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Greenland has given us the extreme beauty to match the extreme hardship, days of unimaginable senses which  have beguiled each of us. For me, the overall impression left from this expedition is a sense of awesome power; the power to shift a warm undersea river of water north that would take 100,000 nuclear power stations to generate, the power of wind and sea forces, the power of ice, how it shapes, melts and threatens. There is no human repost for this scale of activity, we have only just managed to witness and survive. We now know without doubt that our human activity and waste in the form of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is destabilising the status quo of the planetary systems – we are blindly stirring a hornets nest with our self obsession and greed and it is getting angry.

Here in the Arctic the temperatures are up 6 degrees Centigrade, weather patterns worldwide are destabilised: witness the floods in the UK, more violent hurricanes, drought in parts of the USA and Australia and recently a solid month of rainfall fell south of the Sahara from Ethiopia to Senegal. Each event on it’s own can be explained as a freak event but this is a pattern of events predicted as a consequence of our heating planet. The changes of climate will increase and become more unstable. If we have learnt anything on this expedition it is that the forces that will be released against us will not be manageable.

And then the magic rides in. We have not seen another human or even a trace of human endeavour for 17 days, we have been beyond any safety net, we have depended on our own resources and have engaged and become overwhelmed by the shear magic of bears, ice, light, emotions and our own shared company. Not totally true – we did manage to get close enough to civilisation to get Brian picked up by helicopter, satellites have fed us with information of position and weather and we have communicated using high tech devices. Escaping is not a desire but I am motivated to try to retain what we stand to lose. Small adjustments to our expectations of what defines our individual lives could achieve new technologies and ways of living that are sustainable.

Somehow embracing this change seems more fun and fulfilling than the status quo of more need, more aggression, more tension. I am doing what we all have agreed is futile – preaching. During this expedition we have all been inspired artistically, new works are in embryonic form and now we need to refine them, get them out into the public domain and hopefully engage, illuminate and inspire.
David Buckland

We had to force our way out as new ice arrived from the sea into Barclay Sund – it felt quite desperate for a while as we pushed ice flows half the size of the boat out of the way. We headed south to a less ice strewn Sund, a following northerly that rocked and rolled and after four hours we could ease our way in to calm and a shore landing. Both Aminatou and Liam had prepared new music so the afternoon was spent recording two videos from the snow landscape overlooking the most awesome landscape and Hollywood lighting. Liam’s song he had only just finished writing, great music and it looks great in the camera, we should be able to put it on the web next week. We are having trouble sending his last song, 12mb via satellite is not easy this far north. We try again this morning.

The evening was spent projecting texts by myself and Ami onto an Ice Berg, which was the most beautiful one we have found yet. Magic. Finally we motored to our haven of rest for the night only to witness the most amazing northern light display that went on all night. The fiord was also freezing but this morning we are thankful not locked in ice. All that not bad for one day, everyone exhausted and elated.

Today a morning of activity before we head out to sea and head for Iceland across the Denmark Straight. 40 mile an hour winds from the North – easy!

The first sight of Greenland, a moonlit cloud bank over the distant shadow of land.

Time has this odd circulate quality; I think it was 48 hours ago that expectations of land were high, on a course of west-southwest from Spitsbergen. We had received an ice report that maybe, just maybe, it would be clear of ice to enter Scorsby. A direct course was set and the wind; force five, from the north increasing to force 7 later, snow and poor visibility. We had been warned.

60 miles out and ice flows were sighted on the starboard bow, expected and no threat – we continued our course. 40 miles from Scorsby we are force by the ice flows to change course to south, the ice flow appears to be 2000 meters across, the wind is now force 7 and sleet/snow blows horizontal through the rigging. We are on a number three jig and speed is 7-8 knots. The air temperature is -2 degrees C. By 2 pm we again change course to south east followed shortly by east south east, the ice has now become an alarming lee shore in a force 7 driving wind, still on number 3 jib, holding course and 5 knots – searching for a brake in the ice.

4 pm, the oceanographers perform a probe, the results are exciting showing the south drifting Greenland current 60m below the Noorderlicht. More alarming is the surface temperature, -1.5 degrees C. Simon and I confer, we have an ancient mariners worse fear, we appear ringed by ice with no clear passage out, at minus 2 degrees C the sea freezes en block and a winter lock-in of the boat could begin. We are now heading east-northeast back to Spitsbergen, the wind has moderated to force five but night is approaching. The radar shows maybe a break in the ice [at force six with breaking waves the radar cannot decipher between them and ice chunks the size of busses]. We are now northeast and after 80 miles of sailing in horrendous conditions we are within 8 miles of our original position 20 hours earlier. At 1am we can eventually break from our ring of ice, muscling through the ice, then head south east then south, the winds is nothing, the seas calm and the moon shines through cloud layers. It is now a beautiful arctic night and the gods play with our emotions.

Midday, 30 hours in, the wind again freshens from the north and we set schooner sail and number 3 jib, we keep the ice flows to starboard with occasional traverses through weak lines of ice flow. Six pm, force 8 from the north, ice chunks have broken loose and there is a 40-minute struggle to bring in the sails, thrashing canvas and widow maker rope blocks. Motoring now in cross seas through ice strewn seas keeping the ice flow to starboard, wind spin drift crosses the seas, the ice watch shouts ancient cries of “Ice to Starboard”: “Ice to Port” – we continue as night falls, now heading due west towards what we are now convinced is a mythical place -Greenland. There is metaphor to our passage and we speculate on the plight of endless climate refugees as they struggle to find a secure place, our wanderings enable us to empathise.
6am and I have just come off watch, moonlight, northerly force 2, we continue our dance with ice flows which give off unearthly light shadows into the night sky. The mountains of Greenland are visible directly ahead and light fall at 9am should see us enter a promised fiord of calm and a place for us to settle and work. We have completed a 7-day, 800-mile sea crossing in a 100-year-old schooner in the high arctic between the 78 and 72 parallel north in late September – for any sailor this can be notched up as a major achievement. We have carried out a major oceanographic tract, few of us on board had sailed before, and yes, this is a front line of climate change. The raw power of ‘nature’ is startling. Einstein has put it thus: “To stand in awe at the structure of the world”.

David Buckland.

We are all exhausted and each have found a unique way to suffer, Brian, healthy of body is suffering dark dreams and hallucinations, for Aminatu this place is foreign, the sea frightening and after her deserts she cannot comprehend the fact that the earth is 70% ocean – she is even looking forward to the calmness of ice.

Our watch systems continue, it is a good rhythm as we plough forward. We are 160 miles from Greenland but cannot access there due to ‘old ice’ blown down from the north – the seas are far too warm to freeze. This needs to be about -2 degrees C. Scorsby is 298 miles so we expect to arrive Sunday lunch, ice permitting. We are at this moment 75 miles from the ice edge and there is a promise of calm seas tonight. Last night the full moon glowed dimly through the cloud mass and it would be great if tonight we got clear skies, the moon, northern lights and the glow of the ice sheet.

Kathy and I send out the text and images on our 4am watch, this is no simple matter with the laptop connected to the Iridium phone and all this outside on the pitching ship. It is a wonder at all that the Iridium works in such environments and that we can communicate and send images. Your passed on messages are very welcome to this most northerly sailing ship on the planet!

David Buckland Friday. [I think].

There are 20 of us, eight nationalities of writers, scientists, fine artists, journalists, musicians, film crew and Marcus Brigstocke bring comedy to the tragedy of Climate Change, melting ice and threatened wild life. Ahead, even for hardened sailors, is an epic arctic journey, 850 miles of ocean sailing during which the scientists will make ocean soundings using a CTD and two thirds of the journey is expected to be made close to the ice edge as we track south. We should see whales as this is their feeding ground, maybe even the threatened fabled Greenland whale whose numbers are now thought to be increasing from a point of extinction – these whales can grow to an age of 250 years, a point charted by the age of broken harpoons lodged in there skins.

We are carefully tracking an Atlantic low as it passes westwards just off the Iceland coast – so deep in depression that force 8 to storm 10 is forecast. We should be north of such systems but this years jet stream has been notably unstable which rises concern – we do not want to encounter seas of such magnitude.

Now everyone is waking, Anna’s breakfast, a walk among the glacier and then let the sail commence.

6 am Monday and the Noorderlicht is calm as we anchor with a glacier off in the distance. On a chart of 1950 this same glacier reached four miles further out to sea from our anchor point.

Our epic urban journey of planes and hotels finished last night and the joy of being truly Arctic and on our own resonated throughout us all. Downloaded Ice maps show a 20% reduction of Arctic ice this year but most of this is in the Russian Arctic basin and the Northwest Passage of Canada. Off the Eastern Greenland coast the ice has advanced south driven by a summer of northerly winds blocking, we feared, our entrance to Scoresby Sund. The arrival of Ko de Korte, our expedition guide, brought good news. Yes there is 20% ice covering the entrance of Scoresby, but it is old ice, very dense and he thinks it is navigable. So now there is no plan ‘b’, we sail this afternoon crossing the High Arctic Atlantic, chase south along the sea ice and in 5-6 days we should be able to enter our point of destination.

David Buckland.

P.S. Yesterday in Longyearbyen airport we met the returning Youth Expedition. Full of stories of adventure and life changing activity, such a glorious team on young people hungry to continue their study and work within the Climate Change arena. It was a very emotional ‘crossing of paths’ and we all applauded their success.

David Buckland
Artist and Cape Farewell Director (UK)

David Buckland, artist and director, started the Cape Farewell project 8 years ago. His initial work with mathematical modelers and climate scientists was driven by artistic inquiry but due to the frustration of the scientific community to get Climate Change debated on any major public platform, he created Cape Farewell to address just this issue.

Eight years on and now, thankfully, climate change has risen to the top of the western agenda but for David the steer is still artistic inquiry. Artists have always aligned their work, directly or obliquely, to the prevailing agenda of cultural positioning, whether it be religion, the enlightenment or self greed. Climate change is no exception but the stakes for humanity are very high, it is about our social and economic survival and will question very basic assumed values we have evolved over the past 200 years.

Questioning these is the driver for David’s artistic inquiry and continues to be central to the work he is currently creating whether it be voyaging with a collection of our best creative practitioners or exhibiting his video and photographic works in urban venues worldwide.