances involved. If you manage the passage by small craft, you will join what is still a very short list of people who have achieved that feat. The passage was first completed by the legendary Roald Amundsen in 1906. Many dozens of navigators and explorers failed before him in their pursuit of a new trade route between the east and west; Cabot, Hudson and of course Franklin’s expedition of 1845, to name a few. Even now, the route cannot be traversed some years, most recently in 2018 a yacht that had been advised by Canadian Coastguard not to persist had to be abandoned. There is not one passage, since the ice conditions around the various islands differ from week to week and weather is of course a dominant factor. For the larger, better equipped vessels there is real time data courtesy of the CANADIAN ICE SERVICE . Traversing from east to west, Cambridge Bay on Victoria Is. will likely be the last ‘large’ port of call. After this it is remote, often there will not be another Inuit settlement, vessel, or any human beings for hundreds of miles.

If you’re looking for beauty, solitude, remoteness and thrive on self-reliance then it will be all of that; a very long passage that truly will take a good deal of planning. The most recent (not a pilot) guide to the history and region is Tony Soper’s 2019 book, North West Passage: Atlantic to Pacific.