Despite of having completed thousands of nautical miles in Arctic waters aboard our 18-metre yacht “Passage”, in recent years, I always feel a creeping sense of anxiety whenever we set sail for East Greenland. Sailing over the 80th parallel north at Spitzbergen last year, we reflected on the fact that, for a few days, there was no other yacht closer to the North Pole! But the eastern coast of Greenland has a murderous reputation: It is fringed with pack ice and the countless glacier fjords are visited by föhn gales of such intensity that the houses are anchored into the ground with straps. Of a total population of just under 60,000, only 2,000 or 3,000 Greenlanders live in the east in one of two locations: Tasiilaq and Ittoqqortoormiit, with its 450 welcoming souls. The latter even has a supermarket which is regularly restocked – and by that I mean twice a year!

The team

The new team arrives on Saturday. I’ve already met Leonie Schmid und Diane Seda, who are earning their stripes as skipper and first mate. But not the other members of the crew. They pull long faces at the sight of the spartan accommodation typical of a racing yacht, the bunks in which they will have to sleep, stacked above each other like sardines. The “Passage” is no floating salon, it’s an ocean racer, built from strong aluminium in 1989 for the Whitbread Round the World Race – a machine built to defy storms and carry its crew across the oceans of the world as fast – and as safely – as possible.

Women in command

Very few yachts set sail for East Greenland. And to the best of my knowledge we’re the first yacht under female command. I should also point out that, even when their individual ages are added together, Leonie and Diane – at 27 and 28 respectively – are still a good decade younger than me. I’m there to offer advice, and possibly help in an emergency, but not before we are up to our necks in water! Leonie grew up on Lake Zurich – familiar with the family yacht from her earliest childhood, a competitive racer in her teens – and has the sense of the wind in her blood. She starts whooping whenever the wind picks up speed. Diane, daughter of an American father and Iranian mother, grew up in Switzerland. She sailed with us in Norway last year and has just returned from a mission of several months aboard a Norwegian yacht, during which she worked as a researcher and co-skipper.

Through the Denmark Strait

Before setting sail from Reykjavik, we need to take 500 litres of diesel fuel on board for the heating, the generator, the water maker and the engine in case of an extended lull. Plus two carloads of food. For the next few weeks we will have to be completely self-sufficient, a self-contained universe shut inside an 18-metre-long, 5-metre-wide aluminium can. We’ve been at sea for two days now, and have reached 67 degrees north/ 28 degrees west in the middle of the Denmark Strait, when a small but wicked depression approaches from the south-west, forcing us to stop and take shelter along the Icelandic coast.

Reaching the coast of Greenland earlier than planned would have meant catastrophe. 150,000 tonnes of pack ice drift south along the Greenland coast every second. Not forgetting the monstrous chunks which regularly break away from the glaciers and crash into the sea. Propelled by the wind and the waves, the ice would have crushed our yacht like a grain between two millstones. This way, our timing is perfect: When the first icebergs appear against the wild backdrop of the coast of Greenland, the storm which bore us over the Denmark Strait at lightning speed has blown itself out.

Safely anchored

There is only one safe harbour in East Greenland – at Tasiilaq, south-west of our current position. The remainder of the 3,000-kilometre-long coastline is charted unreliably and often incorrectly. Last year, our marine charts showed us sailing miles over land and anchoring against a mountain at an altitude of 80 metres! This time, we only escaped smashing ourselves to pieces against a reef by a whisker. Rising steeply out of the depths to just below the surface, the rock needle was not shown on any of our charts and its white foamy surf was virtually impossible to see amidst the many growlers – the technical term for lumps of ice the size of a car.

Thanks to the watchful eye of the helmsman and the crew’s presence of mind in steering the yacht away from disaster at the very last moment, we escaped unharmed and set a course for a position shown in the current British Nautical Manual where the Seventh Thule Expedition apparently found a sheltered spot to anchor in August 1931. Time has stood still in East Greenland. Next year will see us set sail from Holland for Greenland once again: via Scotland, the Hebrides, the Faeroe Islands and Iceland.