Our sea conditions today were, well, somewhat unexpected as we crossed the infamous Denmark Strait. We have been here before and have encountered very different circumstances in the past. Now, we’ve had beautiful clear blue skies, calm seas, and warm sunshine. In fact, during part of the day we enjoyed glass-like surface conditions. It was fun seeing people out on deck wearing short-sleeved shirts and worrying about sunburn. Someone asked, “Did we make a wrong turn last night? Is this the Caribbean?” However, we knew we were probably in the right place, because the sun rose this morning at 04:00 AM and didn’t set until after 10:00 PM.
This was a good day to start our lecture program. We learned about auks (guillemots, murres, razorbills, extinct giant auks, dovekies, and puffins), the sinking of the German battleship BISMARK during World War II and its recent finding (during the lecture, we crossed over the very spot where HMS HOOD was sunk by BISMARK in May 1941), Greenlandic history (covering Vikings, Inuit, Danes, and modern-day Home Rule), and a recent expedition to East Greenland in 2009.
We were escorted throughout the day by energetic northern fulmars, who seemed to enjoy circling the ship, following over our wake with wide, side-to-side sweeps, and even leading us onwards at times. However, when we sighted a blue whale during lunch and slowly circled the ship almost to a stop, our fulmars grew impatient and just settled onto the water’s surface. The whale spent very little time at the surface, so we only got a few good looks at it, but its immense size was very impressive. Even so, we felt it was a relatively small juvenile specimen (as blue whales go, that is) and as yet, only about two-thirds its potential size. Once we got moving again, the fulmars eagerly took to the wing, amusing us as they skittered over the surface to get airborne.
In the early afternoon, we left Icelandic waters and entered into Greenlandic waters (at the midway point between the two islands), although we couldn’t really sense any change in sea conditions. This evening, Captain Skog hosted us to a Welcome Aboard cocktail party and the excitement was palpable as we talked about reaching Greenland tomorrow.
