A Couple of Sea Days and Prince Christian Sound

With our next two days being sea days, we wouldn’t have another port call until we reached Greenland.

Our first big iceberg!

Our first sea day was spent cruising the North Atlantic Ocean and gave us an opportunity to work on the blog, participate in some ship activities, and just relax and take it easy. Day two was spent traversing the Prince Christian Sound, a waterway in Southern Greenland separating the mainland from Samomisoq and other islands in the Cape Farewell Archipelago near the southernmost tip of Greenland.

A blue ceberg

The sound connects the Labrador Sea with the Irminger Sea and is a long fjord system (~60 miles) mostly surrounded by steep mountains that can reach up to 4000 feet with one peak topping out at 7280 feet. Many glaciers go straight to this waterway and calve icebergs.

Just as we were entering the sound, Capt. Larry spotted something long and dark on the surface that was undoubtedly performing a “blow.” Watching it move through the water it appeared to have a dorsal fin and performed two more blows.

A waterfall

While not really sure of its identity, its characteristics seem to be at closely aligned with that of the fin whale. Unfortunately, everything happened so quickly that he wasn’t able to capture a picture.

The scenery immediately changed as soon as we entered the sound with high mountain peaks towering on each side of the ship. It took a few miles of cruising through this beautiful landscape before the novelty started to wear off, but every now and then there would be a breath-taking view that we would have to photograph.

Where the glacier meets the water

We were fortunate that the conditions were good for our transit with clear blue skies and no fog. About one third of the way through the sound we came upon a glacier that came all the way down to the water’s edge. An announcement was made that the captain would do a 180° turn here so that all sides of the ship could see the glacier and get their photographs.

Beautiful rock strata

 

While we were there for about one hour observing the glacier, we didn’t witness any iceberg calving. Moving on, the peaks got even taller, but then a fog settled in. And it was a fog so thick that any further observation was pointless.

Tonight we had reservations at the specialty restaurant featuring Italian cuisine.

Five tall peaks in a row

The food wasn’t particularly noteworthy, but the people that we shared a table with turned out to be really different which made for an interesting evening. After dinner, Jane went to the nightly entertainment which featured a performer paying tribute to rock legend Freddie Mercury.

The fog starts to set in

Capt. Larry went to bed anticipating our first big day in Greenland. We also gained an hour’s more sleep tonight