Siggi and Aurora

I've been meaning to post more stories and photos of Greenland but have been held up first by the return to work email backlog plus my home laptop is not just dead but not repairable accordingly to John Lewis and they can't (or at least didn't) extract any of the data from the hard disk before disposing of it.

Gloom.

Anyhow back to Greenland and this is the yacht I went on. It's one of the original Clipper fleet, 60 feet long, hull made of fibre glass, and currently called Aurora.

She was Robin Knox-Johnson's favourite of that fleet and there are some good Robin KJ stories to come, in particular how she ended up with Siggi.

Siggi Jonsson is the owner & skipper and must be the world expert on the anchorages of East Greenland, having gone over there for many, many summers and talked to everyone he can from hunters to Robin KJ to Willy Ker. Willy is the author of the Royal Cruising Club's pilot book to Faroe, Iceland and Greenland, a staple from last year, and also another Contessa 32 sailor, as we sailed last year.

Siggi is a rather common name is Iceland and while waiting for the helicopter at Tasiilaq I had this conversation with an old Greenland hand about how I'd been sailing with him and they said yes they knew him only to find out they meant someone completely different.

However this Siggi is known to at least one other sailing blogger as he was the guide for Alasdair and the crew of Sumara of Weymouth on their epic sail and climb voyage to Jan Mayen Island.

He would have been a good choice as was very impressed with Siggi's knowledge and skill both in navigating the icy fjords of E. Greenland and also preparing tasty dinners of baked fish or freshly baked bread: yum.

Here is Siggi standing on an iceberg in his crocs (as you do):