Sunday, August 31, 2014

Arriving at Sermiligaaq

The flight from Reykjavik to Kulusuk Airport takes around an hour an forty minutes. Just over half way through the flight we began to see the jagged frozen coast of East Greenland. As we got close we could pick out some of the headlands and islands that we would be paddling round in the next 16 days.

When we landed we needed to get to the boat jetty which is around a kilometre walk from the airfield. Each of us were carrying around 30-40 kilograms of equipment and food.

The boat journey to Sermiligaaq took just over 90 minutes. Once we arrived there was no time to hang around. The first job was to get to the shop to buy some extra food. I bought bread, cheese, some tinned fish and as many beers as I though I could cram into an already heavily laden kayak. The second job was to get re-aquainted with the P&H Scorpio that I paddled in the 2012 expedition.

Once we were all loaded up we launched into a misty afternoon and paddled for just after an hour until reaching our first camp. After pitching my tent I went for a short walk around the nearby headland and gazed at the moon rising over the ice laden channel that we would be paddling through next morning. It really felt as though we were about to paddle off the edge of the world.


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