All the Way to Narsarsuaq

Today's goal was to fly from Goose Bay to Narsarsuaq, Greenland. This one entails wearing survival suits, emergency life raft on standby. Total flight time was scheduled to be 4.5 hours, including 4 hours over freezing arctic waters of Davis Straight.

Goose Bay was high 30's and cold and rainy.

We met Peter from New Zealand who was going to follow us by several days in a Cessna 172, waiting until the weather improved. We also met Marcus and his colleague who were flying at P210 to Narsarsuaq and also waiting out the weather due to possible icing. We were icing equipped and so offered to play the role of wind dummies and check it out.

We got weather, analyzed the weather, prepared survival gear, got the life raft ready, packed the plane, water bottles ready to go, only to find when we checked the fuel tanks that two of them were still empty! Just then a commuter plane pulled in who got the exclusive attention of all of the fuel operators. If you arrive in Greenland after 4:45 pm you get to pay an extra $1000 for the privilege of keeping the airport open. At this point we were pushing the time window and had to encourage the FBO to fill our tanks in a timely manner.

We had to put the survival suits on in the terminal and crawl out to the plane.We called up clearance saying we're IFR to Narsarsuaq and would like to copy our clearance, filed hours before, only to be told that they had to call up Gander to get it. At this point our motors were running and we were burning precious fuel. Twelve minutes later we offered to get our clearance airborne and were told "NEGATIVE!" As we were asking ourselves "What does that mean?" we finally got the impression that meant he was on the phone to Gander and would have our clearance. After 20 minutes of delay we were finally cleared for takeoff. If Goose Bay had to handle more than one IFR aircraft at a time we're not sure how they would do it.

We took off, climbing out to 21,000 feet, with low level headwinds and higher tailwinds. We had +2C temperatures all the way up to 10,000 feet. We picked up some ice from 11,000 to 16,000 feet, whereupon our pitot heat failed causing our IAS to drop to zero. Still, we were showing 200 knots ground speed and a good tailwind. All systems were operating normally, made hourly reports in to Gander, using satellite phone links where VHF was out of range. Every hour on the hour we reported "ops normal" and also gave position reports at required waypoints at the edges of controlled airspace.

Happy campers at FL210, over Davis Straights 300 nmi from the nearest land packed to the gills.

Given higher ceilings at Narsarsuaq, we decided to go for a low level visual approach. The WW2 Army Air Corps were nice enough to provide us with an oceanic NDB radio beacon at the mouth of the fjord leading up to Narsarsuaq (SI). We homed in on this as we commenced a rapid descent from 21,000 feet to 500 ft over the fjord.

We broke out of the clouds at 4,000 feet and an sea full of icebergs greeted us.

The start of the 50 mile Fjord up to Narsarsuaq.

Sculpted iceberg

cracking iceberg, a sign of global warming?

swimming pool anyone?

the scenic town of Narsaq (watch the power lines!)

The view on the way in.

Iceberg factory.

icebergs on final approach, glacier on go-around (watch your climb angle!)

There's a cowboy in Greenland!

Our trusty steed turned in to her stable for the night.

Cheated death once again, the two boys celebrate their achievement. We enjoyed a delicious dinner of whale steaks, reindeer filet, two kinds of caviar, wonderfully smoked halibut, shrimp, bacapple berries and a bunch of other tasty morsels that we really couldn't identify.The water is so delicious that we're thinking of hiring an oil tanker to bring it back and bottle it in the states! Tomorrow is the most dangerous part of our trip yet, as we venture forth in two kayaks to reach the home of Erik the Red.have to paddle 4 km across a iceberg-laden fjord in 30 degree water in two kayaks and we'll try to visit the first Viking establishment in North America, 500 years before Columbus was born.Stay tuned for more adventures.