PADDLER
“ When I encountered serious sea ice , the only option was to stick to the land and drag Scorp a few kilometres until the ice thinned out .”
PADDLER
44
Drawing on my background as a chef ,
and very much into natural cooking and preservation , I ’ d decided to eat only a traditional Inuit diet for the duration of the expedition – so pretty much only sea mammals , muskox , reindeer and fish . I give talks and demonstrations on fermentation and the wilder end of cooking . I also have a keen interest in how humans have evolved with food in different regions of the world – as part of that journey ; I had a great network of microbiologists and other experts . I managed to get some in-depth medical tests done through Tim Spector at St Thomas ’ Hospital in London just before I left and the same ones on my return .
In addition , I was to send samples of my gut microbiome ( through the medium of poo ) before , during and after the expedition to a team of microbiologists to measure how my gut and body were reacting to the diet .
THICK SEA ICE
Straight away , the weather and ice started acting up – the ship carrying my kayak couldn ’ t get through the unseasonably thick sea ice in the south , and it was delayed by about eight days . By that time of year ( late April ), the wind has usually blown any remaining sea ice way out towards Canada .
Having been so tight on money , I couldn ’ t afford to spend any downtime and the extra accommodation costs , so I got down to Nanortalik ( even further south ) and worked on a building site for a week while waiting for the ship to get through .
Eventually , Scorp was delivered , and we reunited ( my craft is a P & H Scorpio MK2 , MV , imaginatively named Scorp and gender unspecific , hence the ‘ it ’). And I found myself at the quayside in Qaqortoq on a cloudy and cold day in late April , all togged up and scorp waiting patiently for me to get going . The national news had featured me the evening before , and seemingly half of the town of 3,000 souls had come to say farewell .
FACEBOOK USER PERCENTAGES
With the population of Greenland at around 57,000 people – the entire populace could comfortably fit inside Wembley stadium – and spread over a landmass the size of Europe , their relative isolation means that modern comms are used to their full advantage . Not only do most people watch the nightly news , but the country is number three in the world in terms of Facebook user percentages ; this would come in handy for me as I progressed with communities posting updates on social media and following me closely on the tracker map on my website .
The harbour resounded to the sounds of beeping cars and flag-waving , cheering schoolkids . I thankfully managed to get in without capsizing and gracefully paddled out of the harbour , swung west into the fjord and headed in the general direction of Canada . After just a few hundred yards , the crowds and noise of the harbour died away , and I was truly alone at last . I remember feeling that the adventure had finally started , and a shiver of trepidation washed over me briefly before the metronomic monotony of the paddling kicked in as my thoughts turned to the map and where my first night would see me .
The fjord was calm , with not much of a breeze , and I made good progress through the sea-ice laden waters – visibility was good , and I could pick my course through the ice from a fair distance away . Well broken sea ice is not as imposing as icebergs and , with it being frozen sea ( as opposed to great hunks that have calved from a glacier ) means it ’ s a lot lower and closer to the surface of the water – that being said , I did have to about-turn and find a clearer path several times – going closer to the land invariably worked . A lot further north , when I encountered serious sea ice , the only option was to stick to the land and drag Scorp a few kilometres until the ice thinned out .
CHECKING THE SATELLITE PHOTOS
I ’ d had a couple of Danish old timers knowingly shake their heads , roll their eyes at each other and recommend that I start a few hundred kilometres further north as they didn ’ t think the ice was passable . I ’ d done some homework , though , and had been regularly checking the satellite photos from the Danish Meteorological chaps , which showed that the heaviest ice was in the first 50km . So , I was pretty happy to have knocked out 36km on the first day without too much hassle .
I ’ d never done an overnight camp with a kayak before , and even though I ’ d done plenty of camping , that was a fair few years ago . One of my concerns pre-expedition was whether there would be many camping opportunities – on my previous visits , I ’ d travelled in a few fjords where the mountains just descended steeply into the water with no chance of landing , let alone setting up a tent . So I was pretty happy to find a potential site at the end of a headland sometime around 1700hrs .
“ When I encountered serious sea ice , the only option was to stick to the land and drag Scorp a few kilometres until the ice thinned out .”