Saturday, June 15, 2013

Icelandair



Icelandair is the airline that I will be flying to Reykjavik with from Heathrow. The airline is Iceland's main airline and flies from Iceland to 25 destinations in Europe and 10 in the US.

I flew with Icelandair when I went to Iceland last year and their quality of service was excellent.

The company has generously agreed to waive excess baggage costs for my trip, quite a saving :-)

Paqua

Being a sea kayaker, I have a need to keep certain items of gear dry whilst on the water. The main piece of electronic gear that I have on deck is my GPS. GPS units are an awesome invention and are really useful just as long as the fundamental navigation skills don't go out the window. I use a garmin 62S mapping GPS that contains contour and street maps for all of Australia, Marine charts for the whole of Australia as well as detailed custom maps of the Amassalik area in East Greenland. The GPS is the definitive means of locating oneself in unfamiliar territory and it is worth looking after. Over the years I have tried just about every brand of drybag suitable for use with GPS units (or phones or vhf radios) including the big name brands. They have all failed rather miserably, some are poorly designed, the biggest name of all is built far too light and fails after a fairly short period of time. About 3 years ago I came across an Australian brand called Paqua.
Paqua is a relatively small company run by Paul Trachtenberg. Paul designed the bags to be as tough and waterproof as possible. My Paqua Mobile bag has safely carried my GPS for the last three years and kept it dry every time. It has been across Bass Strait by kayak, it has travelled 260 kms by kayak in Greenland with me, and every time I go out in the kayak it comes along for the ride, whether it be surfing (and rolling, the two go together :-) or just going for a quiet paddle. It just works.
Paqua have generously supplied their bags for use on my expedition.






Sunday, June 9, 2013

Icebergs!

The Danish Meteorological Institute supplies satellite ice charts on an almost daily basis of the Greenland coastline and fjord systems.
The latest ice chart from 6th June shows two massive icebergs in the Ammassalik fjord systems. The larger of the 2 measures approximately 2.5 kms long, the second one isn't much smaller. Both of these icebergs have broken free from the tidewater glaciers to the north, either Karale  Glacier or Knud Rassmussen Glacier. Huge!