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Foulk Fjord towards Etah and the Nares Strait with Canada in the far distance.
Wesley’s Cirrus
sitting at Qaanaaq, Greenland (BGQQ) – the top of the world.
first a direct shot to Ilulissat, the source of the Titanic iceberg, but also right next to Disko Island. This time the plan was to fly over water the whole way and avoid terrain and ice.
We loaded the plane and fueled up but didn’t use the jerry cans, to keep weight low, and left a full barrel in Qaanaaq. Since the estimated flight time had plenty of buffer, we decided to go straight to Ilulissat. The briefing with Greenland weather service that morning said we’d stay to the east of a low and have good
conditions all the way down. It should have taken around three hours and 45 minutes.
We departed to amazing VFR skies and went over the ice cap to reach Baffin Bay. The first hour and a half was gorgeous flying weather. The view of Greenland while sitting just offshore was spectacu- lar and the MFD map popped back up just south of the Thule area where it had disappeared on the way up.
But it didn’t last ...
We started encountering significant clouds to the south of Upernavik, and as we approached Disko Island, about 20 miles offshore, I was forced down to 2,000 feet to avoid clouds and ice. At about the same point, the winds were picking up and I was facing a sustained 65-70+ mph headwind and significant turbulence. At the peak, I was hitting 80 knots and the shear became vicious to the point I received a “Crosscheck Attitude” warning on the PFD. Justin kept looking at the white caps below and said
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VOLUME 18, NUMBER 7
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TRAVELOGUE