Words : Mike Keen . Photos : Mike Keen & Arina Kleist
I ’ m no seasoned paddler . Like so many things I wish I ’ d learnt when I was younger , paddling is up there with the guitar . But sadly , time travel hasn ’ t been invented yet , so I ’ m stuck with it . Just before covid , I was off to the Faroes , Iceland and Greenland on a food research book project ; I knew I ’ d have a chance of a paddle and also knew I ’ d regret it if I had to pass due to not knowing what I was doing so I did a day ’ s kayaking course just before I left Suffolk four years ago .
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Words : Mike Keen . Photos : Mike Keen & Arina Kleist
I ’ m no seasoned paddler . Like so many things I wish I ’ d learnt when I was younger , paddling is up there with the guitar . But sadly , time travel hasn ’ t been invented yet , so I ’ m stuck with it . Just before covid , I was off to the Faroes , Iceland and Greenland on a food research book project ; I knew I ’ d have a chance of a paddle and also knew I ’ d regret it if I had to pass due to not knowing what I was doing so I did a day ’ s kayaking course just before I left Suffolk four years ago .
Fast forward three years , and I ’ d spent each summer since that first trip to Greenland cooking , travelling and , yes , kayaking . One of the more unexpected things to be relished in Greenland is the language – super hard to pronounce , let alone understand for a heathen such as myself – the amount of Qs is enough to give a Scrabble player a hot flush . Place names , in particular , sound so cool – Qaqortoq in the far south and Qaanaaq in the far north , for example , and the word kayak comes from the Inuit qajaq – the craft they invented and have been using for millennia .
And so it was , over a couple of beers , a conversation kicked off an expedition idea – Qajaq from Qaqortoq to Qaanaaq . It ’ s got seven Qs in there ! Some back of a beer mat workings out , and a couple of dips into Google gave me the basics – 3,000 kilometres in total , so an average of 30km per day would give me a 100-day expedition . That ’ s doable , I thought , and the rest rolled into place over the next 12 months .
Rolled may be a bit glib – I managed to get most of the equipment sorted by amazing companies – all the clothing and kayak gear from Palm , Scorpio kayak from P & H , tent and bags from Bach , tech gear from Global Telesat Comms . Getting any hard cash for the myriad of other expenses proved particularly difficult , though , and it came down to a crowdfund and smashing a couple of credit cards ( which I ’ m still paying off ).
The plan for the expedition was for it to take around 100 days and for me to leave Qaqortoq in the south of Greenland towards the end of April . Because of sea ice patterns in the south and the north , the paddling had to take place over the summer . To add interest , the weather patterns have been a bit screwy for the past three years , which affects what happens with the sea ice , so I was half expecting things to go awry .
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