Prince Christian Sound, Greenland

 One of the best days of the whole Canada & Greenland cruise. I took almost 200 photos.

After leaving Nanortalik, we continued southeast along the coast of Southern Greenland, heading for the entry into the fjord system.

Map from The Inside Cabin , with labels I have added in green -

From Wikipedia "The Prince Christian Sound (Greenlandic: Ikerasassuaq; Danish:Prins Christians Sund) is a waterway in Southern Greenland. It separates the mainland from Sammisoq (Christian IV Island) and other islands of the Cape Farewell Archipelago near the southernmost tip of Greenland. The name was given in honour of the prince, later king Christian VIII of Denmark.

The Prince Christian Sound connects the Labrador Sea with the Irminger Sea. It is around 100 km long and it is narrow, sometimes only 500 m wide. There is only one settlement along this sound, Aappilattoq. 

The long fjord system is mostly surrounded by steep mountains in general reaching over 1,200 m, one of them 2,220 m high. Many glaciers go straight into its waters where they calve icebergs. There are often strong tidal currents limiting the formation of ice. It has many offshoots, such as Kangerluk to the north midway through the fjord".

I was out on deck by 6.10 am before it was fully light. We were still in the sea and it was really cold and windy but as we turned into Prins Christiansund (Prince Christian Sound) at 6.30 the wind lessened.

The sun slowly rose. Many people came out on deck. The first mountains were stunning, with jagged needles and pointed peaks on the tops – these are nuntaks, formed from frost shattering. (A nunatak is a mountain peak or ridge that sticks up through a glacier or ice field that covers most of the mountain). Really impressive. The sun lit up one side turning it gold. So beautiful.

1st glacier of the day -

More nuntaks -

The right side of this iceberg looks like a standing figure facing left, with a close up of a face on the side!!!

We reached the arm of the fjord that goes up to the glacier mentioned above marked x on map -

Gulls on an iceberg -

We had left the nuntaks behind. The mountains now were much smoother -

Looking back -

As mentioned above, there is only one settlement in the fjord, Aappilattoq. The first sighting we had of any civilisation was the mast and satellite ball -

Aappilattoq is hidden behind a natural harbour. It has a fish processing building and church, a heliport and we saw a couple of sail boats. There are only 100+ inhabitants. The name means “red” from the mountain behind.

We had quite a long stop by the village. A tender was put out and then a rib, which just went around. 

Just beyond the village was a huge flat iceberg, about 300 m wide and 10 m above water. At first we hoped the brown lump on the iceberg was a seal, but it turned out to be a rock!

 

I particularly liked this little iceberg, with lines on one side and "teeth" on the other -

The banding and folding was different on all the mountains -

Strange line across the water, with different colours -

Looking towards the narrowest part of the fjord, just 500 m across -

 We came up to a nice glacier, it is marked 1 in green on the map above.

Then past some waterfalls

The black bands almost looked as if they had been painted!

We were surprised to see a yacht come sailing past us, presumably heading for Aappilattoq.

We then came to a much bigger glacier. We were able to sail up to about 2 km from it, although it looked much closer. The mountains on one side are 1200 m and 1050 m on the other. We spent a time here and did a couple of 360⁰ turns. The glacier had some small calving. No 2 on map above.

A tender was put out again for the crew to collect some ice from the water. They came back with 2 large lumps.

We carried on, and saw some nice faulting and banding-

Then another glacier with an iceberg almost in front of it (3 on map) -

The final glacier we went past quite quickly but it was beautiful. It is No 4 on the map, and is the southernmost point of the Greenland ice cap. As we went past we saw the whole width of it, with an amazing lump on rock in the middle.

Final view -

The mountains became much smaller, it reminded me of Llandudno area in North Wales! There were a few small icebergs.

We saw a large group of seals in the distance on the left side, but I didn't get a good photo

On the right close to the sea entrance is a small lighthouse and an old meteorological station, founded by the US during World War II under the name Bluie East One. Bluie was the United States military code name for Greenland during World War II. 

We left the fjord at 2.30 after 8 hours in it. Absolutely wonderful. As we left there was a large group of large icebergs in a bay on our right.

A German fishing boat passed us.

On the left were low islands or skerries.

It had been a wonderful day and a glorious goodbye to Greenland.

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Apparently the season for cruise ships to go through Prins Christiansund is just 3 months but this year the ice only opened enough 3 weeks ago, so many cruises before that were cancelled. It was the worst ice for 50 years.